the longest Christmas post ever or ho ho ho… and pass the gherkins.

I’m a bit of a Christmas-a-holic.

And no, it’s not too early to talk about it.

Even as I type those words, I know I’ve lost a good 75% of you to ardent cringing and mewling about commercialism and Judeo-Christian societal dominance and Visa bills.

(Did I just use the word mewling?)

In all honesty, I get why some people are so bent out of shape about the season; all those gifts to buy, all those obligatory parties and dinners and fetes, and nothing but ten extra pounds and some knicknacks to show for it in the end.

But I am not one for racking up major damage on my credit card to commemorate the occasion (I don’t even use credit cards), nor am I a fan of fruitcakes or the acquisition of sparkly ceramic ornaments.

Hell, my family was never even one where gifts were the point; we had generous parents, to be sure, when they could afford to be (and sometimes when they couldn’t — my father was a minister and my mom a soft-hearted Jill of All Trades, i.e. someone who does everything for free, even when she should and could charge for anything she crafted), but our priorities never left us unwrapping electronic behemoths on Christmas morning and crying in our pajamas when our Coleco or Atari died from misassembly.

We did not ask for anything our parents could not afford and if we did, it was made clear that children should know their limits. We could be jackasses, but it was dealt with swiftly.

While I loved the perfume my dad would buy me (my mom was allergic, but he loved giving perfume, so yay for me!) and the excellent sweaters I received, we knew we had it easy just being warm, fed, and loved.

Still, I adore giving presents, and I don’t need a holiday to do it — though I prefer a well-chosen single item to 10 or 15 things I’ve been nagged to purchase. My budget can’t handle that kind of consumption, anyhow. I am not into being stressed by expectations.

But that’s not what I dig about Christmas.

What I really love about my Christmas is the wealth of memories and stimulus that come along with the season for me. I love twinkling lights and the smell of pine and the spicy warmth of cider and the feeling of snow crunching beneath a wooden toboggan.

I love the carols and the bells and the sound of feet stomping snow off of boots in the entryway. I love the snap of gingerbread, the slick shine of roasted turkey skin, and the sharp tang of cranberry sauce made from real whole berries on top of the stove.

Idyllic? Oh, hold onto your hat, I’m not done yet…

I love how my family would gather to trim the tree — so studiously and according to routine when I was younger, down to who would put what ornament where (by the wishes of us kids — I’m sure my parents couldn’t have cared less, but they always took us seriously).

As we grew older, we’d fit in the tree trimming event late some night not long before Christmas actually came. We’d listen to all the most silly old holiday vinyl LPs we could, giggling at the cheesy lyrics and and sparkly album jackets. Then we’d gather with only the lights from the tree illuminating the room to enjoy some cider — and a little bit of the baking that was slowly taking over the pantry — before we crashed into bed.

I loved the dresses my mother would make me for pageants and parties: demure, dark-velvet designs with crisp white collars or antique lace at the cuff — the kind of thing Meg or Jo or Beth or Amy would have worn in the books I was reading at the time. I can remember sleeping in rag curlers the night before and dreaming of putting on one of those soft, yet weighty confections with my patent shoes and scratchy stockings.

Sometimes Mom would let me wear one of her necklaces or rings and then I would feel like the most glamourous lady on earth.

I loved our family gatherings on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, AND Boxing Day: darting from lap to lap; sneaking odd little pickles from Aunt Hazel’s old ceramic dishes on the buffet table; receiving bright boxes filled with stuffed animals and pen-and-pencil sets and odd handknit vests with red-bowed terriers on the front; and commiserating in my teenage years with my ninety-something year-old Cousin Norma about how rough it was to be a single chick.

I loved listening to “A Child’s Christmas In Wales” — as read by Dylan Thomas — on our way back from Hazel and Joe’s or Grammy and Grumps’ house on Christmas Eve, the whole car silently adoring the plummy tones of his Welsh brogue.

