Being a mother at Christmastide is perhaps the height of feminine joy. Sure, some emotionally unbalanced women very publicly complain about all the wrapping, cooking, and activities. But they need to figure out how to center and organize themselves, because complaining about wrapping a present ignores that it gets you something precious: the look in your child’s eyes when you put it under the tree, after their excitement when you ban them from your bedroom while they know you are wrapping.
Mothers have not just the power but a sacred duty to make some of the next generation’s deepest, happiest childhood memories. That duty is a much higher calling than simply pleasing ourselves 24/7.
Children are so much better than movies or reality TV. That is, being a mother is living itself, which is indescribably better than watching strangers’ lives or living alone.
The specific presents aren’t really the point. It’s the precious relationship with a child of your own that you are marking, always inadequately, with whatever item you managed to scrounge for the occasion. As everyone who has ever seen a child play with a giant cardboard box knows, you don’t need to buy a kid a pony to light up their lives. That’s one of the magical things about children.
The many magical things about children can make family holidays a movie-worthy life experience you can keep in your memories forever. Yes, that definitely includes Griswold family-style experiences. But it also includes better-than-Hallmark life experiences, customized just for you.
Only for you will the curve of your child’s lip that looks like your husband’s family be extra precious when it smiles dusted with powdered sugar and sprinkles. Only for you are the snuggles with your kids while reading the long version of “The Nutcracker” on day six of a 10-day family barf session in the midst of a winter stomach bug.
Only for you are the yearnings of a child still young enough to only want his own mother and no one else for every special moment of his tiny life. Only for you are the warming hugs he needs when he comes inside crying with frozen-red hands because he didn’t put on the gloves you recommended. Only from you comes the comfort and joy to other people that you uniquely provide when you are their wife and mother (as well as when you are their husband and father).
The innocence and freshness of especially young children is an intrinsic part of Christmas. All the old hymns and folk songs say so, and they are right. Every child in some tiny way reflects the Christ child, a fresh start, a new hope, and a reason to not just live but also to smile amid all the darkness of Earth. Without this, life truly isn’t worth living, and holidays have no meaning.
Children are essential to the special magic of Christmas, and in fact all festivities. Think back to any times you have been to a holiday gathering without children. Now, such gatherings can certainly be fun and festive, and adult-only cocktail parties and the like do have their place. But it’s a lower place than gatherings with children, just like a wedding without children is missing part of the very essence of wedding-ness itself. Add children, and the festivity immediately ratchets up to level eleven (yes, along with the noise).
Christmastide is nothing without children, especially the smallest and most comical children. If you need to cheer yourself up this year, run over to the nearest Christmas pageant featuring small children and if you don’t laugh until you cry at the tots sticking their fingers in their noses while forgetting the words to “Silent Night” and bumbling around the stage in the wrong direction, you have no soul.
Every time he does something accidentally adorable this Christmas, I keep thinking that our youngest, who is five, will be one step closer to cynical, tired adulthood every year forward. If we have no more until the grandkids come, for the next 10-15 years who will say hilariously ignorant things about Baby Jesus and dance around boxing his fists while singing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” every Advent?
Why even make Christmas cookies and foods without children around to give them to? That includes adult children, and the children of your parents and your aunts and uncles. It’s unbelievably desolate to imagine making a splendid, magazine-worthy meal and serving it only to … yourself.
Children are the best Christmas decoration, and the best audience for Christmas decorations. They are the people who, in their little souls, glory in the sparkly lights, the Nativity scenes, the Christmas trees, the Santas, and all the stories about Christmasses past. Their delight teaches us again every year what Christmas is for, and how to do it.
Yes, kids whine, nag, and get too worked up, especially if you let them watch YouTube. But you’re the mom. You can ban bad behaviors, and take away something they want if they don’t stop. When they are parented well, kids are the most amazing people. My husband taught me this by parenting the children well, which is to say disciplining them consistently. I became a believer after I saw how well it works.
Something as cheap as Calico Critters can make them leap about with the most adorable, real, live expressions you’ve ever seen. Something even cheaper, like giving them Christmas cookies for breakfast, can do the exact same thing. That, or some coffee with an inexpensive homemade syrup, even works for teenagers if you haven’t trained normal human interaction out of them with internet access. (Remember to lock the kids outside afterwards with the dog to burn off their sugar rush while you enjoy a nice hot cup of coffee.) It’s so fun to be able to give small people that pure, thrilling delight with the simplest gifts.
Children keep us child-like, and childlikeness is the very center of the Christmas spirit. That’s because Christmas is about the God who became a human child to save all who believe from eternal death. It’s something worth whooping about.
