Remember that episode of The Family Guy where Lois goes crazy?
“You all think Christmas just happens,” I think she says, before she jumps out the window and kills Frosty.
Don’t worry – I’m not there, or even close to that point. For one, my husband is not a useless buffoon like Peter Griffin.
But Christmas certainly is different now that I’m a mom.
In some ways, it’s sweeter. There are those snuggles while watching Rudolph (that doesn’t count as screen time… right?) And our delight when baby boy points in the right direction when I ask, “where is the Christmas tree?”
Then there’s the bittersweet – the bittersweet that always seems to come with Christmas as an adult, combined with the holy-crap-I-need-another-baby-to-soothe-my-existential-dread bittersweet that comes with my baby becoming a toddler.
And then there’s also just… a lot of work.
This might be more of a commentary on what an overgrown child I was at Christmas until the age of, oh, 39?
For two decades, I would swoop into my parents’ house from wherever I was living – Mexico City, Ottawa, Toronto, Kingston, and immediately open the fridge. To quote the excellent SNL sketch “Back Home Baller” – hell yeah, my mom went to Costco. I’d park myself on the couch in my stretchy pants, pet the dog, and generally bask in the lack of responsibilities as my parents took care of me.
Now I am the parent. No more bed rot for Christmas.
Which means I don’t even have the time to write something particularly long, poignant or funny. It’s just this.
