As we enter the holiday season...

Pajamas get opened on Christmas eve along with gifts from people who are not there. Everything else waits for Christmas morning.

I remember one Christmas where we were woken by this angelic noise at 3:00 in the morning. It was our three little children singing silent night, wanting to get up and do Christmas. Our first reaction was, “What the heck are you doing? Don’t you realize it’s three in the morning? Go back to bed!” As my husband and I lay there, unable to get back to sleep, feeling a bit guilty and realizing just how sweet the scene had been, we decided to get up and go in the hall and start singing “We Wish you a Merry Christmas” to the kids. You must understand the contrast. The children were so angelic and melodic. My husband on the other hand has a big bellowing voice that sounds great if her weren’t so tone deaf! We started Christmas early in the morning that year, and I think we were all back to sleep by noon.

I am not with family during the holidays, so I don’t follow any traditions anymore.

When I was in the 7th grade I think, me and my mom and sister decided we wanted to go Christmas caroling at the last minute on Dec 23 (or Christmas eve eve, as my mom likes to call it)
We used to do it every year with a group of friends, but me and my sister eventually got too old for it and found reasons to not go. On Dec 23 this year, I will be going to a Pink Floyd tribute band concert instead. :)

“Pajamas get opened”

I wanna go to Judi’s on Christams Eve!!

“The Knapps’ Christmas Party”, a potluck. Their house gets incredibly crowded and hot. You see everyone there. You exchange smiles with people you never see except at this party, and you embrace people you’ve known forever, and you make new friends. After everyone has had a chance to squash themselves all through the house and had a chance to eat themselves silly and get kinda drunk, the hostess somehow elbows her way to the piano and everyone sings Xmas carols. Marla Beth and Dan sing the loudest and the most earnestly. They sing harmonies (so do I) and people come over near us so they can pick up on the notes. At the end of it most of us sing O Holy Night, including all the very high notes, as loudly as we possibly can – it sounds so bad! Most years there are new babies, and now that we’re older, sometimes there have been deaths in the last year. We need to mash ourselves together in the light and heat and sing as hard as we can.

To my in-laws for a scrumptious early dinner, then the service/pageant at church. We head home and then, like Judi, we open our Christmas jammies. Cookies & milk are put out for the ‘big guy’ and off to bed the kids go. On Christmas day everyone is here for dinner, and we end the meal with traditional Christmas Crackers, the jokes are corny and the crowns are flimsy, but the laughs are priceless.