A Trapp Family Christmas: An NR tradition - how a large family celebrates Christmas

National Review, Dec 31, 2000 by Aloise Buckley Heath

One of the reasons-I say one of the reasons because I could think of several others if I put my mind to it-that I kept on having babies for years after all my classmates were taking turns being president of the Planned Parenthood Association was that I always thought a big family would be such fun at Christmas. Which who doesn't, including people like me, who know? I know why Ben Heath, who is tied to me by the bonds of marriage, has the spirit of Christmas around Thanksgiving and the spirit of Ash Wednesday around Christmas. I keep telling him I know. "I know," I say. "I know. I know. I know."

I know we always get more glitter and glue on the floor than on the candles, and that I never remember to wipe it up until the dining-room carpet (new last January) is permanently (though not uninterestingly, I always think) spangled. I know I look absolutely insane crawling around in the snow for weeks before Christmas, putting candy canes on window sills and then galloping madly off in the dark, jingling sleighbells and shouting, "Ho! Ho! Ho!" I know the newsboy would rather have two dollar bills than a $1.95 flashlight wrapped in green paper and silver ribbon with "MERVYN" spelled out in red Scotch tape. I know no one can eat those Cut 'n' Bake cookies after the children have decorated them with green sugar and cinnamon hearts (Christmas trees), and then with more cinnamon hearts and melted marshmallow (Santa Clauses), and then with more melted marshmallow and pink crayon (angels). I know it's un-Gesell and not even altogether Spock to match candid blue eye to candid blue eye with a ten-year-old and say: "But, sweetie, how should I know why Polly's Santa Claus is really her father? Maybe her father has to be her Santa Claus, poor little thing! Maybe Santa Claus just doesn't like Polly. Ever think of that?"

I also know ten children who aren't going to see this issue of National Review.

I know all that. What I didn't know till this year was what Ben meant, every Christmastide, when he tossed out, not at all at random, the words "materialistic" and "spiritual." What I always thought he meant was that it would be materialistic for Alison and Betsey and Jennifer and Timothy to get a Chatty Cathy apiece, but spiritual for them to share one. I mean, that's what I thought until one afternoon last week.

That afternoon they were all in the coat closet (well, they were, that's all; they like the coat closet) making out their Christmas lists. Pam, who can spell, was helping the ones who can't write; and Alison, who is magic, was helping the ones who can't talk. I had my ear at the crack in the door, listening, because I'm still trying to hear one of those childhood conversations whose innocent candor tears at your heartstrings. You've read about them, I'm sure.

What I heard was my dear little ones calculating how much more each of them would get for Christmas if they didn't have so many brothers and sisters to share the loot. They itemized, giving reasons for their choice, the siblings they would gladly exchange for a hockey stick or an army bugle or a Barbie doll with a different dress for every single day of the week. From what I could hear through the crack, nobody kept Buckley and Timothy, which is understandable-let's face it-but not nice.

Then and there I decided (yes, again) that there is more to old Ben than meets the eye, and that this Christmas the Heaths would be spiritual. Spiritual also, I mean. At my age you can't just cut those old materialistic ways right out of your life. And by coincidence I happened to be reading, at the time, a book called Around the Year with the Trapp Family. Actually, I was reading it to find out why the Trapps play the recorder better than we do, a fact which is widely bruited by those who have heard us, though not necessarily the Trapps. It turned out, though, that the Trapp family spends its year not practicing the recorder, as I had hoped, but "Keeping the Feasts and Seasons of the Christian Year," which is, in fact, the subtitle of the book. We plunged into keeping the Christmas Season of the Christian Year like the Trapps. Some of us (me) plunged more enthusiastically than others (Jim, Pam, John, Priscilla, Buckley, Alison, Betsey, Jennifer, Timothy, Janet, and their father).

Certainly some of the things the Trapp family does at Christmas are not entirely suited to the Heath family. I know. I know. And some-give me that much-I didn't even try. Like baking the traditional Spekulatius on December 6 (St. Nicholas's Day), for instance; or the traditional Kletzenbrot on December 21 (St. Thomas's Day); or even the traditional Lebzelten, Lebkuchen, Spanish Wind, Marzipan, Rum Balls, Nut Busserln, Coconut Busserln, Stangerln, Pfeffernusse, and Plain Cookies on December 23. Especially since the freezer was bulging with all those still Uncut 'n' Unbaked rolls of cookie dough. Nor did I consider for more than one mad moment suggesting that all the children take a nap before Midnight Mass and that their father awaken them by initiating a procession from room to room with a lighted candle, singing "Shepherds Up!" (each verse pitched a half-tone higher than the last), though I think it would be lovely, myself. Maybe when Ben is older . . . mellower . . .