listen, we don’t do it anymore. and i miss it terribly. i’m also going to write about this one specific thing even though there are many family traditions that exist in our family.
we would always go to my aunt’s house, who was really my mom’s cousin, but like — you’re not going to call someone “mom’s cousin” so “aunt” it was — and we’d gather around the piano in a warm cozy house all decorated for christmas every year. there was a gorgeous twinkling tree with a beautiful train track set up around the base. i loved train sets as a kid and i always wished i could shrink myself down in size so i could ride them.
there’d be drinks and food and quality time with cousins and other family members you hadn’t seen in a while. one time a family member told me, “hey, i just want you to know it’s okay to be gay.” i was a 25 year old man at the time who had come out in 9th grade but i looked at him and said, “oh wow, thank you.”
the packet of christmas carols that was distributed was the same every year, but sometimes there would be new carols added! the songs we sang were always in the same order, pages worn with use and time, but lovingly so. staples sometimes barely keeping the pages together.
my aunt would sit at the piano bench as we all squished into the sofas, armchairs, or if you were young like me, the best spot on the floor. we’d go through the songs like a ritual, ushering in the holiday spirit as best our little voices would allow.
there was always one song where my mother would ad-lib a line in that was not in the caroling booklet. the song in question was called “nuttin for christmas” which as i type that seems absolutely insane — but my mother would always add in the line, “boy was she mad!” in an emphatically dramatic manner. it always caused my cousin and i to make direct eye contact and cringe.
every year my mother continued to do this. over. and over. my cousin and i looking forward to it more and more each year, until it became so deeply entwined in my own feelings about christmas spirit that i was no longer able to differentiate between the two.
we don’t have these caroling parties anymore and i miss the joy and magic the adults in our lives worked so hard to give us.
it’s almost like santa’s jovial “ho ho ho” to me now but if i close my eyes, travel back in time and remember how everything used to be, i can still hear my her voice singing out, “boy was she mad!” into a room so full of love and happiness.
tales from the cove 