It hit me this year that I am finally old. Here are 10 reasons why:
1. We are older than the youngest of the "college kids" we'd see on vacation when we were little. When we were at resorts with our families over breaks and our parents would roll their eyes at the belligerent, unruly adults wreaking havoc... Those people always seemed so old. I'd imagine them practically married with serious jobs and kids in their near futures. We are younger than some of those people now.
2. My "baby cousin" used the word "nor"-- in correct context. I remember carrying her to the ice cream store near our lake house when she was maybe a year old, and how capable I was then and how old I felt then... And she is a seven year old now who correctly uses the word "nor" and whoops my a*s tubing and gets reprimanded for carrying snakes into her friends' cars because she wanted to keep them. Not to mention, my other baby cousin is in FIFTH GRADE getting makeup for Christmas, and I remember walking to get food with my fifth grade boyfriend after school and my first kiss with him (very G-rated) when I missed but thought I was in love for sure.
3. I am the one cooking the family recipe that I used to refuse to consume. A child reluctant to try any food that wasn't Americanized and processed, I avoided our Christmas meal recipes like the plague. Now it's my favorite, and I'm the one cooking it.
4. We don't all bake Christmas cookies together anymore, and latkes are waiting in the oven for me when I get home, and I didn't light the Menorah a single night, because schedules are too conflicting, and I'm away at college, and it just couldn't happen. Traditions become much more lucid as they have to adapt to the crazy lifestyles of young adults.
5. We bought a Christmas tree three days before Christmas, because I came home horrified at the notion that my parents didn't see it necessary this year. Enough said.
6. Hanukkah presents become seven, and then six, and so on. The space under the Christmas tree becomes much emptier. Presents just aren't the same. Our parents can't fill space and our excitement with a million cheaper toys and gadgets. At a certain point, there aren't many more Apple products that you can acquire, and you're not so interested in collecting the next hot thing, so many presents become a few big presents... And then a few big presents become a lot of clothes and shoes... And then your parents are the only ones purchasing anything, and the rest of your family sticks to money.
7. The presents for my parents are wildly less impressive because **they're not funding them**. When I was younger, I used to know just what to get my mom, my dad, and my sister, and it was easy because I was provided just the right amount of money to do so. Unfortunately, the budget of a typically unemployed college student is far less impressive.
8. I'm factoring a boyfriend into that budget, and considering how to split time on the holidays with him, and actually understanding what it means to miss someone when I'm away for Christmas. I am actually old enough that that's a real thing for me. Even in high school, my relationship was pretty cut dry and easy: it was a long haul of not-that-serious. Now it's everything I could have ever wanted, but everything I never thought I'd be old enough to experience.
9. My grandparents don't have the holiday spirit that they once had. I remember sitting in my Bubbe's treasured, pretentious living room 20 minutes away from my house, next to the fireplace, opening presents that she anticipated more than we did. Now she's on the opposite end of the coast from me, and holiday presents become harder as we become more obscure. My grandma slept through a day that she used to cook, and my grandpa ate alone to catch some space when he would've been mixing drinks for everyone in the garage. I'm not the only one getting old, and that definitely digs the deepest.
10. It's a transgression that you almost miss while it's happening: from wearing onesie pajamas and cramming in on the couches with all of your cousins to await Santa anxiously on Christmas Eve... to borderline throw up with those cousins on Christmas Eve. I remember being the exact age of my little munchkin cousins right now -- 5 or 7 or 10 or what have you, and feeling the utter bliss of naivety. We didn't really know anything except that we adored each other, and we loved the same movies, and there was snow for us to deface, and that Santa could give us everything we wanted. We've all been through so much now: heartbreak beyond compare, new houses and lives that we didn't ask for, wanting more than Santa could help with.
But we still have each other. And I am so lucky to say that if one thing did not change at all, it's the warmth that I feel in the bottom of my heart from the people I love the most in the world during the holidays. It's a cumulative month, give or take, out of the year, that the people who fill your heart have days on-end to do so. The voices that calm you most, the embrace that puts you in utter peace, the laughter that plasters a smile to your face. So we may be getting older, but that's ok. Because the holidays will mean something different over time again and again, but they'll always revolve around love and family and friends, and that's more than anyone could ask for.
