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Saturday, Dec. 22, 2007

The constant in Christmas is the message

Family groups, traditions are altered through the years

My son, John, has announced his engagement to a sweet-natured, pretty young woman named Cassie.

This time last year I didn't even know Cassie, and long before next year's Christmas, she'll be my daughter-in-law.

My sister's son, Will, is about to become a father. Will's more like a second son to me than a nephew; he and John practically were raised as brothers.

Will's wife, Stephanie, is pregnant with their first child. Next year at the Prathers' annual Christmas gathering, we'll be setting another plate, or at least a jar of baby food.

We've always held our family's celebrations on Christmas Eve, at my parents' house.

My mom was one of the best cooks I've ever known, and she spread a holiday feast: country ham with raisin sauce, mashed potatoes, homemade yeast rolls, three or four side dishes, several desserts. I ate until I was contentedly ill.

Mom died in 2003. My dad moved to a smaller house. We still congregate at his place on Christmas Eve, but now we snack on finger foods.

The constituency at those dinners has shifted as well. My sister Cathi's first marriage ended in divorce, but some years later she married Tracy. He brought along his own son from a previous marriage, T.J.

Later still, Cathi and Tracy took in Lorrie, a student from a high school class Cathi taught. They finished raising Lorrie as their daughter. Three years ago, I performed the ceremony in which Lorrie married Ralph, a member of my church.

All of them come to the Christmas Eve gathering. Once upon a time we were strangers. We're family now.

At my own house, too, the holidays have undergone transformations.

My late wife loved Christmas. Renee sent out scores of cards, shopped months in advance, bought gifts for everyone with whom we were remotely acquainted.

Just after Thanksgiving, she'd put Christmas carols on the stereo, then she and John would spend hours trimming our tree, decorating our house's windows and stringing lights from its gutters. I'd sip custard as I watched the spectacle from the sofa.

After the decorations were finished, Renee would stack and wedge wrapped presents halfway across the den floor.

She passed away. John and I still share the same home, but we've never been able to work up much enthusiasm about preparing for the holidays.

This year, it was mid-December before we lugged our artificial tree from the basement, hung ornaments on it, and let it go at that. We joked about how bare that corner of the room looked. I hadn't bought, much less wrapped, a single present.

Thinking of his impending marriage, John patted me softly on the shoulder and said, "I guess this is the last time you and I'll be putting up a tree together."

"I suppose that's true," I said.

My girlfriend, Liz, carried over a few colorful packages from her apartment and arranged them under the tree, in part, I think, so it wouldn't appear so forlorn.

At 51, I find it awkward, unnatural almost, to write the words "my girlfriend." It sounds like something a teenager would say. But this month Liz and I celebrated our second anniversary together. Rather than seeing her as a usurper of his mother's place, John cares for her deeply. So do I.

Come Christmas Eve, we'll all trek to my father's house with our snacks. There'll be Dad and Cathi and John and Will and me. There'll be Tracy and T. J. and Lorrie and Ralph. There'll be Stephanie and Liz and Cassie.

Christmas, like most things in this world, changes.

That in itself is neither good nor bad. It just is. Some of the changes tear your heart out. Others are joyous -- new marriages, new babies, new friendships.

You mourn the old faces that will appear no more. But you also love the new faces you never expected to see. They are bright, wonderful gifts.

And all the while, you try to focus on the only constant, that child born in a Bethlehem stable, who in spirit attended the first Prather Christmas Eve party, and who'll be there again this year, and who has promised to remain with our ever-shifting family through eternity.

Paul Prather

herald-leader contributing columnist