Unpacking Christmas

For me Christmas is a two part engagement, Dads side and Moms side. It's always been this way. Now I know what this sounds like, my parents must be divorced. Incorrect. My parents are happily married. But for some reason the holidays have become segregated-- separate but equal. It's not like, weird or scarring for me because, well that's just kind of how I'm used to operating. In fact I like compartmentalizing the two sides of my family. The crazies and... the crazies.

I think my parent's families are on two ends of the crazy spectrum. So far apart from each other that after a while they start to resemble eachother in an odd way. If that make sense.

My dads family gets Christmas Eve and my moms gets Christmas Day. And for the most part they hold equal significance. I think I have more memories from Christmas eve, but then again I think I have more memories of my dads side of the family. They represent a huge portion of what I think of as family. And it's not just limited to relatives. I grew up hanging with people that were "aunts and uncles" and "who really knows". My moms side is more focused on the immediate family. Grandma and aunt and uncle and two cousins. Sometimes other aunt and uncle. But the family tree on my dads side is not nearly as simple. Second cousins, third cousins, aunts uncles, great aunts, and extraneous people who have found a way into our family circle. Put simply, it's just a larger group of people.

But I think its more then just the size of the group that makes a difference. My dads side has it's traditions but they are not nearly as orthodox as my moms side. I think in a lot of ways I relate more to my dads side because of that sense of unorthodox-ness.

But on both sides we have a cast of characters. We have the forever wise grandfather who likes to impart wisdoms upon anyone who will sit still long enough. We have the cousin who has just reached that beautifully attitudinal stage that accompanies middle school. We have the cool aunt who arrives in a whirlwind after traveling across the globe. We have the one who you think is always a little disappointed that you don't party as much as he did. We even have the pretentious artist type who spouts out monologues that you suspect may just be a load of crap. And the list goes on. And I love every one of them, as cliche and crazy as they may be.

And then there's me. Stuck in the middle, and with my own version of crazy spilling out. And I still haven't reconciled the two sides of the family within myself. I think only time will tell what the new age of my family traditions for Christmas will entail. One thing is for certain, it will be interesting.