Celebrating Chrisgiving
Although most of you reading this will be celebrating Thanksgiving this Thursday, my family’s major feast already happened on Thursday, November 5th.
When we first told our daughters, there were tears. You mean we won’t have one last Thanksgiving or Christmas?
No, we won’t. Our house closing was set for November 10th, so we began packing, and planned for a group goodbye to our beloved home. To make sure we could also have a “last” celebration, we accelerated Thanksgiving and combined it with an early Christmas, calling our one big dinner “Chrisgiving.”
Interspersed with the feasting, Lauren, Kailey, Emma, and Maddie would each be packing their rooms. There would be much to sort and box up. When Charlie and I bought this house in 1994, I was seven-months pregnant with the twins, and on mandatory bedrest to prevent early labor. Lauren and Kailey were six- and four-years-old not understanding why their usually busy mom was now always lying on our couch. Not wanting to risk premature delivery, I remained on the sofa while dear friends unpacked boxes and moved what little furniture we had into the house. For months after, I would search for items I knew to be somewhere but had no idea where friends had thought to unpack them.
A house once sparsely furnished began to come to life with the laughter of four sisters and all they filled our home with. Cribs, strollers, baby swings, and playpens became Pretty Pretty Princess, Teletubbies, Easy-bake ovens, Power Rangers, and a menagerie of stuffed animals including an overstuffed cow and a buffalo head. Playdoh, rolling pins and cookie cutters, Crayons, markers, construction paper, sequins and glue filled bins for rainy days, and the resulting creations decorated bedroom walls. Dr. Seuss, Madeline, and Chicka-Chicka Boom Boom made room for Harry Potter and Hunger Games. Along with stacks of books, closets held other treasures like fuzzy slippers, tutus, a squirrel shrine, a rock collection, four voodoo dolls, swimming ribbons, basketball trophies, and of course, soccer participation trophies.
Throughout our house, soccer jerseys, soccer cleats, and soccer socks were always being lost, never in the right place with four players and three game schedules (since the twins always played on the same teams). On these hectic pre-soccer game Saturdays, Charlie served up pancakes to the four bed-headed girls in PJs lined up on stools at our kitchen counter. First pouring traditional “circles” in the hot pan and then “letter” pancakes—L, K, E, and M—Chef Charles delivered each to the appropriate plate drizzled in melted butter.
Once fed, our all-girl team would spill into the yard with basketballs and bikes, climb into our two-story treehouse, scale the magnolia tree, or hide in the secret expanse of its branches. Over the years, swings soared from 60-foot oaks and a six-foot brick wall became their favorite jungle gym. A golden retriever, Chester, and a pair of corgis, Ellie and Emmitt, wagged amidst the fray and eventually, a male black lab, Dexter, would become their only brother.
As we packed boxes over our “Chrisgiving,” there were thousands of photographs to sort with all of this history. The school pictures, the Halloween pictures, the vacation pictures, the birthday party pictures, the prom pictures, the graduation pictures, and the girls just being goofy girls pictures. There were some albums I had carefully organized but in the busyness of four children that system had given way to labeled photo boxes and finally, just bins that I meant to get to someday.
As we sorted trash from treasure throughout the house, someone would call out You have to see this! And we would gather to marvel at the find. Letters from camp and letters from beloved grandfathers. A summer homework packet never touched. Cards written and stamped but never mailed. Photos of a forgotten boyfriend. Favorite books. Favorite friends. Evidence of a life built over two decades and a tender museum to it all.
Over the course of three days, we unearthed and repacked everything. Much was eventually thrown away and still, much was saved. Our “Chrisgiving” was held around the dining room table where we had savored so many turkey dinners. Through Amazon, Emma ordered our favorite festive Christmas “crackers” and we unwrapped the paper crowns hidden inside to begin our royal meal. It was a combination of our favorite special recipes—homemade ham biscuits, tenderloin, scalloped potatoes, and green beans with almonds. For dessert, we had the birthday favorite “Zebra cake” made in the shape of an “S” for our street and address of two decades. We ate our cake in the traditional way, with no plates, just a six-fork food fight.
On Saturday morning, Charlie made the last set of pancakes he would ever make in this house in the same pattern of circles, letters, and drizzled butter. The girls posed in their pajamas for one last photo on the brick wall seemingly much more difficult to climb now that they range in age from 26-31. We held one last dance in the den laughing, crying, twirling, and remembering all that had happened within these walls.
We are in the final weeks of disassembling this home and building a new one. Boxes and furniture will be divided between Portland, Austin, Asheville, and Charlotte. Much has been let go and much has been saved but it will all remain as indelible memories. We blessed and released this house to become home to a new family that will one day sort their own boxes of photos, evidence of the life they made here.
I had imagined our “Chrisgiving” would be an ending but like life, it was really just another beginning. As it turns out, our dining room table is now on its way to Texas to the new house Lauren and her husband, Peter, have just bought. A house that is, like ours was, sparsely furnished but ready to be filled with memories.
This Christmas we will reassemble around that same table, probably with the same recipes for homemade ham biscuits and scalloped potatoes, and begin new traditions filled with the love of old.