Last year on Christmas morning I woke up early, and found that my friends 6 time zones away were still awake, starting to wrap the gifts their five kids would find under the tree the next morning. As time passed, I made the sacrament bread, got ready for church, and my friends were still wrapping. It was past 2 a.m. for them when they finished. I mentioned that somehow my parents always went to bed on time the night before Christmas.
Let me add here that in Hungary we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, and somehow half of the kids are out on a walk with the grandparents in the afternoon, only to get home and find they had missed baby Jesus and/or the angels bringing the nicely decorated Christmas tree and all the gifts. I can only assume how frantic the gift wrapping must be for most parents during those few hours between lunch and the arrival of the cold and tired kids from their walk! Well, not for my parents for sure. You see, the wrapping paper industry would go bankrupt if everyone did Christmas like we did. Other than me never believing in Santa or the baby Jesus or the Easter bunny (and the Tooth Fairy was still unknown in Hungary), Christmas magic didn’t involve unwrapping gifts.
Four different years, four different trees (the szaloncukor were the same, though), and no wrapping paper in site… other than what’s used to cover the small table holding most of my gifts. My gifts were always waiting for me out of their original packaging, set up, and ready to use. How I loved immediately playing with them! That Duplo set is is still around, waiting for the third generation to play with it. That was always part of the Christmas magic: getting under the tree and starting to build and make a mess.
So This Woman 