reminiscing

Christmas was always my favorite time of year. At school, there was always some Christmas program to prepare for. In elemetary, it was a school play. We'd always take lots of time from classes to rehearse. I think it was even tradition spend the entire day before the program (which usually took place on a Thursday night) in rehearsal and forsake classes completely. Then in high school, we had the Messiah Concert to prepare for. Prepreation for that usually started in October, with more and more sectionals outside of our regular rehearsal time as the date of our performance approached. At first it was exciting, then entire choir always kept singing whatever chorus we were working on as we left the choir room and walked to our various classes. But as P-day approached, tensions would rise as we realized: 1) holy crap, this performance is our FINAL and 2)how the hell we were supposed to memories all those melismas? Then there was dreaded DEAD week, the week of performance, and the week before finals. while the sane kids who weren't musically involved enjoyed the time to buckle down and focus on actual studying during study hall in the evenings, I was in 2 1/2 hour rehearsals for three nights. One day was for mass choir, another for select choir, and another for the piano recital. And it always seemed like the whole music weekend was doomed. Yet somehow, every single year, we pulled it all off. It was glorious.

As for home and personal life, it just wasn't Christmas until I had blasted my Hanson Christmas CD (don't laugh, you know they're good. And anyways, it later became my Avalon Christmas CD... much better.) at full volume. Mom, Earl, and I (Dad was usually working) always decorated the house Thanksgiving weekend. Decorations for Mom and me was an artform. The tree's lights and ribbons always had to circle the tree an even number of times or it was just unacceptable. Then, our color-coordinated ornaments had to be distributed evenly, and crystal ornaments had to be placed last and always near a light. Dad would put up our Filipino Christmas star above the door, since he was the only one who wasn't afraid of heights.

Then there was the gift wrapping. As a child, I would watch my mother wrap gifts. (not mine, of course, though I always managed to accidentally find my presents before they were wrapped. And I really do mean accidentally.) Again, here was another work of art. We're not talking about pretty paper and slapping a bow on top. We're talking exquisite, beautiful wrapping paper, perfectly aligned and folded, and not one edge of the paper to be seen. Later, as the gift wrapping became my responsibility (mostly a voluntary undertaking on my part) I further developed my perfectionism. The images on the wrapping paper had to be aligned, everything pefectly parallel. One year, Mom bought the metallic wrapper that's sort of like cellophane. Gorgeous stuff, but practically impossible to fold perfectly. I spent a half an hour folding just one present. I made Mom promise to not buy that kind of paper the next year.

I could go into detail about how every night I would compulsively rearrange the presents under the tree, grouping them together by family member, placing outgoing gifts in the front, stacking them just right, arranging them in various attractive angles. But I've already given enough evidence that I'm an obsessive-compulsive mess. And yet, I love Christmas. I love even the stress of preparing for the day, I find it relaxing in my own weird way. So here's to Christmas and our own weird and wacky traditions.

Merry Christmas!!