Our traditions include planning a prepared-ahead breakfast that rarely materializes, my oldest son's perpetual disappointment with whatever he gets, and my oldest daughter's cuckolding my gifts with the better versions she offers. The two younger children generally enjoy the holiday. My sister cries because Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa are dead. We give her a handful of candy canes. Her eyes light up and she's happy.
Besides that, I cook a feast fit for a king (we keep an open-door policy on food). We utter oaths to celebrate a week later "next year" to catch all the post-Christmas sales (and never do). Sometime in the afternoon, I remember the stockings or some other quasi-vital prop, and we enjoy that then. This is also about the time I find the Christmas CDs.
If I've prepared gifts for family members not seen or heard from since last year, the gifts sit forlornly under the tree. If I don't prepare gifts for those guys, they show up en masse with two or three carloads-ful of presents. I think this year it's their turn. We're strange and nontraditional, but we love each other in our own cracked, dysfunctional ways.
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Last night my sister baked sugar cookies. Her original intent was to give them as presents. Instead, she ate the whole batch -- most of it raw. Poor thing left a trail of barf all over the house.
Hope that's not the start of a new family tradition.
1 comment:
HAhahaha!!! I'm reading through the older stuff on your blog! You know, I never intended to show you up with presents. Sometimes I think we just think too much alike! :)
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