LEON

LEON has been a part of Christmas for as long as I can remember. He has held a place of prominent esteem in our family. LEON has been both revered and ridiculed, loved and loathed, honoured and heckled. This year, LEON was one of the first Christmas decorations we lovingly unpacked and set up for display in our home in England. Well, NO was what we put out, but I will get to that later. I will start with the back story.

LEON was a faux gilded set of four letters in an antiqued burnished gold. The letters were festooned with  chubby cherubs and dancing angels playing cymbals and harps. LEON was ornately encrusted with sparkling glitter that would twinkle in the candle light. Each year, LEON would be placed with care atop Daddy's piano. Mom would carefully space the letters in a neat arrangement to spell NOEL. We would OOHHH! and AAAHHH! at the sight. Once the parental figures had departed the room, my much older sister and I would quickly change the letters around to LEON. Thus began a tradition that lasted nearly 40 years.

Mom and Dad would "rescue" their gilded letters from our cynical, sarcastic, piano top editorial daily and return it to the more traditional, albeit less interesting, NOEL.  We would promptly change it back. Once we were grown, Mom gave up in defeated exasperation. And we believe she actually preferred LEON to NOEL. Who wouldn't? Before long maybe all NOELs would decide to take the brazen leap to become LEON. But,  I digress. LEON was here to stay. No longer forced to be the NOEL he'd been raised to be, LEON was free to express himself. He started to shed some of the gilt and glitz for a more natural look. The cherubs and angels started to "disappear" - we think they ran off with the wise men - and the glitter slowly faded away. LEON became, well....just LEON.

LEON was as much a part of my Christmas experience as Santa,  mistletoe, the advent wreath and my Daddy's herbed bread. LEON's presence was taken for granted. Certain things are expected during the holidays: forgetting where you hid THE present; waiting until Christmas Eve to assemble the "some assembly required"  must-have item of the year with 5,000 itty bitty parts and instructions in Chinese; writing and addressing Christmas cards only to forget to mail them; and LEON. He was what we looked for first in Mom's house. LEON was the symbol of all things traditional. LEON was the harbinger of all things secular and sacred. LEON was the epitome of Christmas.

A few years ago, in the dark of night, LEON disappeared. My sister and I could not believe our beloved LEON had defected to another family. We couldn't accept his leaving any more than we could accept a Christmas without the barking dogs of Jingle Bells or the glass moose punch cups from A Christmas Vacation. We knew there must be a logical explanation for his abrupt departure from the piano. Surely Mom did not really want to change her decor. We hoped against hope that Mom and Dad had found a way to divide LEON up between us and let us enjoy his holiday presence in our own homes - that was it!! Of course!! Mom had it wrapped somewhere waiting to see our faces when we discovered him. We were to be inconsolably wrong. LEON had been given to .......Goodwill. Yep, Mom and Dad donated LEON.

Mom and Dad kept up the charade for that entire Christmas season. Whilst we were thrilled that another lucky family would come to love and treasure our LEON, we were not particularly happy with our parental units. They were indeed a charitable pair, but couldn't they have donated something else? Anything! Mom's diamond? Dad's watch? Much older sister would have made a great addition to some lucky family! A dark cloud hung over our Christmas celebrations. Then, on Christmas morning, my parents presented much older sister and her much wiser cohort (that would be me) a simply wrapped package. Inside was our beloved LEON with instructions to figure out how to share it betwixt the two of us. It was suggested we alternate years.

Much older, and since the reading of this blog probably a bit annoyed sister and I opted to break LEON into NO and EL. I got NO. We are both quite happy with our arrangement. We know that one day our beloved LEON will be a unified set of letters again. In the meantime, each set is loved and adored by all who see them. So whilst the rest of England is enjoying their boozy squishy tub of cakey cheer this Christmas, I will be enjoying the beautiful site of my part of  LEON.