Baby's First Christmas

Our extended family has two new baby girls who will experience their first Christmas in 2024.

I remember the joy I felt at our son’s first Christmas, which still tops the list of All-Time Best Christmas Holidays (even better than when I got my Chatty Kathy doll). And I wish their parents happiness and laser vision to preserve the precious moments in memory.

In 1990, we moved into our first home (not an apartment) on March 21, and our son was born about two weeks later. (I do not recommend moving this late in pregnancy, but that’s another story.)

We hosted my parents from the Fort Wayne area, and my brother, wife, and five-month-old son from Iowa. They arrived on Christmas Eve, finding our short driveway lined with paper bag luminaries and snow falling. Except for the big 23-inch snowfall of 2004, I don’t remember many other white Christmases this far south (we’re on the same latitude as Richmond, VA).

Our house was tiny, and my nephew slept in his portable crib while my parents, brother, and wife slept on uncomfortable pull-out sofas in the living room and family room—the kind of couch with a metal rod sticking you in all the wrong places.

My dad read the traditional story of Jesus’ birth from Luke, and then (does every family do this?) the poem “Casey at the Bat?” It’s a family favorite; indeed, that night, there WAS joy in Mudville.

Each baby had multiple presents on Christmas morning, even though they were infants and couldn’t unwrap them.

We put them in Santa suits. My nephew had a beautiful designer Santa Suit with shiny, thick white fur and silky lapels. I had purchased our son’s at K-Mart in October, and he was so fat that rolls of fat came through the cheap red felt around his belly. We placed the babies on the floor, and they started flailing their arms and legs as if dancing. It was hilarious (of course, you had to be there, but if they were your precious babies, you would also remember it.)

Six adults were transfixed by the sight of two babies mimicking the exercising Richard Simmons on the floor.

There’s a video of this day hidden somewhere in this house. If you want to torment the babies — now men, one with two children, one about to be married — discuss the contents of the video. I won’t say anymore as it might cause apoplexy among these young men, now middle-aged.

The sweet and precious thoughts of those beloved, wanted, beautiful babies still fill my soul today.

Let your soul be filled with the holidays of light and love in these dark times.