It’s Christmas season. Time for nostalgic thoughts about the things that make the holidays so wonderful. Most of us have one or two near-perfect holiday memories and we love recalling them.

When my son Josh was twelve, he spent a December weekend with a friend. It happened to be the weekend their family went on their annual Christmas tree hunt. They bundled up  and made a day of it. They drove out into the countryside and found a Christmas tree farm. They cut the tree themselves after tromping about in the fields choosing just the right one. They hauled the tree to their car, loaded it on the roof and then enjoyed a thermos of hot chocolate and some snacks to warm themselves up after being out in the chilly winter weather. They drove home rejoicing in their success and then put the tree up and decorated it. In short, they had a wonderful family day and my son took part in it. He came home thrilled with that experience.

The next year when Christmas rolled around, Josh had a clear and compelling memory of that perfect tree hunting day. He wanted our family to duplicate the experience. One problem. His Dad didn’t want to drive out into the countryside. He hated putting up a tree and would have been just as happy if we didn’t even have one. His idea of getting a Christmas tree was to drive to the nearest tree lot, grab one, complain about the cost and then get it home as quickly as possible leaving the set-up and decorating to anyone else who wanted to do it. No nostalgia, no hot cocoa, no memories.

Now Dad wasn’t a Scrooge, not really. He just didn’t have the same data in his memory banks. To him getting the tree had no fuzzy warm thoughts attached to it; it was just a nasty task. The vision in my son’s head was absolutely nothing like the one in his father’s. It often happens that way. The point of all this tree talk is that making good family memories is just as often a “happening” as it is a planned event. Our family had golden days too. They tended to grow naturally as a family day unfolded rather than being planned out. They occurred on days when we were together and content and were perhaps more spontaneous than usual. The stars were in alignment.  I carry some of those golden days in my memory banks but I would never try to duplicate one of them. It’s too risky. I might end up losing what is safely tucked in my head.

 There’s no guarantee that your golden day and mine will be the same. We never did capture Josh’s tree memory in our family and as a mother who wanted very much to please, I felt bad about that. I wonder if one day he’ll take his family out in the boondocks to cut a tree and drink hot chocolate and make it a wonderful fuzzy time for all involved. I hope he does. Maybe if he treads softly and lets the day unfold naturally, those stars will align again and his family will experience their own golden day.