Christmas Eve has always been the big holiday in my family. We’d always spend it on my mom’s side — the Italian-American side — and we’d eat plenty of seafood and pasta and pastry.
As a girl, Christmas Eve always meant a new dress: my grandmother would stop by our house a few days before the holidays with a fresh, festive outfit. I’d arrive at our Feast of the Seven Fishes donning a red, tartan frock with a big, velvet bow on the back. In the reflection of my brand new patent-leather shoes, I could see myself scarfing down shrimp cocktail and clams casino.
The food was always something to celebrate, but I particularly enjoyed being around my loud, wild, relatives. The adults always made it seem like there was fun to be had — and I often resented being a child because of it. I liked sitting with the adults at the long table; I liked their outlandish stories that were punctuated with curse words and slapping the tabletop. I admired the way they gingerly swirled around the wine in their glasses, how they’d pinch their nose if the conversation became ridiculous, or the glamorous way my elders would throw on their furs and slip out into the cold to smoke a cigarette.
At the adult’s table, the night brimmed with possibility. What stories lay there for me to eavesdrop on, what family secrets hid there for me to find? I would catch bits and pieces of tall tales and confessions before someone would wise up and force me out — dismissing me to the kid’s table.
I couldn’t stand the kid’s table due to the company it kept: my younger brother or, very inconsistently, my little cousin Brittany. I loved both of them and we got on together well enough, but I found it to be isolating and confusing. As I watched the glow of the adult’s table from our far-back corner of the dining room, I’d feel a profound sadness toward my position in the party’s scene.
The way the adults got on made it seem as though the world simply existed for them to live in it. That their only job was to shriek with laughter and dunk those large shrimps into the pools of tart, red sauce on their plates.
I so enjoyed laughing and shrimp. So why wasn’t I with the grown-ups? I didn’t totally understand it, but I still found this scene to be comforting because I would one day be a part of it. Childhood didn’t really seem to suit me. Often, I felt more like I was wearing a child’s costume than I felt like a child. I took solace knowing that soon, I’d be one of them: a potentially glamorous adult who owned a fur and sat at that marvelous table.
It didn’t exactly turn out that way. Christmas Eve is still the big holiday in my family. But what used to be my several great-relatives gathered around the table has downsized to mostly my mom’s siblings and their families.
My grandmother is mostly in the kitchen preparing the food and my step-grandfather is in and out of the house, attending Christmas parties among his kin.
We’re still a rowdy, loud bunch. And there’s still plenty of gossip among the lot of us. But things just look different. For example, my little cousins are allowed to sit at the adult’s table — in fact, there doesn’t seem to be a genuine kid’s table.
I don’t want to come across as a hater, but damn. What was the point of me sitting at that terrible little table for all those years if we were just going to arbitrarily abandon the “rules” and decide it was a trite tradition? I guess I do feel a smidge of, “I had to suffer, so you have to suffer, youngins.” Which is not a good look on anyone, might I add, even if they’re wearing patent-leather shoes.
But what’s more-so daunting is the usual absence of fellow adults my age. These last few years, my brother has been spending Christmas Eve at his long-term girlfriend’s home. My cousin Brittany does her own thing, too.
My husband is by my side, but he is not accustomed to any of our American or Catholic traditions. By extension, he is unable to comprehend the depths of my disorientation of this changing scenery.
It’s like … I became older, but so did the adults. And so somehow I still feel like I am on the outside looking in, watching them in some far-off place that seems inaccessible. They’re not excluding me, I want to be clear — I am very much at that table, twirling my fork into the shrimp scampi and cracking jokes. But I guess I feel the same profound sadness I did when I was small.
This is coupled by the fact that I am also in communication with the children who sit among us at the table. Hearing them talk about Santa Claus reminds me of that delicate time in my life, which feels both so far away from now and also right within reach. At this current adult table, I feel as though I am as exposed as the rings of a tree, revealing my current age and every age I’ve ever been. It’s a very strange feeling to navigate while also taking in that one day, these adults will be just shapes in my memory.
It makes me wonder what Christmas Eve looked like for my ancestors in the 1940s, the 1910s, the 1880s. What stories did they tell, what foods did they eat, what clothes did they wear all those Decembers ago?
Maybe this is why Christmas Eve has always sparked the age-old baby decision for myself. I’ve always loved the idea of a big, wonderful family — movies like The Family Stone, The Holiday, and Home Alone also fueled this desire to have a family around the holidays. And I feel very sad thinking about being seventy-something-years-old with no seafood to share with a younger crowd.
But one holiday a year is not enough to justify such an important decision. Being a parent requires patience, time, and an abundance of love. Most importantly, it requires one to truly want to be a parent. I’ve always believed that this means not only raising someone, but accepting the possibility that that person may grow and live a life they do not want you to be a part of. There’s numerous reasons for why, but I’ve considered those whys, and they bring me enough anxiety to always fumble the “kids?” question when it rears its festive head at the Christmas Eve dinner.
Last year, I was deservedly stuffing my face with the brie and jam appetizer I prepared when one of my uncles asked the “kids?” question. I was twenty-five then (twenty-six now) and replied, “I don’t know. Maybe one day? Maybe not?”
Blame it on the warm wine or the stuffy kitchen, but he turned to me and said, “In my experience, if you don’t want them by now, you’ll never want them.”
I know this person’s heart, so I know this was well-intended wisdom that maybe he believed would settle my fence-sitting on the subject. But it sent me into a spiral. Did I want kids? Was I sabotaging all the Chritmas Eves to come by not having kids? Could I settle into a child-free existence that measured up to a life that was merry and bright?
Thinking back on it, maybe I feel like I’m wearing an adult costume, too. My self-actualization isn’t leading me any closer to my answer on “kids?”. It is, however, making me very fond of the present. Twenty-six is still quite young with plenty of time to muse on the prospect of having kids (who may or may not sit at a kid’s table, whatever).
And if I don’t fit at either the kid’s table or the adult’s table, maybe I was meant to stand out all along: I just bought my plaid-and-feather dress for this year’s Christmas Eve party.
Cumulatively yours,
That American Girl
That American Girl 
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