The stockings are hung by the chimney…

…always with care.

It’s tradition, now, for Kristin and me to put up our Christmas decorations the weekend immediately following Thanksgiving. This year, no different.

It’s tradition.

It takes us less than a half day.

Nowadays.

In the past, with young kids a dad wanted to thrill, it would take the entire weekend what with all the lights that “needed” to be strung on the house, in the house, and on the trees both inside and outside the house. Nowadays, we don’t string as many lights—and my life is so much the better (if less bright, at least in that respect; more bright in ways other). Remember, cuz if you’ve been there, you know…each of those damn little lights that burn out on the 200 light string takes months off your life to either find, replace, forget, or throw away. I used to actually go bulb by bulb to try to find the one whose filament burned out and that kept the rest of the entire string, all 199 bulbs, from lighting. Don’t laugh…of course I know you did this too! Geesh, we can send humans to the moon…. (Here I’ll save you a reply: Holiday LED lights hadn’t been invented yet! Yes, we are THAT old.) Frustrated, and thirteen months lost to my lifespan, I would just bag the whole string and ask Kristin to go buy some more (such is our unsustainable “throw it away” tendency. At least we can recycle them now.)

Yeah, my life is much better—for certain at least over the weekend following Thanksgiving.

We also hang stockings… by our chimney… with care. We, but if I’m honest, mostly Kristin, (this Lenseigne family’s not-so-secret St. Nick) take great effort to fill said stockings with small but meaningful and personal gifts. Christmas stocking shopping could begin as early as the summer before Christmas. I think this is what happened this year. You’d have to ask Kristin.

This year, we hung seven stockings. Sammy gets his own too.

Last year, we hung eight.

Dad got his own stocking last year. When you live with us, you get a stocking, and it gets filled, meaningfully, with things sometimes bought months ago, primarily by Kristin. Dad lived with us; he got a stocking. We filled his stocking with things meaningful even though he wanted us to promise we would buy him nothing. But, he had a stocking—so it got filled. This happens when you are in our family. His stocking was used only once—I do wish it would have been used more. But now, it will serve a different purpose.

Dec. 25, 2022

Dad’s stocking will never again be filled with “stuff.” Instead, it’s filled with something more valuable and precious.

We are close to the end of this calendar year, the year Dad died. We are still in our year of “firsts” without him. Perhaps you too are in a similar kind of year—if not now, you likely were in the past; if not now, you certainly will be at some point in the future. Such is the nature of things and of life…and of death. Maybe this is why, after I outgrew the excitement of “getting, getting, getting presents” at Christmas, the Holiday seasons began to be tinged with a background sense of melancholy. It makes this period of time, every year now, more profound.

This is our first Christmas without Dad a living physical presence in our world. But seeing his stocking in the Christmas box we took down from the attic the weekend immediately following Thanksgiving, and holding it, and remembering….

… brought a smile; not the kind with a lot of happiness behind it, more the kind of fondness and longing and remembrance of good times past, the kind always edged with sadness in the knowing there will be no more new memories made: “Oh…Dad…(sigh).” All this just more alchemy to season the season’s deeper feelings. Another “forever-now” reminder of the fleeting miracle that is a human life. Christmases for me now are becoming so much more about heart and Soul.

“Wally’s” stocking is never empty now. It’s filled with the things we bring to it from our shared pasts. Each item in it unique to the specific memory that surfaces on its own, or that we choose to surface because we want to remember. And I fill it differently than Kristin, than Trevor and Clary, and than from any of Dad grandkids. His stocking will be a gift that will never stop giving, no longer to him, but to us. He’s still, and will always be, a living presence…

… as long as we remember.

Christmastime circa 2022. Sammy is apparently looking for his stocking.

And we’ll always remember.

It is inevitable in lives that continue year after year, and Holiday season after Holiday season, that holes in the fabric of life get created when those who have been among us, those who comprise the magical threads of the rich tapestry that makes up our lives, die. If we are wise, and know the opportunity that comes from those specific holes, holes we can still cherish for their poignancy, we might look with deeper gratitude at those still with us for the miracle they remain. And in so doing realize that the greatest gift one can ever give or receive, is the full presence of the ones who love—the ones who love us, and the ones we love.

Every new Christmas, then, would make us more human.

It’s inevitable; it’s Holiday Alchemy.

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Merry and Happy Everything y’all. May you make the season what you need it to be for you and yours.

And Love, Always Love.

Always and Ubuntu,

~ k

🎄

PS: At some point before or right around New Year’s Day, or whenever we get tired of the Christmas decorations still hanging around, we pack it all up; change the music on Pandora from Holiday Favs back to contemporary pop, Taylor Swift, Josh Groban, or Ludovico Einaudi; and put it all back in the attic in the garage. Stockings included. Dad’s will be packed with the other seven—next year’s Christmas will no longer be “the first without.” Without him anyway.

But at least I’ll know, come the weekend after next Thanksgiving, his stocking will be ready to be unpacked—in more ways than one. I’m looking forward to seeing what old new things I’ll find inside it then.

And I’m sure I’ll smile.