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First Christmas

by
Rick Brown



Yvonne and I married young … too young. I was 22, she just 20. But back in 1974 there were few options available. Living together was still a pretty radical notion, not just with family’s perceived immorality, but landlords were not entirely enlightened either. And believe me, there were plenty of times during the wedding planning we at least talked about eloping. I was graduating from college the week before the ceremony, and Yvonne had another year of school. To be honest … we needed the wedding gifts … the loot. Neither of us had household items and we went into the whole thing pretty naively. When we left on our honeymoon we didn’t even have our own apartment in Columbus.
   
Love you know.
    
Fortunately, two epiphanies made me feel better about 6 weeks into our marriage:

  1. I was pretty sure … despite family tensions … I had married the right woman.
  2. I soon realized being married was a LOT better than getting married … empowering really.

    
The only genuine conflict with epiphany #2 was the fact that no one … and I mean NO ONE … was a bigger expert on marriage than 20 year old, single, never been hitched … friends. They were … for the most part … incredibly annoying with their so-called advice and “you can have sex any time you want” comments. But time has a way of leveling the playing field. And by that I mean this.
    
Most of those friends are divorced now … some TWICE!
    
The thought still makes me smile.
Yvonne and I are the oldest of our siblings and obviously the first to marry. There were precedents to set for those younger brothers and sisters that first year of matrimony (what a horrible word). The wedding had been in early June. So, the first really BIG line in the sand was … you guessed it … Christmas.
    
Many, many women believe what I consider a Norman Rockwellian myth. That being … they have babies, their babies have babies, etc. and EVERY holiday … EVERY SINGLE ONE … the entire procreation chain … shows up at Mom’s house on the specific day at the specific time to be determined by said Matriarch. Amish aside, I’m convinced this rarely, if ever, happens anywhere, any time except on the Hallmark Channel. And if it DOES ever happen I’m betting the holiday is a tense one indeed.
We were very poor that first year of marriage. I was driving a bus part time for the Easter Seals School, giving guitar lessons when I could, and delivering pizzas at night. Yvonne also had 2 or 3 part time jobs (including answering the phones at the pizza shop), all the while going through her senior year of college. So at first we considered skipping Christmas altogether. But the only married couple we knew (they were a little older and yes … are now divorced) convinced us to celebrate, get a cheap tree and throw ourselves into it as best we could afford.
It was excellent advice.
Yvonne and I then told our respective families that Christmas Day, Christmas Eve … all the family holidays really … were off limits. We’d be glad to celebrate the weekend before or the weekend after the actual holiday. But we were going to celebrate our first Christmas just the two of us … with our dog Daisy … and the cheapest Christmas tree we could find. The last thing I wanted to do was spend the entire holiday driving around Ohio to accommodate families. And I figured if we didn’t do this from the get go it would just get harder every year.
Of course it proved to be a not too popular decision … and hardly put parents in the “Christmas Spirit”.
    
But you know what? Everybody got over it … or at least kept the complaining at a lower decibel level … after a while.
So we got ourselves a scraggly little tree … one that Daisy… our pooch … tried to lay under every time we were gone … knocking it on its side each time. My mother donated some old decorations for the cause. And on Christmas Eve we exchanged small gifts and reveled in marital bliss. Christmas Day we ate Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Then we watched “It’s a Wonderful Life” on our small, black and white television … Daisy sleeping soundly under our scraggly tree.
This was our very first Christmas together. And it’s one of the very few I remember vividly … and with a genuine fondness. Another one I recall involves Aunt Edith. But I remember THAT year for other reasons!
    
2013 marks our 40th Christmas. For different reasons, we will again spend it together … just us two … along with our pooch Henri. And both of us have realized that all young couples go through this “staking out your own holiday traditions”. The sooner the better … especially if … unlike us … you have children.
As for my epiphanies of long ago … I still realize being married is a LOT better than getting married.
And on Christmas #40 … I am very, very sure … I married the right woman.