Christmas will not be Christmas this year
We blinked, and now, it is Christmas.
Although in my house, we are doing something a little different this year for the holiday.
We aren’t having it.
What I mean is that yes, we will be celebrating Christmas on Wednesday because, well because it’s Christmas.
How can you not acknowledge Dec. 25 as the day in which Jesus was born?
It’s the most precious moment there has ever been or ever will be, and no truer words will ever be said.
But what I mean to say is that we will not be doing the whole Christmas-tradition thing we have always done before.
And I am honestly devastated beyond words.
There will not be that excitement of waking up on Christmas morning with the anticipation of seeing what lies beneath those carefully-wrapped gifts underneath the tree.
There isn’t going to be the setting of an alarm so we can wake up extra early and visit the homes of our loved ones, who are awaiting our arrival so their children, who are eagerly waiting to see what Santa has left for them, can finally open their presents.
There will not be any traveling from house to house, taking notice of all of the gifts everyone has received, reading the Christmas cards that are on display or snacking on a variety of amazing, homemade cookies that we will have to wait another year for to have again.
There won’t be any of that.
Why aren’t we having Christmas you may be wondering?
Well, there are a couple of reasons.
The first is that no one has any money to buy anybody anything.
That’s just a fact.
We are all broker than broke.
I know without a doubt that we are not alone.
There are so many people who are struggling right now to make it — families, couples and individuals who have to live paycheck to paycheck.
Some of us don’t even have a paycheck.
It has been a hard couple of years.
For a lot of people, we are given the choice of having to either pay a bill or buy food. Presents aren’t even an option on the table.
For those of you who are going through this, I completely understand. And I am truly sorry.
I would love to be in a position to help. Because Christmas should be “the most wonderful time of the year.”
For so many, it is not.
As a matter of fact, I wasn’t going to put my tree up at all. But I finally got around to it on Thursday.
Now anyone who has ever met me knows just what my Christmas tree means to me — it is practically the most important thing I have ever owned.
There is no question I have talked about it before.
My mentioning how I taught my children when they were growing up that if the house were to ever catch fire, the first thing we do is to not run out of the house, but rather, we go downstairs and grab the Christmas tree and all of the decorations.
Before you call social services, my children no longer live with me. Not because they were taken away by the state, but because they grew up and moved away.
And because it was a joke. Well, sort of.
I honestly wasn’t going to put my tree up this year. I figured if there aren’t going to be any presents to place underneath it, then what’s the point?
But my mom reminded me we should put our stuff out because of the baby.
No, not the baby Jesus, but for the baby Layne, my grandson.
I can’t believe those words come out of my mouth. Grandson.
I blinked.
He is at that age where holiday decorations fascinate him. At least snowmen do.
How he loves them.
And how I love him.
Right now, he doesn’t much like his gram-gram. Or whatever I find me call myself on that particular day.
I haven’t actually decided on what he should call me just yet. It’s only been two years.
I need some more time to decide on a name. I am open to suggestions.
He cries when I try to hold him. Closes his eyes when he sees me — as if he is making himself invisible so I won’t notice he is there.
That, too, breaks my heart.
But I love him too much to face reality and so I pretend I am his favorite person in the whole world. (That’s the living-my-life-in-denial thing again.)
The other reason we will not be celebrating Christmas this year is because my youngest son, the one who is in the Air Force, is still serving in Poland.
He has been residing in a tent and staying in a country where the people there are not very kind to him.
How I would trade places with him if I could.
What we wouldn’t do for our children, which is why the no-Christmas thing.
We knew he wouldn’t be here for the holidays.
He told us as much before he left at the beginning of the year, but somehow, the reality didn’t set in until the holidays actually arrived.
It just isn’t the same when your entire family isn’t together.
It feels lonelier, emptier and incomplete.
Yes, I believe we all need to be grateful for the ones who are here. Suck it up and appreciate what we have before us.
I know that we should rejoice and be thankful.
But you have to understand that there has never been a Christmas when all three of my children weren’t under the same roof as me on Christmas morning. And there has not been a Christmas in 13 years that my dogs will not be there, either.
There will be one less plate around the table when we sit down for dinner.
An empty chair can say a lot — it tells a story all its own.
As I said in a previous column … home, for me, is not a noun. It is a feeling.
The same goes for Christmas.
It too, is a feeling.
It is family.
It is love.
It is togetherness.
It is the one moment when all is right with the world.
And that feeling just isn’t there this year.
But the tree is up. The outside lights are hung. And the holiday music plays on the radio.
Again, I pretend.
Sometimes, we all pretend. And that is OK.
I did come up with the idea of having my other two sons, along with my mom and step-dad, have us put our names in a pile and each person selected one name as the person that we will buy for.
Nothing extravagant. Just something that we can unwrap on Christmas morning. I still don’t have anything.
My other idea was for us to wait and celebrate Christmas when my Noah comes home in March, on the day when we can all be together again … that will feel like Christmas. So why not make it Christmas?
For those who live in my neighborhood, for those of you who have to drive past my house on their way to work, or who walk their dog down my street, you will have to excuse my outside Christmas lights being on a little longer.
You will have to pardon my tree as it sits prominently in the front bay window a couple additional months.
You may have to excuse any Christmas music you might hear coming from an open window during the spring.
And you might just run across a couple of current social media photos showing freshly-baked Christmas cookies long after St. Patrick’s Day has come and gone.
My Christmas will not be celebrated until all of us can be together once again.
To everyone who will be celebrating on Wednesday, I would like to say to you, Merry Christmas. I hope you will take a moment and realize the blessings you all have before you.
Take mental snapshots of your children, your grandchildren, as they hurriedly open their presents. We are always so busy taking pictures and videos on our cell phones that sometimes, we miss the actual moment.
We are not looking at them — we are looking down at our phone. And it isn’t the same.
Before cell phones, we had each other. I can remember many wonderful Christmases that are not captured in or on any device. The times we would wake up on Christmas morning, waiting for our grandparents to arrive so we could finally see what Santa had left for us.
I remember the smiles on their faces as they watched us open each gift. That, is perhaps the greatest gift I have ever received. Or ever will. The memories of them smiling.
When I got older and had children of my own, we would wait for their grandparents to arrive. And mine. They would somehow find the strength to come over around 6 a.m. and watch as the boys opened their gifts.
We would then go to my grandparents’ house and have Christmas. I recall the games my grandfather would play with us when it was time to reveal their big gift.
They always gave everyone an envelope containing a crisp new $50 bill. How they must have saved for a long time to do so.
It was what they could afford during that time. What they could afford was so much more than that $50. It was memories. It was a day that will be embedded in my mind until my last breath allows me to see them once again.
After my grandma’s house, we would go to my mom’s and open gifts. We would have a late lunch or early dinner and then, sometimes in the evening, we would go visit my dad.
Christmas was simply a wonderful day.
I wish you a beautiful and memorable Christmas like the ones I used to have. And my gift to you is that I ask you to go and read Jerry Barilla’s letter to the editor if you haven’t already. I had to help proofread the page the other day and while doing so, I came across his message. It had me in tears. I rarely cry when reading another’s words, but it resonates with me. His words are beautiful. You have a pretty special mayor, Steubenville. He and my grandfather were good friends. I used to buy appliances from his shop.
He is one-of-a-kind and his letter speaks volumes as to the kind of people we have living here in this community.
It’s my gift to you. Merry Christmas.
(Stenger is the community editor of the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times. She can be contacted at jstenger@heraldstaronline.com.)