Cigarettes, Coffee, and Christmas

Maybe there is some magic in those holiday lights

By Laura Forrest Hopfauf

Growing up, my insular family, just my parents and I, didn’t have any standing traditions. We didn’t serve a special breakfast. We didn’t always hang lights. Some years we didn’t have a tree. What I most remember happening every Christmas is my dad having to pause the present opening so he could step outside to have a smoke and drink a cup of reheated black coffee. Like one hour without either of these things was pure torture and that moment of solitude alone on the porch in the cold was the real gift of the season. 

I didn’t really get the magic of Christmas with decorations and lights and Santa until my oldest daughter lit up like a bulb when we walked into a department store with so many decorations it twinkled like the midnight sky. On first sight, she picked out the most obnoxious tree topper I have ever seen. A North Pole sign that reads Santa Stop Here with lights that come out in every direction and spin a rainbow of colors across our ceiling and walls. We keep our tree in our dining room and both her and her little sister demand me to turn it on during every meal. Wonder in their eyes. 

Sometimes I catch myself watching it after they go to sleep thinking I get it now. There’s some kind of magic in those lights. 

Even before my tree topper induced revelation, my husband, who grew up with traditions unrelated to his father smoking cigarettes in solitude on his porch on Christmas morning, had been trying to teach me the beauty of the season. Last year, he finally talked me into watching Home Alone. I learned a couple things. One being that he didn’t make up you’re what the French call les incompetents. The other being that all these little things we do matter to build something special that only comes once a year. 

We’ve been trying to build traditions with our daughters. We go to the City Park and walk around and look at the lights. We watch Mickey Mouse’s version of The Christmas Carol. We make cookies with icing that look nothing like stockings or candy canes but taste just fine. We do Elf on a Shelf, which I forget to move a lot, and we creatively named Elfie. We leave a plate out for Santa and read The Night Before Christmas. 

All of our traditions have not been hits. Taking a picture with Santa is pretty much like getting teeth pulled without pain medication. After the first try, when we couldn’t even get close enough to Santa to take a picture in the same frame as him, my husband’s work put on a Christmas party and needed a Santa. He volunteered and we made up a whole story about how Elfie had come in the night and said Santa couldn’t make it and asked daddy to help. 

That didn’t work like we thought it would.  

My youngest daughter burst into tears that didn’t even stop when he pulled the beard down and said it’s just Daddy. My oldest daughter wouldn’t touch him. So, we’ve got a picture of me sitting on Santa’s lap with both of our girls sitting on my lap looking like they are on the ferry to Alcatraz. I put it on the mantle so everyone can see it and understand how much we love Christmas. 

We’ve also got this thing with orange cinnamon rolls, bad ones. We’ve been trying to find a recipe that we like for five years. And for five years I wished that we would have just bought the tube that you pop by smacking it on the counter and called it a day. Ours take longer to make, require way more dishes, and don’t taste half as good. We’re going to try again this year anyway. I already have a recipe. It’s important that we make these terrible orange cinnamon rolls from scratch. It’s tradition that we hate Christmas breakfast and wish Walmart was open every hour of every day like it was in the ‘90s. 

Someday if our kids think back to our family Christmases and remember terrible homemade cinnamon rolls and being terrified of Santa, even if he’s their dad, I’ll know we built a tradition. A good one. Because the truth is, I don’t remember what our trees looked like as a kid or how many presents I got or the lights we hung or didn’t. I remember my dad smoking cigarettes and drinking black coffee, and that tradition, as small and strange and perhaps typical as it was, brings me joy and love every season.