Christmas Bells (Naughty or Nice) - Andi Deacon, 2010 Advent Calendar - Naughty or Nice

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Andi Deacon
Christmas Bells [2]
M
Y MOM
loves Christmas. She loves Christmas so much my
dad once said the main reason she married him was for his
last name—Bell. He was kidding, of course. I think.
Mom’s countdown begins in August with Christmas
shopping. She hits the stores, scours the catalogs, and surfs
the Internet looking for the perfect gift for each person on
her list. No one gets asked what they want. From her point of
view, that’s cheating. But she never fails to come up with
wonderful, unique gifts that the recipients would never buy
for themselves.
I don’t mean to imply she spends a ton of money. My
dad makes a pretty good living as co-owner of a small
accounting firm, and Mom supplements his earnings with a
part-time job selling real estate. She’s an awesome salesman.
But with four kids to raise and educate, my folks have never
crossed the line between comfortable and well off. Mom just
has a great eye—and a lot of experience.
Gift buying doesn’t end in August. In fact, it often goes
on until mid-December. But in September, the primary
emphasis shifts to meal-planning. Not just for the traditional
Christmas Eve buffet and the family dinner on Christmas
Day. She plans breakfast, lunch, and dinner for every day
during the holidays that any of the family will be home, other
than those normally in residence. This means, of course,
those of us who live elsewhere all have to let her know well in
advance when we will arrive and how long we will stay. And
Andi Deacon
Christmas Bells [3]
woe betide anyone trying to limit the visit to a day or two.
She won’t have that, and if you’re smart, you don’t buck
Mom.
I’m lucky, I guess. Even though I don’t live in Castleton
anymore, my job as a college professor—okay, assistant
professor, but I’m getting there—means I have a lot of time
around the holidays. My sister Olivia, next down from me in
birth order, had the good sense to come back home after she
finished law school, go into practice locally, and marry her
high school boyfriend, whose family also lives in town. (Mom
solves the equal-time-for-the-in-laws problem by inviting
Charlie’s folks to the family events—which suits Charlie’s
mother just fine as she hates to cook.) Eric, my younger
brother, is in graduate school and comes home fairly often
anyway—mostly when he runs out of clean clothes. Suzanne,
the baby of the family, is in high school and the only one of
us still at home. Someday things might not be so convenient
for all of us, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Where was I?
Oh, yeah. October. October is baking month. Mom
bakes up a storm, filling the 80 cubic foot upright freezer in
the basement to the brim with cookies, cakes, pies, and even
the odd casserole ahead of time. I envy Suze in October. She
gets to taste test everything Mom makes. (And then the rest
of us have to listen to her bitch about all the weight she’s
gained for the next six months.)
November, things start moving fast. November is
decorating month. Mom has about twenty boxes of
Christmas decorations in the attic, but every year she has to
add to them, has to tweak her designs and do things a little
Andi Deacon
Christmas Bells [4]
differently from the year before. She’s crafty, too, so she
makes a lot of stuff by hand. Of course, there’s about a
week’s interruption in November for Thanksgiving, but she’s
a lot more laid back about that. She does Thanksgiving
dinner and likes to have us all there if possible, but she’s
more tolerant of any necessary defections. Christmas is the
main event for her.
December is all about filling in the corners. The
shopping gets finished; the gifts get wrapped; the final bits of
decorating get done (all except decorating the tree—that’s a
family affair); the house gets spruced up; and finally, a few
days before Christmas Eve, we start rolling in, and Mom can
take a deep breath and know that everything is as ready as it
can be. She can relax and enjoy family and friends while
everything she feels responsible for runs like a well-oiled
machine.
No matter how much chaos the rest of us manage to
create.
S
UZE
was the only one home when I stumbled through the
door on December the twentieth. I was trying to hump all my
luggage in at once—duffle, suit hanger, backpack full of
books, and a laptop case—and doing a piss poor job of it. I
finally manhandled it all through the door and dumped part
of it in front of the stairs.
“Dork,” was the loving greeting I got from my baby
sister, who was standing in the door to the living room on my
right watching me with great amusement.
Andi Deacon
Christmas Bells [5]
“Twerp,” I replied. “Get your lazy ass in gear and help
me out here.”
I could see her debating whether to pitch in or give me
the finger, so I added, “I’ll get this stuff. How about you go
bring the gifts in out of my car?” I knew she wouldn’t pass
up a chance to shake the one with her name on it.
“Okay,” she agreed. As she headed out the door she
tossed over her shoulder, “Hey, you’re bunking in with Eric
this year because Eric’s bringing a friend home with him.”
The guest room used to be my room. Or rather, my room
was originally the guest room. I had talked Mom and Dad
into letting me have it for myself when I turned fourteen and
decided I was too old to share a room with my nine-year-old
brother. I would be leaving for college in a few years anyway,
and I could always sleep in Eric’s room when we actually did
have visitors. My folks bought my arguments about the same
time I realized I would have to maintain the room so that it
would be at least minimally livable for someone who wasn’t a
teenage boy, but it was worth it to have my own space. Once
I left, Olivia snagged the room for a couple of years. When
she left, it gradually reverted to a full-time guest room. I
usually had it to myself when I visited.
I wasn’t complaining, though. Now that I was busy with
my job, and Eric was knee-deep in graduate school, we
didn’t get to see each other often. Sharing a room with him
again wouldn’t be so bad.
I played it smart and took my bags upstairs in two trips,
dumping them in Eric’s room before heading back down.
Suze had already come back in the door with an armload of
my gifts for the family. I relieved her of a few of them, and we
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Christmas Bells (Naughty or Nice) - Andi Deacon, 2010 Advent Calendar - Naughty or Nice

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