"Christmas Traditions"

12/19/2001

When I was but a wee lad (yes, it's true. At one time I could be described as "wee". Stop laughing.) my absolute favorite part of the Christmas holiday season was setting up the Christmas tree. More specifically it was the preparations to setting up the Christmas tree -- as in pulling out the boxes of decorations. Because that meant that I got to crawl back into the dim recesses of the storage area underneath the stairs.

My parents bought a split-foyer (as opposed to a split-level) suburban house in 1978. At some point during the moving in process the crawlspace underneath the stairs was designated as "Holiday Storage" and I, as the eldest male offspring, was appointed "Holiday Storage Retrieval Agent". Except that I made those designation up just now because I wasn't all that clever at the tender age of 11. I did however, with the help of my brother, turn the crawlspace into a rather nifty hidden fortress. We cleverly devised a way to close the covering from the inside and would sit in there pretending to be pirates or knights or robbers or hide-n-seek. That really didn't last long because we eventually grew bored with it and it got to be too crowded as we got bigger.

So anyway, every year we would pull all the coats, boots, tennis rackets and assorted junk out of the downstairs hall closet and gaily toss them onto the hallway floor. At the back of the closet is a three-foot square opening covered by an stray piece of the dark wood panelling that adorns the downstairs living room. Once that was removed, a dark, cobweb infested land of adventure awaited. Armed with only my trusty flashlight, I would crawl into that dark cavern and push out cardboard boxes of varying shapes and sizes out the waiting hands of my father.

This year the torch has been passed to the Clanlad who has been asking practically every day since Halloween when we were going to get out the decorations. I explained to him how I used to do it for my father and now it was his turn, not mentioning the part about how my brother and I had made it into a clubhouse/fort. As soon as we finished getting all the boxes of decorations out, the Clanlad looks up at me, his eyes sparkling, and says "Daddy, we could play hide-n-seek and I could hide in here!"

I just sighed and replied, "Let's go put up the tree, son."

:) that's wonderful. :) ~ sunnidae @ 4:23 p.m. EST on 12/19/2001