HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

By:Deborah Ann Harwood

 This time of year, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams,  Perry Como and all the rest of the old crooners are singing, “I’ll be home for Christmas.  You can plan on me.”  Like Dorothy clicking together the heels of her ruby-red slippers, and crying with anticipation to her little dog Toto, “There’s no place like home.  There’s no place like home,” the airwaves this time of year are bawling out sentiment with, “There’s no place like home for the holidays.  No matter how far away you roam, if you want to be happy in a million ways, for the holidays you can’t beat home sweet home.”

So, we prepare.  No other season finds us as busy as Christmas.  Coloring Easter eggs and letting the bunny hop and hide them down the trail is chump change compared to the whirlwind of traditions associated with this holiday.  “Don we now our gay apparel” means shopping for new clothes for holiday parties.  Getting out Christmas cards, baking cookies and dragging ourselves through the malls for just the right gifts add extra stress.  We need to be ready.  Eggnog in the refrigerator?  Stockings hung with care?

Nothing surpasses the thrill of trudging through the woods in the frosty air to cut down this year’s Christmas tree, the smell of fresh pine in the car, the excitement of positioning the tree in the stand and proudly hauling it into the house, the wonder of standng back in the dark and admiring the glory of the exquisitely decorated Christmas tree.  But it’s all a lot of work.

Hey!  It’s Christmas!  We want to go to all this trouble because someone will be coming home!  We have to do all this because it’s tradition.  My grandmother made little pecan cookies rolled in powdered sugar and I’m making them so my grandchildren can eat them.  That little cookie covers five generations of love remembered at Christmas.  Tradition!

No other time of the year do we decorate our eaves troughs with colored lights, lie on our backs in the snow to make angels or build and decorate Frosty the snowman in the front yard.  We have to do it all.

We can’t be caught unprepared when Santa Clause comes to town.  Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, Dancer, Prancer, Donder, Blitzen, Comet, Cupid – you know the group, jingling their bells, will be prancing and pawing their little hooves on our rooftops while they wait for Santa to drop down our chimneys, stuff himself with milk and cookies, fill our stockings, and leave us presents under the tree.  “Shhhhh, get to sleep now, or he won’t come.”  Gee whiz, you have to BELIEVE!  It’s all part of the magic of “home for Christmas.”

Where is this place called “home?  Do we need to physically transport ourselves to a residence where, a very long time ago, all we wanted for Christmas was our two front teeth?  That house is probably gone now.  We grew up, left there, moved on.

“Please have snow and mistletoe and presents on the tree.”  Do we need all that?  Is that what “home” means – snow and presents?  What are we yearning to go home for?

Poet Mary Oliver defines it best for me when she writes, “Whenever I get home – whenever – somebody loves me there.”

We go about the business of continuing the old traditions; we add new traditions as we update our lives; we make “home” so the next generations – whenever they get there – whenever – can rest, kick back, and feel that somebody loves them there.  We make “home” from the remembered scraps of yesterday, the miracle of today, and the awe of preparing for what’s to come.  Home is a dream-place in your heart.

Going home for Christmas is, in the silent night, falling on your knees to hear the angel voices of all who ever loved you.  Home is joy to the world jumping up and down celebrating a new baby yet to be born.  It’s an accumulation of where you’ve been, where you are, where you dream of going – home.

“Christmas Eve will find me where the love light gleams.  I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.”