If Only In My Dreams

Last year my husband and I breathed a sigh of relief as our children, their children and all their holiday loot was loaded into their urban suburbans and with grandchildren head-setted into their places to watch yet another DVD, they honked their way out of our driveway and out of our lives.
Maybe it is time for our children to be home for the holidays, their own homes. The traditions and rituals their father and I have so carefully nurtured over the years are gradually giving way to generation X lifestyles.
Each year the menu gets larger and the tree taller, as we try to make this Christmas the best one ever, and each year we enjoy it less.
Our children hve grown and have changed, and we have grown older, but resisted change. One year, our daughter from Oregon who belongs to some kind of "green" organization, confronted her father about his lack of ecological consciousness when he brought in a freshly cut fir tree from the pasture.
Our grandchildren know who Santa really is and don't write letters to the North Pole or visit the guy with the fake beard. So we don't have any pictures of them dressed in their Eton suits and taffeta dresses, sitting on Santa's lap. They do make shopping lists. After a trip to the mall they write down the name and bar code information of the items they want.
Nobody wants to go caroling anymore, so we can't stop at the neighbors' for cookies and cocoa and show off our families while they are in town.
The teenage grandkids fill our home with strange music, hevy metals that send our old kitty to the basement for the season.
We don't live on 34th street and we don't expect miracles either, just a little respect. The Madonna on MTV is not the lady in the manger. Our daughter who was Mary in the Christmas pageant at our church years ago pickets manger scenes that threaten the separation of church and state. She declined our invitation for midnight Mass and informed us she is agnostic. I'm not sure what that means, but maybe it is like being antagonistic.
One of the boys, a vegetarian, requested tofurkey and his brother, who doesn't eat much of anything, jogged out the door every morning right past the brunch table and refused to even try my cookies and fudge. The jolly guy with a pack on his back? That is our youngest bringing home his laundry from fall term.
BAH HUMBUG!
This year my husband and I will celebrate Christmas our way. Our real tree will smell better each day as it gets a little dryer. We will bring in the Yule log and sit by the fire in our flannel jammies, munch fudge and listen to Bing sing about a White Christmas.
We'll tell the story that belongs to each handmade ornament as we take them out of storage and midnight Mass will seem a little more holy without the fussing of little ones.
We will be able to go to bed before dawn because the stockings will be mailed. So with me in my kerchief and pa in his long johns, we will sleep late, open our little treasures while we sip hot chocolate and welcome the collect calls from our children, as long they call before we go out to eat.