This year Christmas was special for my family. It was the first year we had a one-day Christmas with parents, all four sisters, and all six nieces and nephews. Usually we open gifts with Sis #2 and her family on Christmas Eve and with Sis #1 and her family on Christmas Day, but this year it worked out that we all landed at the home place on Christmas Day only, so we had one big celebration—as uniquely Johnson as you can get.
I had arrived the night before and spent a quiet Christmas Eve with Mom and Dad, but all three sisters happened to arrive at the same time Christmas Day, producing instant chaos. Sis #1 brought brother-in-law #1, nieces #1 and #3, and nephew #3. Sis #2 brought nephews #1 and #2 and niece #2. Nephew #1 brought his mouse. Sis #3 brought her cat. The cat wisely retired to an upstairs bedroom, but the mouse became the center of attention. Sis #1 happily played with the mouse, while brother-in-law #1 just sat there shaking his head and repeating over and over, "A mouse. Why did he bring a mouse???" (You’d think that after a dozen years of marriage to a Johnson he’d understand…)
The three-foot Christmas tree (really the top half of a six-foot artificial tree) sat on a large kitchen table in the living room. (Like I said, our family is unique!) Table and tree were overwhelmed by more presents than I had seen since I was a kid and we’d visit our rich neighbors before Christmas. Somehow, it felt gratifying, even though we had long since decided that we had better Christmases than they did anyway. As children we came to realize that the material things weren’t what was important, but as comfortably, if modestly, employed adults, we enjoy spoiling each other in ways we never could back then. Six kids aged six to eleven and seven adults somehow crammed into the tiny living room. Picture wall-to-wall bodies with barely enough elbow room to open gifts, but we managed somehow without anybody getting seriously injured in the process.
The gifts were typical of our family. Adults got dolls and toys, and children got clothing and pens and paper. What can I say? Sis #1 gave Dad a remote control John Deere tractor—the first new tractor he’s ever owned!—and Sis #1 and #3 both gave me Barbies for my collection. I gave nephew #1 gel pens because he shares my love affair with pens and paper.
Sis #1 and crew had come from grandparents #1 and were heading to grandparents #3 (some kids rate!), so our entire Christmas, from opening stockings hung on a cardboard fireplace to Christmas dinner to unwrapping gifts, took place in less than four hours. Sis #1 and crew whirled out on a wave of chaos only a little less wild than when they arrived, and things were suddenly much quieter. Dad and nephews played together with all their remote control toys, "plowing" discarded Christmas wrap into piles and terrorizing the resident housecat. Everybody sat around mellowing out, admiring each other’s gifts and eating way too much Christmas candy.
So why was this four hours of madness so special? Simply because we were family, and we were together. I have enjoyed having two Christmases, with less craziness and more time to admire gifts as we opened them and to visit, but I always dreamed of having one big Christmas with the entire family, glossing over the insanity of six kids and seven adults all opening gifts at once. All the years I lived eighteen hundred miles away and never got home for Christmas, I dreamed of driving up with a carload of presents to spend Christmas with my family. This Christmas was a celebration of the fact that we can get together, a reminder of how blessed we are to have each other.
I have no idea what next Christmas will hold. Maybe we’ll get together on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day the way we usually do. Maybe the weather will be bad and one or more of us won’t make it home till after New Year’s. Maybe one of us won’t make it home at all. Maybe one of us will never make it home again. Whatever happens, I know I will always treasure the memory of the Christmas we were all together.
B.J. 12/31/00