Despite generational changes, Christmas is still for family

It's getting to where I'm enjoying commercials more than the regularly scheduled programming. Around Christmas, commercials take on their own flavor, from sloppy sentimentalism to crack-you-up funny.

My favorite right now is the one of the two little boys staring at a package under the tree. The younger one wonders what's in the box and his older brother tells him it could be the Wii they wanted -- or a box of meat.

The look on the younger child's face tickles me up every time, especially when he turns back to stare at the box in disbelief and consternation.

That's the difference between kids and grown-ups, though -- I'd love to get a box of meat. It probably cost more than the Wii...

Different ways

Different people mark the beginning of the Christmas season in different ways. Is it the day after Thanksgiving? The second Christmas decorations go up at the Big Box stores? (If it is, you must celebrate a very loooong season!)

My co-worker John Carney says it's when you see the Santa Claus at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, because that's the real Santa; but I think Christmas really begins with the first Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia pet commercial. It's soon followed by a wide variety of bizarre items bought by the clueless for the luckless. It's no wonder men are notoriously bad at buying their wives good Christmas presents when the television is constantly telling them what women really want are diamonds -- or nose hair trimmers. Since most of the guys can't afford the diamonds ...

Of course, religiously speaking (About Christmas? Imagine that) the season is preceded by Advent. We light one candle every night during devotional, adding another candle every week. We open another day on our Advent calendar and let the excitement build slowly, deliciously.

I remember the Christmases of my childhood being much less rushed, much less hectic and consumer-oriented than they are now, but then hindsight has a tendency to get foggy about things like that.

Remember Harvey's

When I was younger than Buzz, there were few stores in Tullahoma. Santa came to the tiny Sears outlet in a helicopter, but Mom and Dad made Santa supply runs to Harvey's in Nashville to get the big haul. Remember Harvey's, and the pastel polka dots on the shopping bags? I see pastel polka dots today and I can smell cinnamon and candle wax.

Harvey's had a big playroom where parents dropped the kids off, filled with penny rides and arcade games. There were benches and on one of them was a lanky cowboy made out of concrete and painted in gaudy, highly un-cowboy colors. Even Porter Wagoner on his most cheerful day would not be caught dead in this get-up. I would always end up falling asleep with my pillow on my coat, bundled up in his concrete cowboy lap.

If I ever find that statue, I swear, I'll buy it.

It was a magic trip -- we were country cousins, walking through downtown Nashville with our heads tilted back, looking up at the closest things to skyscrapers we'd ever known. Some years, we'd get to go to the library and see Tom Tichenor's Christmas puppet show. Other years, we'd eat at the very first Shoney's, savoring the rare luxury of strawberry pie in December.

Heading home

Yeah, we spent a lot of money. Our old Falcon station wagon was groaning by the time we loaded it up and headed home -- but it was more than that. It was family time and it was fun, even when Dad yelled at Mom because she forgot to warn him about a turn, or my little brother kept looking at me, and I got in trouble because I kept telling mom that my little brother was looking at me. Even after Dad died, it was fun, largely because my mother had the worse sense of direction ever and we always got lost and ended up circling the War Memorial Auditorium a million times before she could ever get in the right lane to get out of there. We'd wave at the TV stations on every passage, sure that we were going to be on the news that night. "Hillbilly family caught in endless loop..."

Of course, by then, Hickory Hollow had opened and was the place to go, so we didn't get downtown very much anymore. How could poor Shoney's compete with a food court?

Nowadays, we rarely venture as far as the Boro. The stores have come to us, with branches or chains, or through the internet. I also try to shop locally to keep my money here, and I try to shop Mom and Pop stores because I really, really hate the Big Box steamrollers.

I miss those hair-raising, death-defying ventures into Nashville holiday traffic, but there are other aspects of my childhood Christmases I miss more. The church I went to at that time once had the oldest, longest-running nativity scene in the state and every year, we all took turns standing in it. We didn't have fancy camels, or scripts, or lie bands or crafts -- we simply stood in the cold air and presented a still tableau of the manger scene and the shepherds in the fields scene, alternating with lights brightening and dimming, all to the soft background music of Christmas music.

Manger memories

After we stood our hour -- or half-hour, depending on how cold it was and how old we were -- we would head back to the kitchen and fill up on hot cocoa and homemade cookies. Then, when it was all over, we would help put the donkey, the sheep and the goats into their temporary pens behind the church's tool shed. The summer smell of straw, the cold bite of winter, the soft, velvet of the donkey's nose -- these are bits of my Christmases I haven't been able to share with my boys. A change in leadership in our church led to a change in attitude, and some members felt it was no longer worth the effort ... a shame.

But the nice thing about new generations is establishing new traditions. Some we have carried over, such as the Ugly Christmas Cookie Contest, and some are new, such as being the first to find the "Kidnapper Santa" ornament. (He's actually pulling a doll out of his bag but it likes like he's stuffing a little kid into it instead.)

But the most important tradition we have is that no matter how we celebrate the season, no matter where we are or what we're doing -- we're doing it together -- as a family.

Sounds like a good holiday commercial, doesn't it?