Christmas Eve is about anticipation

Editor’s note: This column is being reprinted from Dec. 24, 2014. It is funny how our perspective changes over years. Youthful joy of Christmas anticipation can turn to parental stress or even adult indifference. As we celebrate this week, let’s all try to remember and recapture that Christmas joy of our youth and carry it throughout the holiday season.

If Thanksgiving is all about gratitude, Christmas Eve is all about anticipation.

And what could be better than anticipation?

The thrill of Christmas morning is undeniable. But waiting for Christmas morning? Now that’s something special.

On Christmas Eve — when you are a kid — the clock moves slower. Seconds pass like minutes, hours pass like days. Bedtime, which usually comes too soon, can’t come soon enough.

At least, that’s what it’s like when you’re a kid.

When you are a parent, things are a little different.

And Christmas Eve can seem like a nightmare. Instead of moving slowly, the hands on the clock spin wildly like something out of the Twilight Zone.

One memorable — and nightmarish — Christmas Eve back when our twins were little more than toddlers, a key Christmas gift arrived via U.P.S. about 5 p.m.

It was a dollhouse.

Some assembly required.

We’d bought it from a craftsman in New Hampshire, a guy who had a little quaint shop in the village of Hancock. It was wood, and its key feature was that interior walls could be moved around. They were attached by small dowels that acted as pivot-points.

Very creative, we thought. Something special for the twins, we thought.

But the guy in New Hampshire, craftsman though he was, didn’t have a very good grip on the calendar. We waited for weeks, only to have it delivered late on the afternoon of Christmas Eve.

No problem, says Dad. (AKA: Me.) It’s just a matter of waiting until the girls are asleep, then putting it together.

That’s when that old devil anticipation showed up. The twins were in no mood to sleep, completely wound up about the arrival of Santa and the excitement of Christmas morning.

I have no idea what time it was when they were finally asleep and I started assembling the dollhouse. But I know it was late when I finished.

In between, Christmas Eve at our house witnessed a string of angry obscenities, bloodied knuckles and a series of stripped screws.

At the end, it was glorious, better than the one the New Hampshire craftsman had on display in his workshop.

And the girls loved it.

Later, savoring Christmas Day with my parents, I learned that I was not alone.

One after one, the stories tumbled out.

There was the Christmas Eve my folks had assembled a tin toy barn and farm set late into the evening.

There was the Christmas Eve that my father had to call his buddy Dr. Don Spahr to come over to the house to help assemble a bicycle for my older brother.

There was a similar Christmas Eve when nearby neighbor Bill Pfennig was called upon to help my dad put together my first bike.

(To say that my father was not mechanically inclined is to be kind.)

But this year is different, or it should be. Our gifts to grandchildren in Boston have already been entrusted to the U.S. Postal Service.

And that requires getting things done early so they can be shipped.

Sweaters have been knitted, books and toys have been purchased, a special Christmas Eve birthday book has been written and by now they should be there.

So tonight the anticipation is simply a matter of waiting for a Christmas phone call.