Christmas is...

What is it about Christmas that makes it okay when as adult children gathered in the spirit of family togetherness no one feels compelled to change the HBO Chris Rock special for...count them...45 minutes? Or, the bizarre normalcy of sharing masturbation techniques disguised as embarasing moments / "this one girl I know" stories (yes, even the ladies got involved). At this festive and holy holiday season a certain cloud of openness falls upon the merry-makers which in any other context could thankfully be attributed to boozes, but in mine, the practicing Mormon one, our closeness has nothing more to be blamed on than a growing sense that we are less and less our parents children and more and more--well--our parents.

As this frightful thought drowns my mind with fears of growing a grizzly beard that I casually insist makes me look more "rugged, like Magnum, you know Magnum P.I." I realize that this is maturity. No longer is my sister gauging my back with a sharpened pencil lead contending that I do indeed still owe her $35 from prom tickets I couldn't afford; instead we mock our mother in happy comradery as we reminisce over the time I found out my phone hadn't been receiving calls for two days because she let the cell phone bill go unpaid and that it had happened to dear sis twice (yes it's not very nice to joke about financial ineptitude but if we can laugh at it then maybe we will be aware and it won't happen to us).

And maybe this is what Christmas is, an annual token of the small but significant lengths we have taken to find our independence and gain greater control of our individual destinies. This has in fact been a seminal year for each of us: I have left three/fourths of the way into my degree in Sociology to take a job in New York which I am ridiculously unqualified for - a fact reflected in my paltry pay, Ian completely failed to attend any of his classes after the first month and is ambitiously climbing the corporate ladder of his retail chain store because now he has a wife and baby to support - seriuously, though, how could he be expected to parent while trying to retake classes for the next six years, the youngest of us has made the least impact by getting her Associates degree but shows promising signs as she has no clear intention of turning that into a bachelor's but may move out to New York and take her stand-up act on the road.