christmas

i miss christmas. my parents don’t even put up the tree anymore, it’s stored in the closet - the one you walk past when you immediately walk through the door and is just completely forgotten. “we’re too old to put up the tree these days” is the reason my parents say.

it started in phases.

originally the tree had lots of ornaments and decorations. there was a gingerbread man ornament that had a photo of my mother and i during one of her corporate parties making m&m cookies (yes, i’m that corporate-pilled). there was a mini pac-man arcade machine one. a sparkly ornament of my father’s favorite basketball team. and of course, the star on top. the multi colored lights that would probably start a fire. the sash that would wrap around the tree from bottom to top.

the christmas music playing from a tiny electronic speaker probably older than i am, playing music at a crisp 32kbps off of it.

it was just something that happened every year. and as a kid, it’s always a time that santa strangely asked for whataburger with a diet dr pepper instead of milk and cookies, which santa had the same preferences as my father.

we’d all watch jingle all the way. the grinch. charlie brown (and talk about how it’s deeply problematic). frosty the snowman.

my father bought an apple TV and was so excited that he could put home videos on it, as well as stream all of the christmas movie classics. there’s a video of my mother walking around the house when it first got built. it’s a strange feeling watching that, seeing how empty this house is. also seeing my parents as 30 somethings that had no idea what was coming ahead in their lives.

it looked so simple and hopeful. my mother talking about how excited she was since my sister was finally going to have a large house to be in. the house was custom, so it had a lot of passion in it.

there’s videos of me with my aunt. she’s sitting on the bed wearing her signature purple gown as i rip open shovelware wii games that i’ll think are the best video games in the world - primarily because my aunt bought them.

the video was actually shot at my grandmother’s house where i’d spend so many trips at. i never knew you could store batteries in the fridge or never buy cutlery and survive purely on silverware from fast food restaurants - but i learned it there. the blow up mattress and the routine mcdonald’s breakfast quickly became such a tradition.

the tree stopped being decorated with lights when i was in high school. there was a lot of concern around the actual safety of it, given the fact we didn’t really have a good place to plug them in and maybe daisychaining these lights wasn’t the best idea. originally we plugged it into the same place we put the decor we had outside - but that’s no longer there.

soon after that, the ornaments became a hassle. there were so many over the years and having to put them in a pin was exhausting. we ended up going to target and buying generic red and silver ones to put up. no more mystery machine ornaments. no more spongebob. no more photo of my mother and i making cookies. it’s a generic red ornament with a half ripped purchase sticker saying $1.99.

my father stopped using itunes, meaning he wasn’t going to have anything to stream home videos to. we would try catching the movies on whatever channel the antenna would pick up, but would eventually get frustrated at the ads that played over and over - so we’d skip the movie watching.

we used to get tamales every year. there’s a special place to get them, they were always sold it. it was a fun tradition to wait in line super super early in the morning on a sunday. we’d bring paper plates and towels in the car so we could immediately devour the ones we were “going to save”. they have an app now for preorder, so there’s no more line.

my grandmother passed away, same with my grandfather. the house got sold and my aunt died.