First Christmas Away from Home; First Christmas at Home

Christmas 1978 was the first Christmas I spent away from my parents’ home. My husband and I had been married just over a year, and it was my in-laws’ “turn” to have us.

There’s an old Hallmark Cards television commercial about a young woman experiencing her first Christmas away from her parents. It first aired many years after my first Christmas away from home, but it always made me cry. In that commercial, the newly married woman’s mother-in-law hands her a card from her parents, and she experiences the love of both her birth family and marriage family in a moment only Hallmark can create. (I found the video on YouTube if you’re interested.)

I was wistful my first Christmas away from home, much as the woman in the Hallmark ad. I knew I was where I was supposed to be, but I was definitely nostalgic for the Christmases of my childhood.

Here we are in our holiday finery, me in the white dress

Still, I couldn’t complain. My in-laws threw my husband and me a fabulous party. It was the first visit they’d had from the two of us with them since our marriage. In fact, it was only the second time I’d been in Marshall, Missouri, and I hadn’t met most of their friends. My first visit to Marshall had been in the summer of 1977 before we were married, and at that time it wasn’t yet certain whether I would become a part of their family. I guess they wanted to show me off.

That Christmas, my husband gave me a white dress. I first wore the dress to the party, then wore it for many years afterward. Even after it didn’t fit so well anymore, I kept the white dress for several more years, hanging it in a bag in the back of my closet. At some point, however, I gave the dress away.

We were so young

As I look back at pictures of my husband and me now, I think about all that has happened in the forty years since that first Christmas away from home. We have changed, my husband and I, from our younger selves. Jobs. Kids. Health concerns. Deaths of loved ones. And we will change more in the years ahead.

But over the past forty years, one thing hasn’t changed. As I wrote in 2013, my husband and I have always spent Christmas with one set of parents or the other. In large part, we have been ordered to travel to grandparents’ homes because our daughter doesn’t believe I can “do” Christmas.

That will change this year.

For the first year since that first Christmas away from my parents’ in 1978, I will have Christmas at home this year. My husband and I are hosting Christmas dinner for our son and daughter. His mother, the only remaining grandparent, is traveling this year. She has hosted us for most of the years since we were married, and all of the years since my parents died in 2014 and 2015. So we will be a small family unit, just the four of us, for the first time ever.

But one thing hasn’t changed this year — my daughter still does not believe I am capable of “doing” Christmas. She was not impressed that I bought a prepared turkey roll and sides for Thanksgiving last month. (Except for the Brussels sprouts, the meal was excellent.) So she volunteered that she and her brother would make Christmas dinner.

I suppose I could object. I know how to make a turkey, dressing, and the works. I have done it. Usually with my father’s help, but at least once on my own.

But I don’t particularly enjoy cooking. So I will happily permit the torch to skip my generation—from my parents and my in-laws, directly to my daughter. Though I suppose I will be responsible for clean-up.

This turn of events is ironic on at least two levels. First, that I will celebrate Christmas in my home, but will have little responsibility. Second, that this is the first Christmas in our house, and the last Christmas we will live in this house. Next year we will have to establish new holiday routines in a new home.

Should I insist on cooking next year?

No. I don’t think so. Though if that’s the way things work out, I will grin and bear it. After all, I believe I am capable. Even if my daughter doesn’t think so.

What holiday traditions have changed through the generations in your family?