Christmas Until Further Notice

I love Christmas.

I should probably say that first.

I love the smell of cinnamon and cloves, the ridiculous amount of food, the old songs everyone claims to be tired of but somehow still knows by heart. I love candles in windows, lights on houses, evergreen branches over doorways, and the moment when ordinary rooms become warmer simply because someone has hung a string of golden lights across them.

I love the anticipation most of all.

That is important.

Christmas is beautiful because it comes once a year.

I know that now.

The Christmas that ruined Christmas began with an angel.

It was a small porcelain figurine that had belonged to my grandmother. Nothing valuable, at least not in the way insurance companies understand value. Its wings were painted gold, its face was absurdly pink, and one hand was raised as if it had just remembered something important.

Every Christmas, my mother placed it beside the candles in the center of the dining table.

She had done so for as long as I could remember.

And every Christmas she warned us.

“Be careful with the angel.”

Not the crystal glasses.

Not the antique silver.

Not the candles burning six inches from the curtains.

The angel.

That year, I broke it.

It was an accident.

I reached across the table for the cranberry sauce, caught the angel’s wing with my sleeve, and watched it fall.

There was a tiny sound.

Not a crash.

Just a dry little click as one golden wing separated from the body.

Conversation stopped.

My brother stared at me.

My husband whispered, “Oh, no.”

And my mother looked down at the broken angel.

For perhaps five seconds, nobody moved.

Then I laughed.

I wish I hadn’t.

“It’s all right,” I said. “We can glue it.”

My mother looked at me.

“No.”

“Mom, honestly. You won’t even see—”

“No.”

She picked up the broken wing.

Her expression was strangely calm.

“Christmas is ruined.”

My brother rolled his eyes.

“Mom.”

“It isn’t right.”

“It’s a decoration.”

Her fingers closed around the tiny golden wing.

“It isn’t right.”

That was Christmas Day.

On December twenty-sixth, she set the table again.

I thought she was joking.

The red tablecloth was back. The candles were lit. The good china had returned from the dishwasher. The turkey leftovers had been arranged on platters as though the bird had miraculously resurrected overnight.

Christmas music played softly from the living room.

My mother wore the same dark green dress she had worn the day before.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She looked genuinely surprised by the question.

“Christmas.”

“Christmas was yesterday.”

“No. Yesterday went wrong.”

She glanced toward the angel, now standing in its usual place with a thin white line of glue across one shoulder.

“So we are doing it again.”

We laughed.

Of course we did.

What else could we do?

It became a family joke.

Christmas, Take Two.

My brother arrived wearing the same tie. My husband brought another bottle of wine. I found the ugliest Christmas sweater I owned and wore it over my pajamas.

We sang carols badly.

We toasted the repaired angel.

My mother smiled.

For a while, everything seemed normal.

On December twenty-seventh, the table was set again.

“Very funny, Mom.”

She did not laugh.

“The glue showed.”

“What?”

“Yesterday. On the angel. You could see it.”

“Only because we knew where to look.”

She adjusted one of the candles.

“It wasn’t right.”

By December twenty-ninth, my brother refused to come.

My mother cried.

Not loudly.

That would have been easier.

She simply sat beside the Christmas tree in her green dress with tears sliding silently down her face.

“He always comes for Christmas.”

“It isn’t Christmas,” I said.

She looked at me as though I had said something cruel.

So I called my brother.

He came.

On New Year’s Eve, we ate turkey.

At midnight, fireworks exploded over the neighborhood while we sang “Silent Night.”

January arrived.

The neighbors took down their lights.

We did not.

My mother bought another tree when the first one began dropping needles onto the carpet.

By February, the turkey had become chicken because nobody could stand turkey anymore.

By March, my husband stopped singing.

He just moved his lips.

We learned shortcuts.

We stopped wrapping actual presents and began using empty boxes.

The same six boxes circulated among us.

My brother once received the same empty box three nights in a row.

On the fourth night, he opened it, looked inside, and started laughing.

He laughed so hard he had to leave the table.

My mother did not understand what was funny.

“It’s Christmas,” she said.

That made him laugh even harder.

In April, something changed.

Until then, the whole thing had been absurd.

Exhausting, yes.

Infuriating.

But absurd.

Then spring arrived.

The cherry trees blossomed.

Children rode bicycles past the house.

The evenings stayed light later.

And every night at seven, we closed the curtains.

We lit candles.

We turned on the Christmas tree.

We dressed for dinner.

My mother insisted on formal clothes because, according to her, “Christmas deserves an effort.”

The house became warmer.

Then hot.

By May, sitting beside a Christmas tree was like sitting beside a small forest fire.

My husband began wearing shorts under the table.

Above the table he wore a white shirt, black jacket, and Christmas tie.

Below it: blue swimming shorts and flip-flops.

I did the same.

One evening I looked around the table and realized all of us had developed two separate bodies.

Christmas above.

Summer below.

My brother wore a dinner jacket with orange beach shorts.

His wife wore a beautiful red blouse and no shoes.

