My mom loved Christmas.
Not politely. Not casually. She loved it the way you love something you’re willing to exhaust yourself for. The religious meaning. The food. The good cheer. The gifts. All of it. Christmas wasn’t a day in our house — it was a season, a production schedule, and a social obligation she took personally.
She was more than happy to invite a couple of hundred people over on Christmas night to eat, drink, and hang out—family, friends, neighbors, and people who somehow just became part of it. Nobody needed an invitation. If you showed up, you ate.
Back then, all your cousins, aunts, and uncles lived a stone’s throw from each other. Same towns. Same streets. Same churches. Now we might see each other at a wedding. Or a funeral. If everyone can make it.
The Food Factory
Christmas preparation started the first weekend after Thanksgiving.
That’s when the food factory opened. My mom’s homemade cream puffs kicked things off — not a batch, but an operation. Trays everywhere. Powdered sugar floating in the air. My younger brother, sister, and I were enlisted immediately.
I remember thinking of I Love Lucy, Lucy and Ethel trying to keep up on the candy line. That’s what it felt like—moving too slow, getting in the way, trying to help while actively making things worse.
Total madness.
The following weekend was the tree. Getting it. Setting it up. Decorating it. Arguing about it. Then right back to food. By the second and third weekends, it was desserts, side dishes, and folded napkins with silverware tucked inside, tied with bows that were supposed to look elegant but absolutely didn’t.
It wasn’t pretty. It was necessary.
The House Gets Divided
The weekend before Christmas was about setup and control.
Cookies were made. Tables were moved. Furniture shifted just enough to pretend there would be room later. My mom started assigning spaces, like a floor plan that existed only in her head.
Kids were told where they’d be sent once people arrived — basement or upstairs, pick one. Adults would take over everything else. Kitchen. Living room. Dining room. Hallways. No dead space allowed.
The house already smelled of sugar, coffee, perfume, and something just slightly burning.
Nothing was happening yet.
But it was coming.
And we were wired. Santa was on deck.
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve meant church at 5 p.m. Best clothes. Sit still. Pay attention.
On the way home, someone would always point at the sky and say, “There’s Rudolph.”
That was it.
It’s the only night of the year kids want to go to bed early. Off we’d go. I’d sneak back out later, walk down the staircase to the top stocking — because that one was mine — then scope out the piles of gifts around 2 a.m.
No night-vision goggles back then. Just a kid, a staircase, and hope.
Christmas Morning
Christmas morning was magic.
Everyone smiling. Everyone happy.
Well — almost.
One year, I didn’t get what I wanted: a Mr. Microphone. At the time, this felt catastrophic. I understand now my mom was being smart. She worked in radio and TV and probably didn’t want to come home to her son running a pretend broadcast in the living room.
Fair.
Florida Still Got Christmas
For a few years after my parents’ divorce, my siblings and our mom would spend Christmas at our grandparents’ house in Venice, Florida.
It wasn’t a break.
We drove down — car packed with kids, luggage, and food. Not snacks. Full trays. Containers stacked like we were relocating a bakery. The same cream puffs came with us, because Christmas didn’t travel without dessert.
Palm trees outside. Midwest food inside. Confusing and familiar all at once.
That’s the Christmas my brother got precisely what he wanted — a remote-control plane.
As the older brother, I decided I should fly it first.
It crashed.
Oh boy.
Years later, his wife bought him another one. It crashed without my help. Then he bought a third. That one didn’t crash — it just kept flying over the forest, never to be seen again.
Some things don’t break.
They just disappear.
When the Crowd Arrived
After presents and a light lunch, the house reset itself.
Tables out. Food everywhere. Drinks flowing. One to two hundred people passing through — some stayed five minutes, others stayed all night. The adults knew how to party. Sometimes a little too much.
Once, a relative put a small dog in our oven as a joke. The oven was off. The dog was in there maybe ten seconds.
Still not funny.
The argument exploded. The day tilted. My mom never stopped asking why that woman brought her yappy dog in the first place. I never saw her at our house again.
After Everyone Left
As I got older, I stayed up and helped clean.
The math was simple. One night of chaos. Weeks of planning. Months before we’d do it all again.
The house emptied. The food disappeared. The noise shut off.
My mom looked satisfied. Tired, sure — but satisfied. Christmas had worked.
That was the point.
By the next morning, it was already yesterday.
And January didn’t care.
NOTE:
I hope today finds you somewhere warm — not just temperature-wise, but the good kind of warm. The kind that comes from being around people who know your stories, forgive your flaws, and still pass you another drink or slice of pie.
Christmas has a way of sneaking up on us. One minute it’s noise and lights and food everywhere, the next it’s quiet and you’re wondering where the time went. Maybe that’s the deal. We get one day to slow down, remember who mattered, and let the mess be part of the memory.
Wherever you are today — crowded house, quiet room, somewhere in between — I hope there’s laughter, something good to eat, and at least one moment that sticks with you longer than the wrapping paper. Merry Christmas to you
….And Merry Christmas, Mom. I miss you lots.
My mom was an accomplished artist, especially with watercolors. After she suffered a closed head injury in a car accident that nearly killed her. She didn’t want to paint with oil any longer
because the smell was too much. (I could have told her that starting at age one (1). She loved lighthouses, which she saw as beacons of hope and light in her life. Here is one of her favorite lighthouses in Grand Haven, MI, that she painted on a snowy December day. She always had three (3) birds in every painting to represent her three children.
