Christmas Traditions
Mood:  happy
We have some wonderful traditions in my family. Christmas Eve is our big celebration time. We generally have 25 or 30 at Mom's house. We have lots of food spread out all over the house, including some traditional family dishes, like my grandmother's homemade pimento cheese, or my great-grandmother's lemon cake. Everyone talks and visits and eats and eats and eats.

Finally, when everyone is stuffed to the gills, we all crowd into the living room and open gifts. A cheerful chaos ensues. Parents make an initial feeble effort to notice who has given what gift to their kids, but after a few minutes they give up and simply react to the gleeful shouts of "Mom! Look at this!"

Then the kids are sent upstairs to play with their Christmas presents, and the adults play The Game. You've probably played some version of it. It involves each person taking a turn, and either opening a gift from the pile in the center of the room or stealing an already-opened one from someone whose turn has passed. It's taken very seriously in my family. You must be at least 18 to play, there's a $20 limit, and we plan for weeks (sometimes months) beforehand to select just the right Game Gift. The Game has been known to go on for hours on "good" years. (And the kids get tired of waiting, and come hang out in the doorway and whine, and get sent away to leave the the grown-ups alone and let us play!)

After The Game, we go caroling. My mom is a pastor, so she always has a list of people who need a visit on Christmas Eve. It may be the widow down the street whose children can't make it in for the holidays, or the man who lost his wife this year, or the young family whose father lost his job three months before. We take candles (battery-operated ones since the year my son set his cousin's hair on fire during a rousing rendition of "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer").

Then comes the best part. Back at Mom's house, we all gather around the kitchen table for Jesus's Birthday Cake. It's an angelfood cake with pudding between the layers and covered in whipped cream. On top is an angel and a candle for every century since Jesus's birth. We form a circle around the table, turn out the lights, and hold hands to sing first "Silent Night," and then "Happy Birthday To Jesus." If there are family members who can't be with us in person, we call them on various cell phones during this part, and tears always flow.

The angel, by the way, is not flammable - since the year of the Unfortunate Incident when the previous angel did a Joan Of Arc immitation during the second song.

What are your family's traditions? Click the "Post Your Comment" link below and tell me about it!