y memories of Christmas almost all take place in one particular setting: the first floor of the Minneapolis house I lived in for my entire childhood. My parents bought that house a year before I was born, and I still think of it as home — even if our playroom in the basement is now full of exercise equipment, our den now my dad's office, and my bedroom has become my mom's music room. Our memories still inhabit these rooms, even if none of our furniture does.
When I was a kid, the whole family gathered in the living room for Christmas, every year. We opened presents in the morning, then in the afternoon the kids played while the adults napped, the smell of turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie filling the house. Now that we're adults, my parents' house is still Christmas Day headquarters, and as the years have gone by we've watched our kids grow from exuberant toddlers exclaiming over presents to long-legged teens who want gift cards. We all change and grow, but the space is still there.
My whole life, I have spent Christmas Day with my family at that house — until 2020, of course. That year, my partner and son and I went around to everyone's house to wave from a distance and drop off presents and many pies, then we spent the day playing "Mario Party" and consuming still yet more pie.
We hoped it would be just one year, and indeed for a while there seemed to be hope for a normal Christmas in 2021. Then the Grinch came, dropping new variants into chimneys at houses around the country — including my brothers'. As for Jordan, Dash and I, we were asked over for a brief visit, masked and distanced. We sat on the couch and chatted while Dash methodically built a Lego Avengers mech, my parents sitting across from in stiff-backed chairs as if they'd glued themselves there, arms propped on the hard wooden arms, faces obscured by KN95s. I texted a picture of the scene to my brother who responded, "What dystopian hellscape is this?"
My parents had done their best, of course. There was still a tree, the colored lights casting their gentle glow across the room while the air was suffused with its scent. There was still the same Christmas music, including, of course, the best Christmas album ever: "John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together." And while I wasn't there, I know the previous night my dad sat in his reading chair next to the stereo and listened to the recording of "A Christmas Carol" that he had taped off MPR years ago, because he does that every year.
As we sat in the living room on Christmas morning, my dad, voice muffled by the mask, asked, "So, what do you remember most about our past Christmases?"
I'm not great with memory; it frustrates me how I can remember pretty much every embarrassing thing I've ever done and, of course, every mean thing anyone said to me in middle school, but so much of the other stuff has been eroded away by time. My early Christmas memories look a lot like the 8mm films my dad shot; when we were growing up my parents would set up a projector in the living room and we'd watch our family movies, birthday parties and baby ducks, and the yearly Christmas footage of two happy little kids in footed pajamas opening presents. It was the '70s, and there was a lot of mustard and green in the living room, and a lot of plastic "Sesame Street" and "Star Wars" items under the tree. The tree itself was also plastic; every year we'd build it, piece by piece, sticking the pegs of the smooth but itchy branches into the metal trunk.
Later, the living room changed, the wallpaper replaced with paint, the carpet with hardwood floors and the mustard and green couch replaced with one covered in more jubilant red and blues. The gold curtains were simply taken down, because some things should not be replaced. And the plastic Christmas tree disappeared in favor of a real one, so now we knew what Christmas actually was supposed to smell like. Our family grew; my aunt and cousin moved to Minneapolis and were folded into our family Christmas.