My husband had decorated his flip-flops with tiny plastic bells.

My mother was the only one completely dressed.

Green velvet.

Long sleeves.

Pearls.

Stockings.

Shoes.

Not a drop of sweat seemed to touch her.

Outside, June burned against the windows.

Inside, we sang about snow.

That was when I began dreaming about the pool.

We had a swimming pool in the backyard. Nothing luxurious, just a small blue rectangle surrounded by pale stone.

From my place at the Christmas table, I could see it through a gap in the curtains.

The water glittered in the evening sun.

Sometimes I watched it while everyone sang.

Sleep in heavenly peace.

The pool shimmered.

Sleep in heavenly peace.

I could almost feel the cool water closing over my shoulders.

One evening, halfway through “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” I stood up.

“I can’t do this anymore.”

Nobody stopped singing.

Not at first.

My brother stared at the table.

My husband closed his eyes.

My mother sang louder.

I walked to the curtains.

“Don’t,” she said.

I pulled them open.

Sunlight flooded the room.

Real sunlight.

Hot, golden, July sunlight.

It struck the Christmas tree so violently that the electric lights almost disappeared.

For one glorious second, the room looked ridiculous rather than frightening.

Artificial snow.

Red candles.

A wooden reindeer.

My mother in velvet.

My husband in formalwear and flip-flops.

And beyond all of it, the swimming pool shining blue under a cloudless sky.

“Look,” I said.

My mother stared at me.

“Look outside.”

She did.

“It’s July.”

Nobody spoke.

“It’s July eighteenth. Thirty-one degrees. Children are eating ice cream. The neighbors are having a barbecue. There is a mosquito sitting on Baby Jesus.”

My brother snorted.

My mother did not.

She looked toward the nativity scene.

There really was a mosquito on Baby Jesus.

“Christmas,” she said slowly, “is not determined by weather.”

Something inside me broke.

Maybe it had been breaking for months.

“I hate Christmas.”

The room became silent.

Even the music seemed to hesitate between songs.

My mother’s face changed.

I had finally said the unforgivable thing.

“I hate the tree. I hate the candles. I hate cinnamon. I hate turkey. I hate angels. I hate every Christmas song ever written.”

My husband stared at me.

My brother whispered, “Careful.”

But I couldn’t stop.

“And I hate that stupid broken figurine.”

My mother’s hand moved immediately toward the porcelain angel.

“Don’t.”

“It broke,” I shouted. “Things break. Christmas ended. Winter ended. Half the year ended!”

My mother stood.

“It has to be right.”

“It will never be right!”

I grabbed the angel.

Someone screamed.

Maybe my mother.

Maybe me.

I threw it against the wall.

This time there was no tiny click.

The angel exploded.

Its head rolled under the cabinet.

One wing landed in the gravy.

The body broke into white fragments across the floor.

Nobody moved.

Outside, somebody jumped into a swimming pool.

I heard the splash.

My mother stared at the pieces.

Then she began to scream.

It was not a human sound.

It was too high, too continuous, too enormous to come from the small woman standing at the end of the table.

My husband covered his ears.

My brother backed toward the door.

The candles flickered.

And suddenly every light on the Christmas tree went out.

My mother stopped screaming.

Instantly.

The silence was worse.

She looked down at the shattered angel.

Then she looked at me.

“You see?” she whispered.

“What?”

“You’ve done it again.”

The next morning, I woke drenched in sweat.

Sunlight poured through the bedroom window.

For several seconds I didn’t know where I was.

Then I saw the date on my phone.

July nineteenth.

My husband was asleep beside me.

Outside, the pool shimmered in the morning sun.

No Christmas tree.

No candles.

No music.

I laughed.

It had been a dream.

A horrible, ridiculous dream.

I got out of bed, opened the window, and breathed in warm summer air.

Somewhere nearby, a lawn mower started.

A dog barked.

Everything was exactly as July should be.

Then I smelled cinnamon.

I turned around.

There was a small box on my bedside table.

Red paper.

Green ribbon.

I stared at it.

I knew immediately that I should not open it.

So naturally, I did.

Inside, wrapped in white tissue paper, lay a porcelain angel.

Its face was absurdly pink.

Its wings were painted gold.

Across one shoulder ran a thin white line.

Glue.

For a long time I simply stared at it.

Then, downstairs, music began to play.

Softly at first.

Bells.

A piano.

And voices I knew far too well.

My husband sat up behind me.

“What the hell is that?”

I walked to the bedroom door.

From downstairs came the unmistakable smell of roast turkey.

Then my mother called cheerfully from the dining room.

“Come along, everyone. You’ll be late.”

I looked outside.

The pool was bright blue beneath the July sun.

I looked down at myself.

Shorts.

Bare feet.

A thin summer shirt.

Then I heard my mother again.

And this time her voice was impatient.

“Christmas is waiting.”

I closed my eyes.

From downstairs, everyone began to sing.

And that was when I finally understood the terrible thing about Christmas.

It wasn’t that it came only once a year.

It was that it was supposed to end.