the most wonderful time of the year.

Christmas activities get worse over time. I’ve learned this.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy the time I spend with my family; I do. It’s just that everything is now infused with a sense of sadness and lost childhood. Ever since both of my grandmothers passed (within three months of one another not two years ago) there’s a damper on holidays.

I also spend a lot of time reflecting. I think about how lucky I am, how I don’t know how many more times I’m going to get to do this. I remember sitting on my couch last year at Christmas time, staring at the tree in the foyer and crying because I thought I wouldn’t be around next year for it. (That didn’t work out. Yet.)

It’s scary. I’ve always known waking up to my parents and a tree with presents underneath it. It will be very odd to not have that.

My parents and I did a tradition last night that I would fly home from Japan for, if it came to that. We decorated the tree.

Every year my mom puts our fake, color-coded-branch tree up and proceeds to decorate it with about 4584697 lights, both white and multi-color. This is a task that usually involves several bottles of beer, an occasional electrocution and an old Garth Brooks Christmas album.

Then we all gather to put the ornaments on the tree. Dad and I generally dawn stupid Christmas hats (I was an elf, he a reindeer) and mom just shakes her head at our nonsense as if to say, “How could these two idiots, who I’ve put up with for 25+ years, dare to touch my beautifully crafted light spectacle?”

We switch off between old, traditional ornaments and novelty ornaments. The novelty ones are never a problem, but the traditional ones are a bitch. They’re all ancient, glass and being man-handled above a wooden floor for a good hour. Shards of iridescence are quite common on tree-decorating night.

Every year, when we decorate the SAME. FAKE. tree that has taken up the corner of the foyer for the month of December for twelve years, my dad says the same thing:

“We are never going to fit all these ornaments on this tree.”

And mom responds the same.

“Shut the hell up, John.”