Christmas Traditions

Is there a time of year that tugs more on the heart than Christmas?

We remember our favorite Christmas memories from childhood, fanciful fads from late teens and early twenties when we were "cool," special moments when our own children were small and eventually having grown children with families of their own.



At the same time, we enjoy the spirit of the season in the present moment.

Will they become new traditions?

It's impossible to say.

As a child, our loving parents gave my sister and I amazing Christmas memories, with lots of beautifully wrapped presents from them which we opened on Christmas Eve followed by even more unwrapped under the tree on Christmas morning from Santa Claus.

When I was 18 and flush from having worked a steady job while going to college, I bought presents for all of my friends and family, wrapped them up in newspaper and then drove around in my Fiat 850 Spider at night with the top down to deliver them.

While I loved doing that and thought I would do the same every year, I never repeated that exact rite, though when in the Air Force, I bought presents for a lot of my friends who had stayed on base for Christmas, and when I opened the car door on my Chevy Vega with arms full of presents, the 80 mph wind blew the door so hard that it crushed the metal and destroyed the hinge to a point where I could never open the passenger door again.

For years when our kids were small, we would put Barbara Streisand's version of "Jingle Bells" on our boombox, and the kids would gyrate with manic dance steps all around our Carmel Mountain Ranch living room.



I believe the first Christmas we spent in Montana with my sister's family was in 2003.

That's the earliest Christmas letter I could find in my Documents folder, and it doesn't seem to indicate that we had spent Christmas there previously, although we certainly had been to Big Sky several times before that.

It became our new holiday tradition, although in 2006, Julie, Amy and I went on a Caribbean cruise from Galveston with a group that included long time friends Mike and Linda Rood as well as my late friend Bob Ward and his wife Billie.

My 2007 holiday letter notes that Gina and Laszlo came to Manhattan Beach for what was our last traditional Christmas celebration in our family home for an early celebration, which was decorated with Christmas tree and all the holiday trimmings, but we were actually in Big Sky for Christmas Day through January of 2008, the last year of my sweet mother's life.  Julie, Jay and I have been there every year since, though our daughters now living on the east coast have not come as regularly.

In 2017, we had the whole family in Big Sky, including Jay's girlfriend who would soon become his fiancee.

Of course, Sasha's family has their own Christmas traditions, and for 2018, her mother Libby felt like rekindling those traditions with a gigantic tree and both daughters home. That was the first time she had felt like hosting Christmas since her beloved husband had passed away.

As often happens with families, and in fact is something to which Julie and I have become accustomed with our daughters, the family traditions of one person in a relationship often must take priority over that of the other, and no matter how cool ours may seem to us, the other often wins.

However, Libby invited Julie and me to join them.

We were torn.

It would be the first time since we'd been married that we didn't spend Christmas with at least one of our children, but we had already told my sister we would be there, and that had possibly been the deciding factor for them returning to their winter home at a time of year when it becomes more crowded than they appreciate.

We compromised by spending a night in Park City at Libby's gorgeous, sprawling home before continuing up to Big Sky for our Christmas tradition of skiing.

Libby's house was beautifully adorned for the season, and they decorated the huge tree while we enjoyed delicious cheeses, sausage and wine by the fireside.

Our bedroom was certainly comfortable, and we thoroughly enjoyed everyone's company, but after a delicious homemade pancake breakfast, opening presents the next morning and shoveling a little driveway snow with Jay for exercise, Julie and I were off for Big Sky.

We enjoyed a relaxing Christmas vacation with Darlene, Brooks and LB, with amazing skiing in varying conditions augmented by great meals and free-flowing discussions.

One day we had fresh powder, and another day, while the temperature seemed too cold for comfort ---would you believe 20 below zero? --- the sunny skies and terrific conditions kept us on the slopes all day long, with the exception of occasional breaks in "sugar shacks" to warm up.  I had purchased a face mask before the trip, and wearing that turned out to be a great way to stay comfortable while shushing.

In all, we skied six days, taking breaks every two days.