Christmas Eve Morn

It's 1:20am, Christmas Eve, and I sit awake reading One Writer's Beginning's by Eudora Welty, a signed edition by Welty to my great grandmother. I've been saddened this trip because I haven't much felt in the Christmas spirit, and I love the Christmas Spirit. Maybe it's because I didn't make it to the mall this year, since I completed so much shopping earlier in the year and then quickly online. So it could be that I'm not in a car so much, driving to the mall, that I'm not hearing regurgitated Christmas songs from the Beatles to Springsteen to Madonna to the old fogy stuff.

But it's also that I'm missing my boyfriend, I guess. We decided that he would not spend Christmas with me because he spent Thanksgiving with me (but then saw his family for one week right after). This means that I denied spending Christmas with his family. Plus, in my mind, we made this decision after Thanksgiving, which means that we did not plan for Christmas. If it's not planned for, it cannot happen. Not at Christmas.

In my mind, Christmas is all about one thing: stockings. My joy of Christmas is waking up with a fat, knitted (by my grandmother) stocking lying at the foot of my bed. Accompanying this is my sister bouncing into my room to open the stocking, and then the two of us leaping into my brother's room (which is always cold) to shiver and open his stocking. Then the morning begins with moving parents along. Grapefruits are sliced, coffee is poured, trash bags are opened and presents are exchanged. Nana comes over at 11am, makes her bloody merry mix, sets up the shrimps and puts sticky buns in the oven. Having looked forward to this all year, one can understand that to have me wake up in a bed not my own with no stocking would be jarring. I would need to prepare for this.

I'm not sure that David understands this. I tried telling him that even though we live together, since we did not make plans for Christmas, I wasn't so sure how I felt about him actually staying here for Christmas Eve. It's a very big night for me. I've lived with someone before during Christmas Eve, and I actually don't remember what we did. We very well might have fought over the fact that he didn't want to come to Christmas Morning because he didn't have Christmas presents for anyone due to low funds due to no job. So that didn't really count.

I digress. My grand point is really to ask this question, because I think it's affecting my Christmas Spirit: at what point do you stop waking up with a stocking on your bed? Or do you? If David was here, first of all, where would he sleep. If he slept with me, no stocking could arrive. If I slept with my sister, stockings could happen, and it would just be a new experience having David there on Christmas Morning, and for the whole day. Perhaps we're just not there yet as a couple, even though we live together. You have to earn that spot, on Christmas Morning. You have to earn the right to bound and leap, or watch others bound and leap until the heat has warmed up the house, coffee is brewing, and we can finally go downstairs to open presents.

This is truly a wonderful feeling that I'm evidently trying very hard to hold onto. I'm not very old in the grand scheme of things. Only 28 or something. And I know this whole romancing of Christmas Morning is childish. But I don't know how else to feel, and I don't know how to explain this to David, or if any of it even made sense.

Oh no - I think I hear floor boards creaking - the stocking-passer-outer is trying to find me. I guess that means the end of
this meandering thought. Have a good morning!

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