The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I could try to be original, name any other holiday and make up some reason to say it’s my favorite, but in all honesty Christmas is my all-time favorite. There are so many little things that make Christmas my favorite; maybe it’s mom’s burnt cookies or grandma’s 50 year-old Christmas lights (which I’m sure are a fire hazard). Whatever the reason, there is no other time of the year I enjoy more.

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area so having a “White Christmas” was unheard of. My home town’s Christmas decorations consisted of giant lit-up snowflakes stuck on the lamp posts down town and a giant tree covered in yellow ribbons. Whoever decided that yellow was a Christmas color should have been fired.

For me, the Christmas season always started the first week of December. My mom and dad would take my brother and me to the Home Depot to pick out a Christmas tree on their lot. My dad would bring his pocket knife and cut the vinyl strings that bound the boughs of each tree. As my dad cut the ties the tight green cylinders would spring to life. It was kind of the urban version of taking the family out to the woods to chop down a tree.

From that week on, I would walk, eat and sleep Christmas. My mom and I would decorate our house with garland and icicles while my dad and brother would spend hours outside putting up Christmas lights. My dad’s Christmas lights were perhaps the most comical part of the Christmas season. He always had some weird obsession with anything multi-colored or blinking. One year it was a giant blinking arrow on the corner of our house. Another year (trying to symbolize the true meaning of Christmas) he decided to make a Christmas light-covered cross. What he didn’t think about before making it was the color lights too use- we ended up having the only house on the block with a giant red cross on our chimney. I kept expecting to get donations left on our door step.

Christmas day always came too soon. My entire family would gather at my grandparents’ house to eat dinner and open presents. My grandma always had a tea tray filled with home-made cookies made from recipes handed down through years. I remember that as my grandma became more and more health conscious over the years her cookies began reflecting the lack of fattening ingredients. When I was little, almost all of her cookies would be gone by the end of the night, but now they are nearly always left un-eaten.

My favorite part of the day would be after all of the presents were opened and the extra-dry turkey had been consumed. My family would usually gather around the table and play board games. The kids were allowed to be on their parents’ teams, which would make the kids feel so much older.

So, while I never had a sleigh ride, or made snowmen on the front lawn, Christmas was still the most thrilling experience for me. Too use the all-too-familiar cliché- it is simply the most wonderful time of the year.