It was a big deal, between my sisters and I, being the one who got to move the mouse. It was as if Christmas wouldn't come if the mouse didn't move; whoever moved the mouse was directly responsible for the progress of time. Sometimes we'd even try to cheat and move him forward an extra day or two as if that would make Christmas come faster.
Sometime in December, a couple weeks before Christmas, we'd gear up to go get our tree. Since I was lucky enough to live in a house in rural Vermont that was situated on a hundred-some-odd acres of forest, we could just hike out into the woods and find our perfect tree. My dad would climb into his giant tan cover-alls, we'd bundle up in our scarves, hats, and mittens that my mom had knit for us and we'd brave the cold and snow up to our knees, walking the old skidder trails out into the woods.
When we found a good one dad would put his hatchet to work and have it down in no time, and we'd lay it on a sled and tow it home. For a couple of days it would stand undecorated on the porch so it could dry off.
Decorating the tree was the same every year: Trim it to size, wrestle with the stand, make sure it doesn't fall over by tethering it to a little hook on the exposed beam on the living room ceiling, string the lights. All that was dads department. Then mom took over. Break out the box with the ornaments, each of which had a little story of its own of who had given it to whom and when. Mom would take each one out of the box one at a time, put the little hooks on them and let us hang them, all the while pointing out spots that looked empty.
She was in charge of the tinsel. The tinsel was the same every year, recycled from years before I was even born, in a beat up red tinsel box. It had to be perfect, never clumped, draped one ancient strand at a time carefully over each branch. When the decorating was all said and done, we'd put on some Christmas music and sit down to admire our handiwork for a while with the wood stove crackling and warm beside us.
Not every year, but some years mom would make ginger bread houses from scratch and there would be a big production of assembling and decorating those. Confectioners sugar mortar and bowls of candy covered the kitchen table until there was an entire neighborhood of edible homes littering the place. One year dad built a gingerbread castle. It was the coolest.
Without fail, on Christmas eve we'd load up into the car and go out for a drive into town to look at the lights and "oo" and "aw". When it was time for bed, since the wood stove wasn't a good place to hang stockings, we'd lay them carefully on the back of the couch, always in the same order. We'd all sleep in sleeping bags in one room and whisper and giggle and squirm around until we inevitably got yelled at and finally went to sleep.
In the morning, as was custom, one of us would have to go out and feed the horse and the rabbit, and someone would have to make coffee before we could wake the folks. Feeding the animals meant throwing on some boots and a jacket, running a bucket of water and a bale of hay to the horse, then changing out the rabbits water bottle and food. All this in the pre-dawn, in the middle of the winter, in Vermont. Every year, somehow, my sister made the coffee.
Having everything done, we'd peek down into the living room and see that our stockings were bulging on the couch. We'd wake mom and dad up and go sit on the couch holding the stockings and fidget until the folks hemmed and hawed their way downstairs while we squirmed impatiently until they finally settled in and we could start digging in to our loot.
My sister played Santa and handed out presents, and we tore them open just as fast. We'd have a couple of hours to bask in the glow of our new stuff as the turkey in the oven started to make the house smell good. Round two came when my grand parents got to the house, with another stocking for each of us and more presents. Every year my dad opened the same box he'd been opening for decades and every year it was something to talk about.
Dinner around the table was always the same, my mom would make a feast and everyone would tuck in. Sometimes we had cousins and aunts and uncles, sometimes not. My gramma brought the same delicious raspberry jello with cool whip, and every year she mentioned how one lady at church complained that everything was always "Please pass" at big church dinners.
When everything wound down, my grandfather (Gramp) would take us out in his truck to go "hunting" which meant we'd ride around on the back roads looking for deer in the fields.
"See that right there?" He'd say.
"What, where?" We'd say, craning our necks to see whatever it was.
"Nawthin." He'd say. "Great gobs o' nawthin."
Then we'd start pointing out all the nawthin that we could see. There were great gobs o' nawthin everywhere.
Every year. It was great. I don't think we ever saw a single deer.
At the end of the day, or maybe even a day or two later, someone would remember to move the mouse to the last spot on the calender.
Now I'm grown and have a daughter of my own who is excited about Christmas. She met Santa for the first time the other day. I'm sure my little Peanut will remember Christmas and the things that made it special in her own way, from her own frame of reference.
We live in the suburbs, and I'll do my best to make it as memorable and fun as I can for her, but I'll never be able to replicate what I had when I was little. She'll have her Christmas stories I'm sure. I hope she'll have as much to reminisce about as I do.
In the meantime though, I miss MY Christmas.
