Eli McCann: PJs, presents and poems — there’s nothing like a cozy Christmas

My sisters and I had an annual tradition as children. Every Christmas Eve, after donning our new Christmas pajamas and posing for a dim photo on the stairs in our house, we’d retreat to my oldest sister’s basement bedroom for a slumber party.

We looked forward to this more than the gifts we’d open the next morning. This was the 1980s and ’90s, and my sister had in her bedroom one of those small televisions with a built-in VCR. We’d make a large bed on the floor out of blankets and pillows we had retrieved from our own bedrooms, and then we’d debate which Christmas movies we’d pop in first.

We always said we were going to stay up all night, playing card games and listening to music. I’m not sure we ever made it past 1 a.m. Upstairs, in the family room, we could hear the crinkling of wrapping paper and my dad periodically muttering a Bible swear word after dropping a tool.

Christmas morning was carefully scheduled and guided by strict rules set by our parents. We were not allowed to arise before 6, and we were not to leave the bedroom until they came to retrieve us, Mom holding a camera and Dad taking comically slow steps toward us, insisting he was moving as quickly as he could.

We’d sit around the Christmas tree to the smell of cinnamon rolls in the oven and wassail on the stove as Mom handed out presents, one by one, and then acted surprised upon discovering whatever was inside. Gifts were never particularly extravagant in my frugal family, but their simplicity and thoughtfulness were what made them feel special.

At some point, we’d give our parents the presents we had collectively scraped together a few dollars to buy. These gifts were always terrible, but Mom and Dad would handle them like they were great treasures.

The morning would end with Dad pulling handwritten notes off the tree. Each note contained a short poem featuring each of us — a poem he penned about how proud he was to be our Dad, before directing us to find one final gift hidden somewhere in the house.

From poems to prose

Eventually, we grew up and moved away, becoming parents ourselves and trying to create these same traditions for our own children. Mom and Dad converted the poem practice into writing individual Christmas letters to each of us, and to their sons-in-law and grandchildren as well.

Last year, I watched my husband’s eyes fill with tears as he silently read the letter they had written to him. I glanced over at the opening lines: “How did we ever get to be so lucky to watch you brighten our son’s entire world and then somehow brighten ours even more?”

They also wrote a two-page, single-spaced letter to our child explaining why they were so proud of him, an impressive feat considering he was a 3-month-old baby whose only resume line at the time read “smiled once, but that might have been gas.”

My husband is from Vancouver Washington, and each year we travel to be with his family around the holidays. He gets almost giddy as our travel date approaches. I asked him recently why he loves Christmas so much, and he told me the family he grew up in was intermittently quite poor and suffering from a good dose of dysfunction. “Christmas,” he said, “was always a time where everyone was really trying to be the best version of themselves, and for that one day, we’d all just get cozy together and be at peace.”

He captured what made those pajamaed Christmases from my childhood so magical, and what makes them still feel special to recall all these years later. What makes the holiday so cozy is there is so much dark space between the bright lights where we gather in our hometowns to hug one another.

Hearths and hearts

Warm homes lit with twinkle lights in quiet neighborhoods isolate us together in a way we probably need to be isolated during a time when glass in our pockets demand tears or laughs from whatever a stranger shared on the internet 2,000 miles away.

I assume we’d all be better off unplugging the cable news on an individual level, but imagine the collective good that could be done if we all shed the talking heads and rage-baiters and instead focused that energy on whatever compels us to seek true humanity. It seems that for many of us, we are at least able to do that on Christmas.

This year is the first holiday season when my son seems to be aware that something special is happening. In the days after we erected our tree, he began his own daily tradition of sprinting to the living room each morning to stare at it in awe. I hold him up and point out the ornaments we’ve collected through the years. The glass ball full of sand from a beach vacation our neighbor Lynne took a decade ago. The picture of my grandma who died just before Christmas two years ago. Two turtle doves I gave to my husband that December I proposed to him.

I’ll gently touch each of these and let our son do the same. They don’t have any special meaning to him now, but I think they will someday, maybe around the time he’s old enough to buy us terrible gifts we’ll nonetheless treasure.

Happy holidays — may your own family traditions guide you and those you love most to a cozy peace this season, and may your babies’ smiles be more than simple gas.

Note to readers • Eli McCann is an attorney, writer and podcaster in Salt Lake City, where he lives with his husband, new child and their two naughty (yet worshipped) dogs. You can preorder his new book, “We’re Thankful for the Moisture: A Gay Guy’s Guide to Mormon Faith, Family, and Fruit Preservation,” due out in February. This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.