Of all the holidays Burt had had to learn how to handle on his own, Christmas had to be the hardest. The year before he was still in such a daze from his wife's death that he forgot about it until the night before. That was always a good thing. He grabbed Kurt and drove him to get a Christmas tree at 9:30 at night, then left him with the babysitter. It was a miracle Lindsay agreed to come at 10 o'clock on Christmas Eve, but once he explained what was going on she showed right up. Burt dug the tree decorations out of the garage and left them to that while he spent literally hundreds of dollars on presents for him. It was the best thing ever seeing Kurt's face on Christmas morning.
But it was different this year. Burt was actually aware Christmas was coming. He got the tree the weekend after Thanksgiving and surprised Kurt with it, so he had been decorating it nonstop. Burt hired someone to hang Christmas lights around the outside of the house. He tried to get Kurt to tell him what he wanted from Santa, but he wasn't very clear about it. Burt hoped to get one more year from him, one more year of believing in Santa.
Elizabeth would take him to the mall every year to sit on Santa's lap, and they had quite the collection of pictures from over the years. But Kurt didn't want to go anymore, and he wouldn't say why. Burt just gave up, telling himself he would buy whatever he thought Kurt would like. He was so hard to shop for.
The day of Kurt's Christmas party at school was the last day before Christmas break. Burt left the garage early and picked him up, so he wouldn't have to take the bus. He took him home and left him with Lindsay while he went to the mall. He really had no other time to go, and Christmas was just a week away.
He went to the mall rather than Toys R Us. Kurt didn't really seem to want to play with toys anymore. He was into clothes and shoes and stuff Burt didn't pay much attention to. Kurt liked to dress up, even just to go to school. He didn't want to wear jeans and T-shirts and hoodies. He wanted dress pants, with button up shirts and bow ties. If only his school had a uniform. It would be a lot easier. Burt bought him mostly clothes and a few books, and he took everything to the garage and kept it in his office so Kurt wouldn't go looking for his presents. He could get Jake or Tony to help him wrap them.
By Christmas Eve he had all his presents for Kurt wrapped, and they were up in the attic of the house. He considered just leaving them in the basement, but the kid would somehow find them. Kurt got all dressed up, and they went to the service at church. Elizabeth had been strict about going every Sunday, and Kurt seemed to like it so Burt did his best to get them both there on time on Sunday mornings.
It ran late, and Kurt was stressing out about leaving cookies for Santa. Burt wanted him to get to bed, so they stopped at the store and bought a box of sugar cookies. Kurt set out three of them on a plate and poured a full glass of milk and left it by the fireplace. Burt tucked him into bed and stayed up, wanting to be sure he was completely asleep.
He tried to be as quiet as possible getting his presents down from the attic. Thankfully none of them were too big, and he didn't drop anything. He set them all down underneath the tree. They weren't wrapped very fancy, but he did his best. Burt ate one of the cookies and drank some of the milk, and checked on Kurt again. He was out like a light, so Burt went to bed himself.
Burt was surprised that Kurt didn't come running into his room, making him get up so he could open his presents already. When Burt got up it was pushing nine o'clock, and Kurt was patiently sitting on the couch waiting for him.
"You could've woken me up, buddy," he told him. "How long have you been down here?"
"I don't know," he shrugged.
"Well, go on. You can open your presents." Burt could tell he was itching to rip into them. He made himself coffee and sat on the couch as Kurt carefully peeled away all the wrapping paper. He made a big show of all of his gifts, holding them up for Burt to see. Once he had everything unwrapped he folded the clothes into stacks and carried them to his room. When he came back down the stairs several minutes later he was already wearing one of his new outfits. Burt didn't understand why Kurt was so into that stuff, but if it was the only thing he wanted, Burt wasn't complaining.
Somehow it just didn't feel like Christmas. Sure, they had a tree with lights on it and everything, but there were no gingerbread cookies, no Christmas carols turned up too loud on the radio, and none of Elizabeth's Christmas dinners. But he and Kurt were still a family, and that was better than any material gift to Burt.
Author's Notes:
I've always wondered when Kurt first got really interested in fashion and his fancy wardrobe and stuff, but I bet it started at an early age. He would be that kid who wears designer clothes to elementary school. And no one starts to tease him about it until middle school.