Christmas with Teens

It all changes at age twelve.

99% of middle grade novels feature characters who are twelve and under. For example, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials triology. In this world, all people have a daemon, a spirit animal that lives beside them. Up until puberty, the daemon is a shape shifter, meaning young people possess the unique and enviable power to express themselves through any animals. This magical malleability is sought after by the evil Mrs. Coulter, who abducts children and severs them from their daemons, a violent, hideous process that hollows out their souls. A chilling metaphor about stealing youth.

Now that I’ve got two teens, I better understand the bizarre developmental line. A protagonist past twelve is technically young-adult literature and will probably feature love plots, dystopia and warring legions. In the middle grade world, it’s twelve and under for a reason. After age twelve, well, it ain’t what it used to was.

Take Christmas.

For one, Santa’s gone. I’ve been surprised by how often my youngest (13) wishes this wasn’t the case. He pines for his own ignorance on the matter, even guilting me over how I spilled the beans. When he was in fourth grade, he asked and I told the truth. He was horrified—bawled in his pillow for an hour and wouldn’t look me in the eye for days. Yet as often as he pines for his innocence, he also resists the idea. With cold-hearted logic he’ll expound on what rot it all was. How does anyone believe for an instant that a strange man sneaks into our house at night while we’re sleeping to leave gifts? That’s creepy.

Secondly, no one wants to get the tree. Last year we got a permit and went to the forest, fun but a lot of work. This year schedules would not allow, so we went to a lot. The kids refused. They didn’t like the lot, and plus they were busy. I don’t know with what. They were in their rooms, doors closed. I kept yelling from the bottom of the stairs: If it’s not this weekend it’ll be Christmas Eve! I was getting worked into a frenzy when my husband suggested we just go by ourselves. Get some hot chocolate and go. We did. I was anxious and depressed, thinking about the future. Why bother, after they’re gone? My kind, patient husband shrugged and said, This is sort of fun.

Then no one wanted to decorate the tree. Or the house. I got out the ornament totes and the kids were persuaded to join us, but nobody had interest in unwrapping our keepsakes. For god’s sake, I thought. We bought in to this whole middle class mortgage thing just so we could do this at the holidays! This used to be as good as Christmas day! Their eyes would light up: Remember this one! We’d discuss where we got it. They loved eyeing their school-photo ornaments, their funny hair and missing teeth. This year they were a source of embarrassment. My husband unwrapped and hung the treasures while I knitted on the couch and the kids horsed around nearby.

If you’ve ever wondered when you ceased to be adorable, here’s your answer: when you were twelve. I think it’s because twelve is the final year of zero self consciousness. Once you became aware of your own body, whoa. Even as parents we are troubled by the bodies we’ve tended for over a decade. They get hairy. They possess a new mass. Adoration is joined by commiseration. Welcome to this side of the line, with all its surprises and shocks. Gawd. All those feelings. Surely the best we can do once they enter this sad arena is sympathize. We used to tickle and tease; now our best tools are patience, understanding and respect. Unfair but true: one day we’re allowed to rib and laugh, the next day those topics are off limits. No questions. Certain talk will be met with rolling eyes, disgusted groans and that despicable bedroom door.

The key to surviving this sort of thing, time passing, is to take it one day at time. Eckhart Tolle is right about suffering: it comes from being depressed over the past and worrying over the future. The only moment in which there is no suffering is Now. Right Now.

Another thing that helps: other parents, especially those with teens. On a walk with my friend I unloaded my frustrations. She laughed and laughed, admitting that in the corner of their living room stood a naked tree. No ornaments. Only lights, and those because her husband strung them. The emblem of Christmas these days: a lit, naked tree.

In our living room, the ornament bins hung around the living room for days, open-mouthed, half full of stuff that wouldn’t fit: bent pipe cleaner sculptures, letters to Santa, salt dough ornaments, even the tinsel. A week passed with me goading the young people to finish the job. There sat the angel on the piano. I could, I thought, do it myself and be done with it. I didn’t want to. I had the guilty fantasy of walking it all out to the trash bin.

Time passes. That is what time does. All those people who said, Oh enjoy it. It all goes so fast: Yes. It does. Being told that wasn’t the least bit consoling. And it isn’t true that I don’t want them to grow, or that I’d stop them from getting older. The very idea feels perverse, as violent as the evil Mrs. Coulter cutting away a kid’s daemon, sapping his soul.

So I called it done. I closed the bins, returned them, half full, to their basement closet. Only yesterday I pointed out to my husband the angel still sitting on top of the piano. He grabbed it, stood on a chair and stuck it on top of the tree. There. Done. How I laughed. Sometimes living in the moment is simple.