On Comes Christmas
By E. Noel Preston, MD

   One of the things I like the most about Christmas is that it's absolutely inevitable. Ready or not, it's coming on December 25 and there's nothing you can do to stop it or slow it down. Like a cheerful but stubbornly persistent Golden Labrador Retriever after a turkey bone, Christmas is coming, whether you've cleaned the bathrooms, put up the tree, bought your groceries, prepared dinner, or wrapped your presents. That means if you haven't been able to find a Miss America Barbie doll for your 8 year-old daughter, you and she might have to live with a Malibu Barbie instead.

   That's another thing I like about Christmas. It's just unpredictable enough to keep you on your toes. If you ever get so old you can't deal with the unexpected, you're ready for the nursing home, the wheelchair, and the nasal oxygen tube. One Christmas when I was a teenager, my mother overheard me telling a friend I wanted a Bancroft tennis racquet. Overjoyed that she had finally found out what to give a teenaged boy for Christmas, she went that very afternoon to our neighborhood sporting goods store. The salesman didn't have a Bancroft, but he told my mother a Jack Kramer was just as good, if not better -- and that's what I got for Christmas that year. My mother was so pleased, I didn't have the heart to tell her I didn't like it. The Bancroft I had wanted was a beautiful instrument, and the Kramer was a blunt object. But it was such a big clumsy awkward thing it made me a better player to be able to use it.

   One year I had no idea what to get for one of my four teenaged daughters. I knew she liked to go out with her friends for pizza and sing along with a karaoke machine, and so one Christmas I bought her one (a karaoke machine, not a pizza). She pretended to like it for about half an hour, and then told me she really didn't think she would have much use for it. And so, I took it back and gave her a gift certificate instead. That was a year we both learned the value of Keeping Open the Lines of Communication.

   The daughters are all married now and have children of their own.
None of us see each other that often and we don't always know what someone might want, and so the daughters write out Christmas wish lists. Some years I find the lists truly helpful, but other years I tend to regard them as merely suggestions. It's a wise father that knows his own child, and karaoke machines to the contrary, I enjoy thinking about what my children and their families might like. One of the daughters asked me what was the point of the lists if I didn't use them, and I said that was one of the joys of Christmas -- sometimes you get what you wished for and sometimes you got something nice that you completely unexpected.

   Another thing I like about Christmas is that it makes you adaptable to new and different situations. Unexpected guests for dinner? Make it a buffet instead of a sit-down dinner, and make a take-out run to the Colonel for some fried chicken. And if you're divorced? Christmas is a feeling, a time, a whole season too big to be confined to a single 24 hour period. Birthdays and other holidays don't get celebrated all on one day anymore either, but that's just that much more time for celebrating. I usually have my family Christmas dinner as a brunch the Saturday or Sunday after Christmas, and it's wonderful. The children are fresher and awake and don't have to be waked up from naps, nobody has to leave early to get to a midnight church service, it's daytime so the kids can play with their toys outside, we can all go for a walk through the neighborhood and come back and have dessert afterwards, and a brunch is a lot easier to put on than a dinner any day. Since Christmas is on a Sunday this year, I'm having Christmas Eve Day Brunch at noon.

   And so Christmas is inevitable. It's always happened, it always will, and it's comforting and reassuring to be a part of something so indestructible. It's unpredictable, and as long as that's fun, you can't be old and cranky. It's often surprising, and makes you appreciate what you got, even if if wasn't what you wanted. It brings families together, even if you don't see much of each other the rest of the year. And if you do get stuck with a karaoke machine, you can have a nice visit with your dad when the two of you take it back for something else.

   Ready or not, here it comes! Merry Christmas!

E. Noel Preston, M.D. is a pediatrician in solo practice in Peachtree Corners. 6063 Peachtree Parkway, Suite 202-A, Norcross. (770) 448-1553. More information can be found at www.PeachtreeCornersPediatrics.com

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