25 December 2003 - 12:14 a.m. - surprises
It's strange for it to be Christmas Eve and have so few people around. I finally finished the last of my ridiculous projects, right down to the last minute as usual. I'm pleased with how the one turned out; I hope the victim, er, recipient likes it as well.
I helped Aunty Deluvian put things into the stockings. I think this is the first year I've done that. There was a time when I was anxious to help with such things, when I first figured out that Santa was less like magic and more like a stagehand. I wanted to be in on the action behind the scenes. My parents were clever, and would wrap presents from Santa in different paper from the regular family stuff, which convinced me for a while that Santa was operating independently. I'm not sure how old I was when I first started being suspicious, but I do know that it was the handwriting that finally gave it away.
At home, we would leave a plate of cookies out before going to bed, and in the morning, there would be a plate of crumbs and a note. Santa had fancy, curly handwriting full of swashes and flourishes. But at grandma's house, when there were To-From tags on gifts from Santa, the writing looked just like my grandmother's. Everyone else in the family thinks I'm nuts for having noticed such a small, fiddly thing as handwriting when I was so young. It's become sort of a running joke over the years.
And now I feel like I'm old and tired, and it's a lot like work to come up with any enthusiasm for Christmas. It was more fun when it was still a bit mysterious, and there were hints and clues I could pay attention to. Whose handwriting is that really? If I write a letter to Santa with my Christmas list, burn the letter in the fireplace in the approved manner, and keep one item a complete secret from everyone else, will I get the secret thing? Can I prove anything by this?
It occurrs to me that I was awfully sneaky and devious when I was a kid. It was the mystery and surprise that appealed to me, the thrill of opening a present containing something really cool that I'd never even heard of before. The excitement of watching somebody open something I had given them, hoping they liked it. The method of "I'll tell you what I want and then you buy it for me" always seemed like it was missing the point.If I'm nostalgic about any part of this holiday, it's the surprise. The not-knowing, and the getting-to-find-out. Next year (I tell myself), I'm going to make more of an effort to do something unexpected for somebody.