December 20, 2000

Ho-Ho whole week of Christmas cheer

By GARRET LEIVA
Herald editor
       All right, I admit it; I'm a Christmas traditionalist. Sleigh bells, tannenbaum and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra ripping through a guitar-amplified "O Come All Ye Faithful." Christmas is truly a happy holiday.
      This year, however, I'm a bit more giddy than usual about the countdown to Christmas. You see, just like St. Nick, I'm not going into work on December 26. In fact, I'm taking the ho-ho-whole week off. Trust me, nothing makes you feel 7 years old again like a pending Christmas vacation.
      Like a kid hopped up on tree- shaped sugar cookies, I'm having a hard time containing my in excelsis deo. After all, being home for the holidays is what Christmas is all about. While, sadly, other traditions have gone the way of sugar plum dreams.
      Picking the perfect Yuletide tree was one of those long-standing or long-suffering family traditions.
      Vowing to never own a Christmas tree made in China, we would peregrinate through ice and snow searching for the perfect pine. Armed with a dull saw and finely honed tree criteria, spruce after spruce fell by the wayside. Too skinny, too stout, too tall, too short, too crooked. As darkness set in, so did panic. We finally abandoned the plumb bob and picked out the lone tree silhouetted by moonlight.
      Inevitably, once we arrived home our "perfect" tree was anything but. It didn't fit through the front door, it scrapped the ceiling and sat crooked in the tree stand. After 60 minutes of sawing, swearing and sweating, it looked exactly like the first tree we rejected 12 hours earlier.
      Opening gifts was a Christmas tradition that didn't involve any cussing; although it was anything but traditional.
      Observing a Leiva family custom, gifts were exchanged Christmas morning - 12:15 a.m. technically. The hardest part was sitting around the Christmas tree waiting for Grandma Leiva to hustle up and put her pajamas on. While we shook and snuck a peek at our gifts, my sister and I strictly adhered to the p.j.'s before presents rule.
      Like many procrastinators, last-minute Christmas shopping is another yearly holiday rite of passage.
      While others diligently search for stocking stuffers in July, I'm the guy stopping off at the convenience store on December 24. Twisted as it sounds, there is a strange euphoric high shopping at the eleventh hour. Suddenly, you are no longer bound by the restraints of sale prices and costly gift wrapping. Besides, nothing says "it's the thought that counts" like windshield washer fluid and a lint roller.
      During this year's extended home for the holidays, there is one important Christmas time tradition I hope to renew- frozen football.
      For years, on the day after Christmas, Hale High's finest graduates would gather on the school football field for a gridiron grudge match. Squared off on opposite sides of the pigskin were childhood chums from the Class of 88' and 89.' During our college-era days, these contests were 100 yards-and-a-puff-of-snow-cleat-wearing-drag-down-tackle affairs. Around 1994, however, the field was shortened, the cleats left in the closet, and tackling turned into two-handed touch. The last few years the game has been called off because of El Nino or perhaps El Wimpo effect.
      Organizing a rematch might prove difficult, however, since the new two-story middle school is right on the old 50 yard line. Perhaps Robert Frost was right, you can't go home; at least not to play touch football.
      Christmas is traditionally the best time of the year. Whether picking the perfect pine, last-second shopping or p.j.'s before presents, it truly is a happy holiday. After all, when else would a 30-year-old take time off to make snow angels.
      Grand Traverse Herald editor Garret Leiva can be reached at 933-1416 or e-mail at gleiva@gtherald.com