by Anasofia Aceves

Created on: January 29, 2010

As a little girl Jane´s favorite holiday was Christmas, the smell of the tree travel through the whole house making it difficult to forget that Santa’s visit was not far away and that the whole family would be together to celebrate soon enough.

Every year as a child she had the same feelings, happiness, warmth, joy, good will and everything else that you see on the movies, Christmas cards, TV and hear on all the holiday songs that this time a year is supposed to represent.

Now on the eve of Christmas, at twenty five she wondered where those times had gone.

Sometime during her adolescence years it had all turned.

This year the Christmas tree at her house had been bought on the twenty second of December, the lack of money, time and will had made it impossible for her mother to plan on going shopping for it, her father never bother, he would make comment about the decorations and how great the house ran but never wonder how all got done. During the afternoon of the twenty second she and her boyfriend had help her mother put on the ornaments that she had bought at the store, simple, disposable ornaments that had no sentimental value let alone monetary value.

On Christmas Eve she was sitting at the dinner table with her boyfriend by her side, holding her hand but saying nothing, her two older sisters across the table with their new families barely paying attentions to her father´s traditional Christmas prayer that had nothing to do with reality and their actual lives. Her mother´s long wavy gray hair was as beautiful as always and her face, as beautiful as it was only showed indifference.

Christmas had become another family dinner we were all obligated to attend while we pretended that all the family conflicts that had emerged during the year were non existent.

Looking at that table made her wonder, should she say something?, should she point out how everyone pretending that nothing has happened was not fooling anyone? Should she scream at the top of her lungs that she was tired of Christmas at the twilight zone where everyone lives in the fifties and acts like things are normal when they are not?, Should she beg for the good times to come back, for her father to actually care about the Christmas tree, for him to go buy it with mother and had her make hot chocolate while he help put it together on the living room? Should she beg her sisters to stop fighting about whatever meaningless argument they had two years ago and actually include their

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>