Last year I took the time to interview a handful of my friends and family about their holiday memories to cut into CD for a mass Christmas present. As I listened to the accounts of holiday memories and disasters, two interviews in particular struck me. It was the contrast between my Aunt’s recollection of Christmas with her family and my mother’s. You see, my mom is from a family of 8 children in rural western Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburgh. Linda was the oldest child, 5 years older than my mom. So she remembers the first Christmases of a new family, before it ballooned into 8 children and before tragedy struck. It was a pleasant Christmas and the descrption is almost magical.

Fast forward more than a decade. My mom was just ten when her mother died of cancer, which made Linda 15. Christmases were different without a mother figure and ever since my grandfather became an alcoholic after her death. Linda wasn’t around too many years after that, but my mother was. She remembers Christmases a little differently. She remembers her father becoming absolutely drunk and forcing the large family to travel miles in the snow on the way to midnight mass, stumbling and freezing the whole way through the woods.

These two stories show a house divided by two recollections of Christmas from two very different times. One the reflection of the care that goes into a new family’s preparation for Christmas and another the reflection of the same family’s fall from those lovely memories. The fact that these are the Christmases that each sibling chooses to remember is a reflection of their age difference and experience in the family. Though it should be noted that according to each one’s story, the other should have been able to remember at least one Christmas as described by the other sister.

Maybe it’s just also a reflection of the fact that memory and it’s preservation is less a matter of what you remember, but what you choose to remember.

Last year I took the time to interview a handful of my friends and family about their holiday memories to cut into CD for a mass Christmas present. As I listened to the accounts of holiday memories and disasters, two interviews in particular struck me. It was the contrast between my Aunt’s recollection of Christmas with her family and my mother’s. You see, my mom is from a family of 8 children in rural western Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburgh. Linda was the oldest child, 5 years older than my mom. So she remembers the first Christmases of a new family, before it ballooned into 8 children and before tragedy struck. It was a pleasant Christmas and the descrption is almost magical.

Fast forward more than a decade. My mom was just ten when her mother died of cancer, which made Linda 15. Christmases were different without a mother figure and ever since my grandfather became an alcoholic after her death. Linda wasn’t around too many years after that, but my mother was. She remembers Christmases a little differently. She remembers her father becoming absolutely drunk and forcing the large family to travel miles in the snow on the way to midnight mass, stumbling and freezing the whole way through the woods.

These two stories show a house divided by two recollections of Christmas from two very different times. One the reflection of the care that goes into a new family’s preparation for Christmas and another the reflection of the same family’s fall from those lovely memories. The fact that these are the Christmases that each sibling chooses to remember is a reflection of their age difference and experience in the family. Though it should be noted that according to each one’s story, the other should have been able to remember at least one Christmas as described by the other sister.

Maybe it’s just also a reflection of the fact that memory and it’s preservation is less a matter of what you remember, but what you choose to remember.