Holidays for my family have completely transformed.
The patriarchs and matriarchs have died off, so there’s no family glue keeping us together. Everyone just does their own thing, for better or worse.
That sounds depressing, I know. And for a long time, it actually felt wrong and criminal and made me feel guilty that I was bad at Christmas.
But I’m learning that out of those changes, new traditions are able to bloom. They don’t look like before, but what good and new things do?
Instead of a packed house of screaming cousins arguing over gifts, it’s sleeping in and burning away the early morning of Christmas.
That’s freedom. No rush to bake anything, to impress anyone, to frantically clean before they come over to give off the false impression that yes, my floorboards always do shine like that.
This year, it was just the three of us – me, my mom and her husband. We decided to catch a matinee of “Nosferatu” and slip into the 24-hour coney island afterwards (that’s our regional code name for “greasy spoon diner” in Michigan).
Nothing like spending Christmas watching director Robert Eggers’ erotic, brooding, bloody and wonderful Nosferatu with your parents. Seeing the film at the Emagine Royal Oak, It made me feel like I was a kid again, all of us on the couch together, wanting so badly to fast-forward through the nudity scene none of us expected.
Afterwards, at the Royal Oaks Leo's Coney Island, there was no ham or turkey. Just two coney dogs (hot dogs smothered in beef-heart chili, onions and mustard), an omlette, some chicken lemon rice soup and a flaming mound of cheese known as saganaki.
Our waitress was animated, kind and wearing a headband with reindeer antlers on it. I could hear the kitchen staff yelling at each other. Doordash orders were piling up at the front counter. Doordash drivers were patiently waiting for their carry-outs for strangers likely tipping very little on a holiday.
Maybe Christmas is looking different for a lot of us. Maybe it always did look this way for some of us.
And maybe there was a little Christmas miracle available for me, who no longer felt guilty for spending the day in what I had always thought was a lesser or alternative way.
Because breaking away from those old traditions, sneaking away into the movies, sliding into a booth at a greasy spoon and calling it a day might’ve been the best Christmas I’ve ever had.
This post was published in part with WDET.