“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen. “

Then we’d put on the Cambridge singers or the Jose Feliciano album or David Grisman’s gentle guitar stylings for the rest of the trip and watch the house lights go by. How amazing was it that everywhere we went had a country road to lead us to and fro?

I’d always fall asleep and wake up just as I was being carried upstairs to bed. To this day, I can still smell my dad’s cologne on his wooly scarf as I buried my face in his shoulder to block out the bright lights of the tree and the hallway fixture outside my room.

I loved the way my mother would deck out the house in such a ferocious way: the della robia on the mantel with the pineapple in the middle (the symbol of hospitality) and the hurricane lamps at either end; the smaller pines with handmade ornaments gracing the dining room, the living room — even the kitchen; the gorgeous from-scratch wreaths on every door that were so envied by our friends and family (my mother always had to make multiples of everything to meet the demand of admirers); and the best thing of all: the ‘family tree’ with heart-shaped dough ornaments that had the names of every last member of both sides of the family Mom-calligraphed on their puffy, glossy-red surfaces.

I loved the way the house was warm with a constantly burning oven, as we made made jammy thumbprints and sugar cookies and butter tarts for our yearly open house. You couldn’t get past the trays of nanaimo bars and apricot balls and red and green Jell-O cubes (for the little ones) in the fridge — it seemed like our lives were taken over by sweetness.

And once all the church friends and family friends and neighbourhood friends came through, then we’d be laden down with their baking and gifts of chocolates and jellies and preserves.

I loved how my parents reminded us how blessed we were; selfishness may have come up at points, due to our age and immaturity, but it wasn’t accepted in my house. How could we be unthankful when we had every little thing anyone needed and so much more? Generosity with whatever we had was not simply encouraged — it was expected.

I can, however, remember my friends at school ranting about what they wanted and didn’t get, or about how annoyed the whole season made them.

Some of them were horribly spoiled, but I know others had difficult family situations that seemed to preclude any kind of holiday joy. The children of split-up families and fighting factions and frustrated alcoholics and parents with seasonal depressions loathed every minute of December — January not only brought them a new year, but also freedom from a distinct lack of Christmas peace.

As well, many of my classmates didn’t celebrate a December holiday according to their own religious or non-religious or cultural practices — but they’d be inundated with all the trimmings at school, whether they liked it or not.

Theirs was a hard road of odd compromises and weird abstentions at times, culiminating in hours of having to explain why they didn’t have new loot when we came back to school in January.

But I remember talking with my friend Leeta from India about the other cultural and religious celebrations her family observed during the course of the year. She felt like she got plenty of good stuff during the occasions they celebrated; Christmas, to her, was an excuse to poach treats from my lunch and to have a couple of weeks off of school.

It was all good with me; mine was never a family to sideline people with our beliefs and traditions, anyhow; as open and convinced as we were about what we felt and believed, we opened our arms and cookie tins to any and all who came across our path — how else could you live?

Above all else, I was taught from babyhood to cherish family and friends and the love they brought into my life, rather than things and possessions and presents (as lovely as they could be in and of themselves).

Those lessons have come in handy, lately.

Last Christmas, three out of four of the members of my immediate family were (mostly) unemployed, after being buffeted by a few years of major changes and hurts and sacrifices. Only one out of the four of us bought gifts that we opened on the morning of December 25th. He received little in return but thanks, but that seemed to be enough.

He was plenty happy to be the provider, the eldest son, the visitor from the North. It was a new chapter in his life.

We did all the family events and ate all the turkey and stuffing we could, well… stuff in, but the best moment of all was our Christmas Eve Scrabble Fest, complete with good-natured squabbling and my mother’s atrocious board game skills leaving her the brunt of jokes.

I still have pictures of myself gleefully giving my dad’s digital camera the finger as he snapped shots of me in messy hair and pajamas. We laughed like idiots and went to sleep that night with sugarplum fairies and triple-word scores dancing in our heads.

