by Anna Kunnecke
We have a tradition in my family that on Christmas morning, each stocking-hung-with-care will contain a new ornament. So over the years we've accumulated quite a collection. Mine are all angels, my brother's are toys, and my sister's are animals. I've continued the tradition with my daughter: she is now the proud owner of three snowmen ornaments, and she's stuck with the snowmen motif whether she likes it or not. We're the tiniest bit sentimental about our ornaments. Each one has a story: That's the one you chewed the wings off of!--or, Oh look, this is the rocking horse I always tried to steal from you! It's very touching.
This year when three generations of the Kunnecke household gathered together to trim the tree, there was the usual gushing and reminiscing. But an actual reverence came over us as I pulled out a pathetic, battered little plastic boot. It was blue, with dirty netting that had once bulged with candy. It's a relic from the first Christmas my family ever spent in Japan, lo these (achoo!) years ago.
My mother told us how she searched Yokohama high and low for Christmas-y things to fill our stockings and adorn our tree. It's hard to believe now that Japan decks its halls, streets, and stores with such Yuletide abandon, but back then there was no Christmas here. It was still a foreign tradition, and not celebrated by most Japanese people. Sure, a chain of chicken stores dressed its mascot in a Santa Claus outfit, and a few people bought whipped-cream-and-strawberry Christmas Cakes on Christmas Eve, but that was it. So my mother, my candy-hating, raw-honey-advocating, red-and-green-are-the-only-Christmas-colors purist mother, was faced with a dilemma. She could discontinue the ornament tradition, or she could purchase for us little plastic boots in garish colors filled with teeth-rot. You already know how the story ends; we have the blue plastic boot dangling on the family tree to prove it.
If you know my tribe, it's no surprise that tradition trumped nutrition. Traditions are taken very seriously in our crowd. You do something once, and boom! it's a tradition. My theory is that we appointed ourselves impromptu-tradition-creators-extraordinaire because of all those years we celebrated holidays in a vacuum. There were no decorations on the streets, no Christmas trees, no carols playing in department stores, no candy canes, no turkeys or hams in the supermarkets. No one exchanged presents; all our friends got envelopes of money (otoshidama) at New Year's, while we got piles of wrapped packages under the tree. It was lonely, but it pushed us to be creative. We ended up with such beauties as "The Traditional Trimming-Of-The-Tree Chocolate," and "The Traditional Sleeping By The Tree The First Night It's Up," and the mortifying "Singing Carols At The Train Station" that my parents insisted on and we miserably complied with.
This year Tokyo was glittering, blinking, merry with frost and holly. It was festive, to be sure. It made shopping and decorating simpler. But nothing trumped the Christmas cachet of a little battered boot full to the brim with a mother's tenacity.
We have a tradition in my family that on Christmas morning, each stocking-hung-with-care will contain a new ornament. So over the years we've accumulated quite a collection. Mine are all angels, my brother's are toys, and my sister's are animals. I've continued the tradition with my daughter: she is now the proud owner of three snowmen ornaments, and she's stuck with the snowmen motif whether she likes it or not. We're the tiniest bit sentimental about our ornaments. Each one has a story: That's the one you chewed the wings off of!--or, Oh look, this is the rocking horse I always tried to steal from you! It's very touching.
This year when three generations of the Kunnecke household gathered together to trim the tree, there was the usual gushing and reminiscing. But an actual reverence came over us as I pulled out a pathetic, battered little plastic boot. It was blue, with dirty netting that had once bulged with candy. It's a relic from the first Christmas my family ever spent in Japan, lo these (achoo!) years ago.
My mother told us how she searched Yokohama high and low for Christmas-y things to fill our stockings and adorn our tree. It's hard to believe now that Japan decks its halls, streets, and stores with such Yuletide abandon, but back then there was no Christmas here. It was still a foreign tradition, and not celebrated by most Japanese people. Sure, a chain of chicken stores dressed its mascot in a Santa Claus outfit, and a few people bought whipped-cream-and-strawberry Christmas Cakes on Christmas Eve, but that was it. So my mother, my candy-hating, raw-honey-advocating, red-and-green-are-the-only-Christmas-colors purist mother, was faced with a dilemma. She could discontinue the ornament tradition, or she could purchase for us little plastic boots in garish colors filled with teeth-rot. You already know how the story ends; we have the blue plastic boot dangling on the family tree to prove it.
If you know my tribe, it's no surprise that tradition trumped nutrition. Traditions are taken very seriously in our crowd. You do something once, and boom! it's a tradition. My theory is that we appointed ourselves impromptu-tradition-creators-extraordinaire because of all those years we celebrated holidays in a vacuum. There were no decorations on the streets, no Christmas trees, no carols playing in department stores, no candy canes, no turkeys or hams in the supermarkets. No one exchanged presents; all our friends got envelopes of money (otoshidama) at New Year's, while we got piles of wrapped packages under the tree. It was lonely, but it pushed us to be creative. We ended up with such beauties as "The Traditional Trimming-Of-The-Tree Chocolate," and "The Traditional Sleeping By The Tree The First Night It's Up," and the mortifying "Singing Carols At The Train Station" that my parents insisted on and we miserably complied with.
This year Tokyo was glittering, blinking, merry with frost and holly. It was festive, to be sure. It made shopping and decorating simpler. But nothing trumped the Christmas cachet of a little battered boot full to the brim with a mother's tenacity.
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