Does it get any better than this?
#3 of 31 Things I Love About Christmas: Christmas Eve.
Throw back the egg nog, turn on the lights and don we now our gay apparel. CHRISTMAS EVE!!!! One of my favorite nights of the year.
I would dare say I have more fun Christmas Eve than on Christmas Day. Christmas Eve starts in full force in the morning at my house.
Christmas specials and Christmas music only. All day long.
Make sure bedrooms are in respectable order, vacuum the carpets, make sure the bathroom is decent, fresh towels (matching ones at that!), clutter free kitchen counters, living room tidied up, coats on parents. bed to make room for everyone else's, making sure Grandma and Grandpa's slippers were ready to go by the side door, make sure Christmas lights and outside lights are on.
It wouldn't be Christmas until I got my Christmas card from my 1st grade teacher and perhaps, the greatest teacher I ever had, Mrs. Marion B. Northrup. I have every card she has sent me since 1997 which list all the crazy travels and adventures she has had in the past year and what she has on tap for the new year. I should live to be in such good health, with the energy and means to live so well. A true inspiration.
Usually in the afternoon we would get our Christmas pajamas, us three kids would open our gifts for each other and hang our new Christmas ornaments on the tree.
Here we go again, haul up the large folding table and card table in kitchen from the basement and lug up the metal folding chairs (brown and coffee & cream in color) and place accordingly. Clear off the counter space to the right of the kitchen sink for our attempt at a bar, placing out the sauce of which no one drinks (Grandpa might throw a little Seagram's Whiskey in the coffee, but it doesn't get much more wild than that), next to those place the two liters of pop (we dont have soda in NY state) and the plastic cups, start oiling and cooking the sausage around 3 or 4, maybe roast some chestnuts (not over an open fire like the song suggests, that could get dangerous...especially indoors).
For a refresher on just what in the world we bought and why see the "Trip To Wegmans" Entry.
Cut the rolls for the sausage and place in basket, cut, nibble while no one is looking and put the pepperoni, salami, sopressata, provolone, olives and pickles on fancy plates, break out the mixed nuts with metal nutcrackers and place in baskets to be enjoyed later, schelp out the various condiments for the dinner and salad, place butter in dishes with knives for spreading said butter (keeping it classy for Jesus' b-day).
God bless if you are still reading because I'm not finished yet.
Grandparents arrive, give them their slippers and talk their ears off. When we were younger we would haul in garbage bags, I'm not exaggerating, of presents for everybody. Repeat process with Aunt Julie and Uncle Harry and Giavanna. Our living room was a maze of boxes. I got the pictures to prove it. Settle into a nice dinner, happily plowing through the homemade sausage, bacala as we chat and tell stories. Again as younger kids we would be wouldn't shut up until we got our presents. Not before desert, coffee, some sort of cake, Christmas cookies with enough frosting to kill a moose. This period was known as digestion. Code for "keep your pants on a minute, we aren't ready to open presents."
After "digestion" and dinner, we would change into our jammies. Grandma's logic "C'mon letsa make a them opena the presents so they shutup." But never was such a thing said with such love and care. Sometimes before, sometimes after I would read Twas The Night Before Christmas. We would all take a seat with our stash and commence opening in dignified and organized manner, wrapping paper in the garbage bags, announcing who the gifts were from and reading cards allowed...or so we tried to maintain this law and order. Though I must say our presents opening was never like it is on TV with kids just plowing through boxes, one at a time, or each of us opening one of our own gifts all together at the same time. Again in younger years it was boxes upon boxes. Clothes (how I wish for such a sensible gift now). Grandparents always came through with a box each of paper, envelopes, pens, pencils, markers, scotch tape and batteries (for some reason these were always hard to find items in our house, so we each were presented with our own stash).
Grandparents could also be counted on for one or two fun things (usually specific items that were easy to find...like a new CD or DVD that was new that wouldn't be much trouble finding). Aunt Julie could be counted on for the more amusing items that our Grandparents might not buy (keeping in mind my grandparents only got around to having a push button phone and answering machine somewhere around 1995...a VCR, video game system DVD player or computer has never seen the inside of their house). We boringly sat through the adults opening their gifts to and from each other...never suspecting that one day, I would be in their shoes, getting excited over a coffee maker (funny story...I'm not even coffee drinker, but I would be excited if I got one).
We would usually take our bounty to our rooms to make room for Santa and open up and play with anything sensible and fairly easy (again this detail varied by the year, as we got older, the toys became fewer, as one might expect). Back into the kitchen for more sweets and treats. Sometimes cocktail shrimp, sometimes pizza bread, sometimes a ChexMix of some sort, sometimes cheesecake and more cookies...in short, we continued eating.
Soon enough we would look tired and Grandma and Grandpa would call for their coats and boots and Grandpa would fire up the car, bid farewell and know we would see them again soon enough, my Aunt and Uncle would usually follow suit. We would each pick a cookie or two and pour some milk or egg nog for Santa, while making sure to leave carrots and celery for the reindeer. In later years, my sister and I would help clean up the house, which was generally speaking, a disaster area by this point before heading to bed. Put on Christmas music and fell to sleep. As a kid I remember seeing the soft glow outside, falling asleep with the vision of Santa Claus coming in my front door with our presents, polishing off the snack, unloading the goods and making it out without waking a soul.
The things I would give to have some of that magic back. Just one more time.
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