The next morning, I received a beautiful painting from my mom, framed photographs taken by my dad, handmade and lovely things from the both of them together, and two fabulous shirts from my brother, along with gifts from grandparents, etc.

A pretty sweet haul!

But I know it was hard for them to not give more, as much as they knew that wasn’t important, and as much as they’d already given. And it was hard for me not to be able to surprise them with something luxurious they wouldn’t buy themselves, as was always my Christmas tradition.

More than anything, though, it was the final reminder that this had been a year of loss more than a year of gain. I was a little melancholy at the end of the day, given as I was to worrying about the disappointment of others — and knowing I felt a little myself.

Then I was struck straight through my soul as I insomniac-surfed the net late that Yuletide night.

It was just a breaking news alert on the CNN.com homepage at that point, but soon the story would unfold in nightmarish detail: a massive earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale had created a massive tsunami, which was was right at that moment causing devastation in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, The Maldives, and many other areas around the rim of the Indian Ocean. The first images were breathtakingly horrible — I couldn’t even see half of them for my tears.

The death toll from that event is currently estimated at more than 300,000, though rapid burials mean many, many more might have been killed — their loss invisible for the purposes of statistics.

So, Meg — what was that about loss again?

I spent the next few days glued to the television, in the appalling and persistent way we now seem to be after major crises occur in the world. Every time I would think about what it would be like to lose my family under such overwhelming and inescapable circumstances, I would feel the tears return to my eyes and a knot form in my stomach.

Since then, I think of that Christmas of handmade gifts and Scrabble and being shockingly reminded of my charmed life as the best one I’ve ever had. I finally grew up and realized — for all my sensory memories and Christmas addictions and fingerwaggling notions of generosity and charity — I’d never really understood what it meant to have when so many others did not.

Easy lesson to learn? No.

Crucial?

Absolutely.

I wish I’d learned it in any other way possible, but that’s how it happened. I’m not proud of being a dumbass.

So here’s my deal:

Haul out the holly, huck handfuls of tinsel at the tree, crunch through the snow, put a Santa hat on your dog, make your famous cheese ball, dance at the office party, spend three hours choosing the right tree in a freezing parking-lot-full full of similarly indecisive families, step on the scale and wince on the 27th, stare in fear at your child as they consume their ninth candy cane in an hour and walk on the ceiling, and put up the lights on the roofline with a staple gun (only to realize the whole damn strand has gone to the giant Storage Room in the Sky).

That is, if you can do it and enjoy it and not obsess and bemoan and long for what’s impossible.

But if you cannot buy a gift without resenting it, if you cannot eat another damn dinner because it all seems too conspicuous, if you are sick of the displays in the stores and the jingles in the elevator, if you cannot fathom how anyone at all can see the point of any of it –

Don’t do the drill.

Take your indignation and do something to make life easier for someone else, even if it doesn’t make your world one mite more simple. Take your frustration and pour it into giving to a family or a cause. Be honest — even if it’s hard — with the people around you about how you want to live your life and what you see as important. And then back it up with action.

On the other hand, if this season is one that only causes you pain because you’ve been hurt so many times that you can’t begin to count the awful moments, give yourself a gift — and not necessarily for Christmas, but for you — in getting support to heal. Getting treatment? Walking away from a bad relationship? Mending one that is long-fractured? Holding your tongue in the face of an argument or finally speaking your piece?

I don’t know what it will take for you, but I’m willing to bet you might have an inkling. I know two people who had their first day of sobriety on Dec. 25th.

And for those of you who are helpless to do anything to change what you’re facing, I won’t even try to offer you some weak comfort or panacea. To say that everything can transform in your life because of the time of year is just silly. I know that.

So.

I have been richly blessed with moments and memories over the years. I have spent hours tormenting people with my too-early Christmas tunes and little jigs whenever I see houses covered in lights. I’ve probably babbled about it for far too long in this post. I’m a holiday dork.

And really — that’s perfectly okay.