Christmas: The Aftermath

Forgive the silence, like just about everyone else, the last few days were a hectic mess of getting things done for Christmas. What you may ask? The usual, wrapping presents, taking the boys out to look at Christmas lights in order to give Beloved some wrapping time of her own, and of course baking.

Yup, baking.

It's become a tradition for me to spend a good two or three days in the kitchen baking and cooking for Christmas various treats and dishes (Thankfully for my sanity, the Emperor of Japan himself helps in this. December 23rd is the emperor's birthday and thus a holiday that is usually perfectly placed in order to let me get the bulk of the baking done). The usual range is eggnog (made from eggs, no mix here), gingerbread men, sugar cookie cutouts, snowball cookies, and cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning with a New York style cheesecake for our Christmas cake on Christmas eve. This year I added fudge and clam chowder to the mix as well, though I got to move the cheesecake till after Christmas.



Now, oddly enough, excepting the cinnamon rolls and clam chowder, none of the above figures in how I would celebrate Christmas back home in the States. I would bring home Cinabons for Christmas morning though and in my family, Mom's clam chowder in a sourdough breadbowl is the dinner for Christmas Eve, but in terms of cookie production, it just never happened. Let me hasten to state this isn't due to my mother being a bad cook (And no, I am not just stating that because she reads this blog some times), but more of a problem of single mother and way too much to do around Christmas to spend the day making cookies. That said, I had a number of relatives and friends who do/did the whole Christmas treat overload every Christmas and had no qualms about sharing. We didn't bake them, but we sure did eat them.

Which is more or less why I now spend a two days producing massive amounts of cookies. I simply missed the tastes of home during Christmastime and wanted to replicate them as much as possible. Once Beloved tasted the buggers, she got hooked. Since she likes to share, we now have a horde of family/friends/co-workers (I take a plate into my school) who also have started to look forward to Christmas baking.

But it has become more than being a bit homesick for the holidays, it's become making Christmas traditions for Makoto and Hikaru. As I previously mentioned, Christmas in Japan is not Christmas in the US. I'm sure many parents feel the tug every year of wanting to re-create their childhood Christmases for their own children, to re-capture the magic, to make memories, to... have that family Christmas. I am no different in this, but I am faced with a problem of being in Japan. My family is half way around the globe, the culture is very different, we lack any number of things that I took for granted back at home, but I still want to make Christmas happen for the boys in at least a semi-American sense.

Don't let squirrels happen to YOUR Christmas!

The semi bit is important I think. It would be impossible to recreate Christmas in America over here in Japan and to try... Well, I have no wish to host a real life version of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (The best warning there ever was about going overboard on getting the 'perfect' Christmas). As with many things, I've had to pick and choose want I want to pass on to my sons for them to remember. Baking works, it really does. Christmas was never a massive affair at my house growing up. That is to say, while we enjoyed it and celebrated it, it didn't usually involve massed relatives or going overboard on decorations, etc.

The only relative who was usually involved was my grandmother on my mother's side who lived 45 minutes away, meaning my sister and I would have to wait until she woke up and came to our house before opening presents, a horrible torture for children and one that felt like it lasted somewhere between a lifetime and a day or eternity.

But we did have our traditions from stocking raids to the above mentioned Cinabons and thus why I bake so much. After just 5 Christmases, Makoto has taken it as Gospel that this is how things happen. We have fun baking together, cutting out cookies, and he has fun with the smells of Christmas (Hikaru it should be noted isn't all that interested in baking, he's got the eating thing down though). We have other traditions from, again, looking at Christmas lights in a nearby park (This year, thankfully, there was a lack of Christmas lights shaped to look like bugs) to watching certain Christmas films from the US (A Charlie Brown Christmas for example), to the all important reading of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" before bed on Christmas Eve before setting out the eggnog and cookies for Santa.

According to Beloved's friends, this looks like a storybook

It's not my family's Christmas in the United States, it's nothing like the Christmas I grew up with, but it has become Christmas in Japan and so far it seems to be working in terms of making memories. Makoto and Hikaru both were thrilled with their gifts and the food (Oh boy was Hikaru thrilled with the food, he has been non-stop demanding cookies for days), and Beloved has been enjoying herself by taunting her friends on Facebook where she posts pictures of what looks like a storybook Christmas to her Japanese friends and casually mentioning that she has to do none of it, all the heavy lifting is provided by her husband. It is Christmas in Japan, but not a Japanese Christmas. It isn't an American Christmas either, but it is our Christmas and worth all the extra hassle.

But as for now, the gifts have been unwrapped, our tree is now dark, and Christmas goes back to sleep till next year. After this small taste of America, we're getting ready for an extra-large helping of Japanese, because New Year's is upon us and if I was busy as all heck for Christmas, Beloved has her turn at bat as we head towards Oshogatsu.

