So pour yourself another cuppa and think how you spent the last month. Compare it to the other Decembers of your life. Can you see a holiday trajectory? An evolution of holiday habits? Or are you still doing the same things in December that you did at 25 or 50?
If
you are old enough for Social Security, you may have morphed into a new holiday
phase, semi-retired now from some of the hoo-ha and from the merry slavery over
a hot stove. Example: Many of us
geezers have passed on the turkey platter to younger members of the family. Let
them bake the turkey with the giblets still inside. You’ve been there and done
that and a lot more you’d rather not tell Martha Stewart about.
Looking back on the recent holidays and those not
so recent, it seems to me that holiday behaviors do change over the years. When you live long enough to have hung
stockings by the chimney with care for 6, 7 or 8 decades, the thrill wears a
little thin, especially when the cookies and milk are still there in the
morning.
Truth to tell, some of us over 50 have pulled
back on parties and cooking, cut back on cards stuffed over-long letters and
stifled the urge to give little gifts to anything that moves, including the dog
and the cat. It’s not that Scrooge is our hero. It’s that we have less energy
and probably less disposable income to play the Santa that used to be us.
Me,
I can no longer haul in a 12-foot tree, put it up reliably, find the
decorations, untangle the lights, decorate, sweep up the needles, keep it
watered and pull the whole scene apart again the first week of January…to say
nothing of feeling guilty about mucking up the town gutters with my dead pine
tree.
And over-the top celebrations can put older folks
under the weather. Think massive winter colds. Think Yule Flu. We don’t have
the resilience we used to have when we stayed up to 2 AM assembling toys with
the wrong screwdriver.
And holidays with too many bells and whistles now
seem extravagant, especially to those who lived through the deprivations of the
Depression when there was not enough money for a tree or a present. Many older
people lived like Tiny Tim back then, goose-less and gift-less. Not a GI Joe or
Hot Wheels in sight.
With all these things in mind, I’d argue that
it’s perfectly reasonable to leave the heavy holiday lifting to our now adult
children. (Think of it as revenge for the times they didn’t help with the
holidays, but bolted as soon as they came home from college to go off and have
clandestine keggers with their friends.)
And next time, if, after celebrating a bit with
family and best friends---(that thrill is still there)---we then want a little
time to be quiet, listen to Bing and send out for a pizza on Christmas Eve, be
tolerant.
Even Santa hits retirement age.