What is your very favorite
holiday? Recount the specific memory or memories that have made that holiday
special to you.
That would most definitely be Christmas.
For me, Christmas memories include candlelight services on Christmas Eve
and even Midnight Mass with my Catholic friends. It means Christmas Eve day at my
Grandparent’s house opening our gifts youngest to oldest, one at a time (except
for my Grandmother who was not the oldest, but always wanted to open hers last).
We did it this way so we could all enjoy the process of giving and receiving
together. The idea that everyone opens
their presents at the same time was foreign to me until I had my own children
and visited with my in-laws whose gift-giving chaos was an assault to my
senses. There’s nothing wrong with it; I just really appreciate the traditions
we had of the youngest handing out the gifts one by one and then each of us
opening one by one while we quietly finished our desserts after a big family
dinner of ham, sweet potato and green bean casseroles, bread, and pecan
pie.
I love our family of 5 tradition of going back home after an afternoon at
Grandma’s and Christmas Eve services and opening one present each under our
immediate family tree, then waking up early to Santa’s arrival of whole
walnuts, oranges, candy, and other goodies in our stockings, now on the floor
because they were too heavy to hang on the mantel any longer. Then, there was the visit to my dad’s side of
the family Christmas Day on Sand Mt with all the cousins huddling up together
in the unheated extra living room playing games and passing the time as kids do
while the adults caught up on life around the wood burning stove in the main
room. So many of these traditions I
still keep today and have added more to my own small family. Hopefully, my boys will remember their
Christmas holidays as fondly as I do.
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