Merry Christmas!

This is how you know Christmas was well spent, two happy kids and a BIG mess

Toys!

Yes, toys.

I'm not exactly too sure as to where this particular Christmas tradition came from, but every year, right around Christmas time, Makoto fails to pick up his toys.

And yes, this is a problem. As I have related before, I am well aware as to just how bad a room can get when kids don't pick up and so while I might be the world's largest hypocrite in calling for my house to be at least somewhat clean, I do want it clean. In calling for this however, I must face down two very stubborn boys. Hikaru has yet to master this concept of cleaning. In Hikaru's world, cleaning means ignoring Mommy and Daddy until he absolutely cannot, and THEN finally start cleaning... I.e. pick up a single toy, put it into the bin, and then rather cheerfully announce "All done!"

Makoto's habit is more along the lines of saying that, yes, he will clean up and as long as someone is watching him, he will. The key word is watching. If you're not watching, he'll stop cleaning and start playing. And when you do catch him not cleaning, he'll go over and take the toy Hikaru is playing with causing Hikaru to cry and a fight to start.

And then Makoto comes running to say Hikaru won't help and instead hit him.

Thus cleaning becomes something that should take, oh 15 minutes, maybe but instead lasts for well over an hour, during which whatever else I might want to get done, doesn't.

And as always, it ends up with me blowing my stack a bit until the boys get the idea that, no, Daddy is not a happy camper and now is the time to actually start to clean in earnest.

Cleaning, by the way, means grab toys and randomly shove them on the shelves so that the mess is just transferred. Really, I don't want to be an ogre about this, and my own cleaning leaves a lot to be desired (My file system is called "Put it somewhere on the desk, it'll keep"), but it's just a matter of not wanting to get back to what I grew up with. It was my own fault, yes, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to it either.

But getting back to Christmas, eventually though events come to a head where it becomes obvious that the boys simply have way too many toys. Part of this is just growth, the way things are now, Hikaru's toy bin is downstairs and supposed to be full of baby toys. Makoto's is upstairs and full of his toys. The reality is that Hikaru is no longer a baby and spends most of his time playing with Makoto's toys so the toys migrate around the house and of course the general child notion of 'Can't find toy you want? DUMP THEM ALL!' holds well and true for both boys, which just causes even more in terms of toy migration.

Another part of the problem is simply that they keep getting more toys, though that is not any doing of ours. Sure, they get toys for their birthday and Christmas, sometimes they get toys from relatives and once in a great while, just because, but a great deal of them are, well, garbage. Makoto has taken after his aunt, he loves art work so he gathers toy kits. Said kits are usually newspaper ads that he twists, draws, cuts, and tapes into... odd contraptions that require a great deal of imagination in order to see what he says they are. Not a bad thing of course, all children should be encouraged to be creative, but it does leave one heck of a mess in terms of scraps pf paper that liter the house.

Hikaru, being two, isn't into crafting yet, but he's an ace at destruction, especially Makoto's paper toys, which he more or less shreds once Makoto is done with This of course also adds to the mess of paper scraps littering the house.

And it presents a quandary, Makoto made it, thus it's kid art, thus turns parents all gooey and gives a guy one hell of a guilt trip to throw away, but it is a mess.

And Christmas is coming.

More toys. That they can't clean up.

In the middle of this mess cycle is what usually happens, I get annoyed enough that I start taking toys, putting them in boxes or up so that they can't play with them (Before I get called cruel, I take only those still on the floor, they still have heaps of toys and even worse, they never really seem to notice that they are gone). Currently we have three boxes full of toys in the attic that have been thus taken, some haven't been played with for years. For some reason however, Makoto always seems to get to this point right before Christmas and I have yet to figure out if this is some kind of sneaky way of getting his room cleaned out for more toys from Santa or what.

But all of it does beg questions. Some of the toys were indeed gifts, thus I feel hesitant to toss. Some of them are baby toys, which again I feel hesitant to toss right now (You never know if you're gonna need them again, right?). Some where just damned expensive, which also means I'd hate to throw my money away as well. But in the end, I'm having nightmare visions of my attic stuffed full of toys that haven't seen the light of day for over a decade by the time Makoto and Hikaru leave home just trying to keep my house clean!

So, toys... What the hell do I do with them?! 

It would help if I had a place to take them, but lack of second hand stores and both Makoto and Hikaru being in nursery school limits that idea. I can just imagine the problems of taking a toy away, just so that they can play with it at school. Not to mention the fun the teachers would have trying to break up fights between the boys who know the toy is theirs and other students. I'm starting to think that maybe what I should do is write Santa for pick-up service.