Ghosts of D&D Christmas past

 Maybe it's just a general symptom of middle age, but Christmas isn't what it was in the days of my youth. Out of all the Christmases leading up to this, my 49th, I remember those of the mid-80s to early 90s most fondly. 

Those were the ones I've come to remember as the D&D Christmases. We had moved down from a few counties north at the end of 1985. Since we didn't yet have a home of our own here, we lived in my grandma's house, historically the site of Christmas gatherings going back to my earliest childhood, and a house which had at various points served as home for all the aunts, uncles, and cousins on my mom's side of the family. It turned out to be our home for several years, during which I discovered Dungeons & Dragons through a copy of the Moldvay Basic boxed set found by an aunt at a garage sale. I read the rulebook and the included copy of B2 cover-to-cover probably a dozen times before I suggested to the younger siblings and cousins that we try playing the game. We played off and on all year, whenever time permitted, but it was during the holiday breaks from school that we really dove in deep. We had two weeks with no other commitments, and we spent hours around the game table. At first, it was an old pool table converted for the purpose, which coincidentally ended up with a small artificial Christmas tree in the center. One of my cousins declared it to be the Caves of Chaos Christmas tree, and composed a parody of We Wish You A Merry Christmas geared toward savage humanoids. ("We all want some guts and pudding, we all want some guts and pudding!") We played many a session in B2, and some expeditions to the Isle of Dread, and quite a lot of time crawling through homebrew dungeons and exploring the Known World of Expert Set/Gazetteer fame. That reminds me, Christmas was also the time to look forward to new D&D books among the presents under the tree, and almost every moment not spent actually playing the game, I spent thumbing through those new treasure troves of ideas and inspirations. 

Those two weeks of Christmas vacation always felt like ages, and even though we never did get in nearly as much adventuring as I would have liked, we doubtless logged dozens of hours around the table. It feels strange to me now, looking back, that the entire era lasted only a handful of years. At the time it seemed like forever, which I guess makes sense, considering it was literally a third of my life up to that point. Now a week blows by almost before I can blink, and years get away from me. Grandma's house burned down in 2011, and Grandma herself died of Alzheimer's this past July. All the cousins and quite a few of the siblings are scattered to the four winds, and I rarely see most of them any more. As I type this, I sit alone in my house, except for the cats, while my wife visits her family half a continent away in Texas. It's quiet, and there's plenty of time for remembering. I haven't played D&D at all in a couple years, and I haven't played it the way it was meant to be played - old school! - in many more. I doubt I'll ever recapture the magic of those Christmastime marathons. Too much has changed. And yet I still think about it. I still write about it. I miss it terribly. I try to fill the void, with varying degrees of success, by writing fantasy novels and with computer RPGs like Dragon Warrior and Morrowind. For some, D&D was a youthful phase they eventually grew out of. I never really did. I'll probably always have a segment of brainspace dedicated to it, even if I never pick up the dice again. 

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