I was in charge of Christmas magic for my kids. Now they’re grown and things are changing

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This First Person article is the experience of Jennifer McGuire, who lives in Owen Sound, Ont. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, please see the FAQ. 

When my four sons were still very little and I was raising them on my own, I chose the pattern of our holidays by default. No other adult to have a say, no one else’s traditions that needed to be followed or observed. Every Christmas looked pretty similar in ways that were both welcome and easy for us all. 

Christmas Eve was appetizers from M&M Meat Shops: mozza sticks and potato skins and chicken wings all around. We’d go sledding during the day if there was enough snow and do a little walk in the evening around the city’s Festival of Lights.

Cosy pyjamas and It’s A Wonderful Life, putting out cookies for Santa with a note of thanks for whatever he might bring. The next morning, cinnamon buns while we opened our gifts, a big breakfast of eggs Benedict, track pants all day and the usual turkey and card games. 

Regular and familiar as clockwork, every year.

That is, until my sons grew up and became their own people with their own partners who bring their own Christmas expectations to the table. Until I stopped being the default adult who got to decide everything about our day.

Now Christmas has started to feel like a dance routine I can’t quite get right. The old routine, our Christmas Past, is like a muscle memory. Dance moves I can perform as easily as the Macarena at a family wedding. A dance from my own childhood that I might have thought we would keep doing forever. 

Now I’m wondering if the frozen appetizers from M&M are still on our holiday menu. One son is a pescatarian while another has become a real protein guy. I don’t know if the mozza sticks will cut it or if we need to level up and perhaps consider cooking actual food. 

Three of McGuire’s sons — from left Ben, Cal and Jack — on Christmas morning in 2016 (Submitted by Jennifer McGuire)

Their tastes have changed and their palates have matured. They often talk about meals and ingredients that are more complex than anything I’ve ever attempted and have all become genuinely good cooks, which leaves me feeling both proud and a bit pointless over the holidays. 

When they do spend Christmas with me, I wonder how excited they can possibly get over the barely average cinnamon rolls I still make or the berry trifle that is really just layers of angel food cake, custard and fruit. Something anyone could assemble. 

I wonder about their gifts, too. Am I still meant to be stuffing their stockings or is this a role for their partners? But what about the son whose partner won’t be with us for the holidays? Do I stuff his stocking? Will his brothers notice? Is it my job to keep things even and fair?

Then there are my sons’ partners and their own family traditions. They want to watch the Futurama Christmas special or eat salt and vinegar chips for breakfast like they did as children. They want different side dishes at dinner and don’t want to sit through the same holiday movie every single Christmas Eve. 

They might even want to have a Christmas without me one of these years. Just to get their own feet under them in their new lives and start feeling like the keeper of Christmas in their own homes. 

We still get together but every year gets more complicated. They have to work, have to balance expectations from families, friends and (hopefully) their own fantasies about what the holiday might look like for them. I can see my Christmas currency as a mom dwindling more and more every year, the idea that I’m somehow owed the big event. That I get first dibs or second dibs or any dibs at all on Christmas. 

Instead of fighting this new stage, I’m actually starting to embrace it. Some might even say enthusiastically. That old comfortable routine is getting some new layers, and it’s turning into something better. 

Caption: McGuire, right, with future daughter-in-law Avery taking a Christmas cookie class in Ottawa. (Submitted by Jennifer McGuire)

One daughter-in-law has arranged a Secret Santa, which has taken a bit of the gift-giving burden off my shoulders. Another brought The Sound of Music back into my life, a movie I would watch at Christmas as a child but stopped when my sons showed zero interest. Now, Maria, Liesel and the von Trapp Family Singers have been brought back into my life, as joyous and raucous and colourful as I remember. All thanks to my daughter-in-law.

Two of my sons have taken over making breakfast so I go for a walk on Christmas morning or just sip my coffee while they work together in the kitchen. 

If we are together. 

And of course, we are not always together. They have started to move their holidays around to accommodate their own new lives and new extended families. 

Of course, I hated this at first. The thought of not having all my sons with me on Christmas morning made me feel panicked and desperate. 

At first.

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Now I’m breathing and relaxing into this new way of things. I’m willing to go anywhere, do anything to be with them, whether it’s embracing the holidays with my son’s in-laws at their home or celebrating on a different day. 

I’m becoming flexible, agile, receptive to being led towards a different version of Christmas. I’m learning the new dance steps. 

And they’re easier to follow than I expected.

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