Christmas fun is in the anticipation

Friday’s the day.
Though Christmas is obviously the most important day of the holiday season, for years I’ve thought of Dec. 20 as the most exciting.
After all, Dec. 20 was often — as I think it is again this year — the last day of school before Christmas vacation.
So it was something of a watershed.
There was December before the 20th, and there was December after the 20th. And after the 20th was decidedly better.
On Dec. 20, it always seemed to me while growing up, anticipation is beginning to reach its peak.
The peak — always — will be Christmas Eve.
But on the 20th of December, anything is possible.
•You might get a pony this Christmas.
•A blizzard might extend the holiday vacation for months.
•The girl you had a crush on in study hall might have drawn your name in the home room gift exchange.
•Your gift to your mother this year might make her cry with joy.
•And there was still that outside chance of a pony.
On Dec. 20, Christmas expectations expand like a rubber band being stretched by greedy kid fingers.
Compared to the tension of anticipation, Christmas itself could even seem like a letdown.
At our house, no matter how wonderful Christmas morning might turn out to be, nothing could compare to huddling with my brother and sisters on the landing of the staircase, being told we could not yet go downstairs to check our stockings by the fireplace until our father had finished shaving and puttering and generally dawdling in the bathroom until — like that rubber band — we were ready to snap.
And then the green light would come, and we’d pour down the stairs.
And no matter how wonderful, no matter how perfect, no matter how thoughtful our presents might be, none of it could begin to measure up to the anticipation, the expectation, the cornucopia of possibilities that awaited us in advance.
As kids, it definitely wasn’t about giving. But it wasn’t so much about receiving either.
It was about imagining, about dreaming, about not knowing.
And, maybe, “not knowing” is why I love Dec. 20 so much. The possibilities take precedence over the certainties. What I don’t know trumps what I know. And I love that.
This year, Dec. 20 also happens to be the day of the company’s Koffee Klatsch, a great local tradition with a profoundly silly name.
The event was launched in the 1950s, when The Graphic — my parents’ weekly — was engaged in a head-to-head competitive battle with The Commercial Review.
The idea, in those simpler times, was to invite the business community (read that as advertisers) to coffee and donuts before Christmas. The name — complete with those goofy Ks and the faux German of Klatsch — dates from the same period.
Its goal was holiday fellowship, and that hasn’t changed.
The venue has, however. At one point it was at the Home Café, the post-explosion Home Café where Rick Shreve’s barber shop is now located. For awhile, it was at the Quaker Trace, another restaurant from the local history books. For a long time, it was at the Elks Lodge in Portland. And for a short time, it was at the Boys Club, now the Jay Community Center.
But for the past several years, it’s been in Goodrich Hall at Arts Place.
That’s where it will be from 8 to 10:30 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 20, a day filled with Christmas anticipation, Christmas nostalgia and Christmas fellowship.
Not on the mailing list? Consider this your invitation. We may run short on donuts, but I’d love to see you there.
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