My husband’s feats of gift-wrapping extravagance have become a Christmas tradition.   One year he wrapped presents for our daughter in oversized tubes for casting concrete.  The next he built six hinged plywood boxes that, over the course of several days, coalesced to form a star.  Last year, he enclosed gifts in a tall narrow pyramid and a circular creation suspended from the ceiling.  What would he do this year, my daughter and I wondered? 

He had to be up to something.  He couldn’t give up the practice cold turkey.  It was one that was hard to top, but harder still to stop.  In anticipation, my daughter and I decided to make the first move.  We’d gone to Sears and, with a salesman’s help, picked out a perfectly lovely “air nail gun.”  While we didn’t really know what it was, H had asked for it.  He’d written it on the official “Family Christmas List,” a piece of note paper taped to the kitchen wall. 

We began posting the list several years ago in response to an annual after-Thanksgiving conversation, probably familiar in many households.  Someone would bring up the topic of Christmas gifts.

What do you want for Christmas?

I don’t know.  I really don’t want anything.  I certainly don’t need anything.

You know we’re going to get you something.  You might as well give us some idea.

We have to have stuff to wrap and put under the tree.  After nearly twenty years of marriage, I’ve become as dedicated a wrapper as my husband, despite being raised in a more minimalist holiday tradition.  H’s Christmas list entries typically consist of highly specialized electronics, tools or windsurfing gear for which my daughter and I can’t be held responsible; we lack the expertise.  He orders them and thanks us for our consideration and generosity.  But this year, D and I actually went to a store and came home with an air nail gun.  We weren’t sure it was the exact one he had in mind, but we kept the receipt.  The package was of medium size and weight.  We disguised it in an exceptionally long box, which we wrapped in three types of paper.  Propped in a chair next to the Christmas tree, it greeted H rather boldly when he returned home from work.  He was pleased to see that we were in the game. 

His response began a couple of days later, when a single square package appeared by the tree.  Wrapped in shiny paper, it was marked with a large letter E.   An unassuming beginning, perhaps, but one that promised more to come.  Later that night, another foil-encased box appeared atop the first, marked with another letter.  By Christmas morning, there stood, as tall as the tree, a tower of seven packages, the letters spelling out our daughter’s name.  A simple, but impressive presentation.

What’s in the boxes, of course, is of less importance than their visual impact and the process of unwrapping them.  Some might say it’s a terrible waste of paper and not very green.  This is probably true.  But it can also be said that it’s a way of focusing more on the act of giving than on the gift itself.  In this case, our family would agree on the truth of that old adage:  It’s the thought that counts.  Our gift-wrapping is nothing if not thoughtful. 

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Kiko, on the other hand, isn’t so much into thoughtfulness or presentation, at Christmas or any other time.  For him, it’s all about the smell, and he smells treats.  What happened to his stocking?  And is there more beef stick? 

One holiday activity (and chance to go overboard) is no longer available to me.  That’s dressing up my daughter in a Christmas costume and photographing her endlessly.  Over the years, my mother had outfitted most of my dolls with Christmas dresses, coats, capes, and sometimes special hats.  She was eager to transfer her efforts to our real-life baby doll when my daughter came along.  For her first Christmas, Mama made her an elf outfit out of soft fleece.  While D was, like many babies, often the contrarian, from the very beginning she was pleased to play dress-up and pose for the camera.  Here, then, some photos from fifteen years ago, of our little Christmas elf, not quite twelve months old.   

 December 1999

To new parents, nothing says “Merry Christmas” like their baby decked out in holiday gear. 

This October, after some deliberation, my daughter decided that her trick-or-treating days were behind her.  She’d had a good long run: fourteen Halloweens of neighborhood candy collecting.  Last year a mother answering the door at one home had uttered that dreaded criticism:  Aren’t you girls a little old for this?  My daughter seethed inwardly at these words. 

It bugged me, too, I have to admit.  I’m quite happy, one night a year, to hand out treats to polite, costumed children and teenagers of all ages, shapes and sizes.  Who outgrows a love of candy, anyway?  It certainly doesn’t happen in my family.  My eighty-something father begins buying Halloween goodies as soon as they appear in stores, usually around July 5th.  He and Mama see it as their duty to make sure the Butterfingers, Snickers and Milky Ways are up to par for the kiddies.  By the time Halloween rolls around, they are quality-control experts.   

Nevertheless, there comes a time when the annual house-to-house trek becomes more of a slog than an adventure.  As with most pleasures that we outgrow, one day we wake up and know in our bones:  the payoff is no longer worth the trouble.  Facing the truth can be painful, but not facing it tends to be more so. 

Trick-or-treating, then, was out.  But my daughter has not outgrown her love of Halloween.  And this year, for the first time in recent history, the holiday would fall on a Friday.  Better yet, that Friday was an early-dismissal day that marked the end of the quarter and the start of a four-day weekend.  She refused to settle for staying home and answering the door.  She determined to celebrate Halloween, and properly.  Without trick-or-treating, but with friends, costumes, and, of course, candy. 

For additional thoughts on Halloween and trick-or-treating age limits, see On Improving Halloween, from November 2011.