"Santa Claus had come. Officially. We plunged into the cornucopia quivering with desire and the ecstasy of unbridled avarice."- Ralphie Parker
#2 of 31 Things I Love About Christmas: Christmas Morning.
Aside from the morning of my birthday and the morning of my wedding day, there is no other day that I wake up with the feeling of knowing what the day is. If that makes sense. I don't wake up on June 14 and go "IT'S FLAG DAY...YAHOO!"
I was usually the first one up. Some years it would depend, I would lie in my bed patiently til either our parents were awake or my sister had come by to wake me up or vice versa. We might have sneaked into the living room to make sure he actually came and wouldn't ya know it? He never forgot our house. That first look of the tree, usually lit up, rounding the hallway corner, into the living room...magic. We also made sure that Santa had indeed enjoyed the cookies and egg nog and given the celery and carrots to the reindeer...funny how the thank you note looked more and more like my Dad's handwriting....the gift tags looked a lot like Mom's writing....God bless 'em.
Now that we confirmed Santa had come it was time to get our parents up, if they hadn't heard "the prancing and pawing of each little hoof" already. Mom would sometimes make her and my dad coffee and dad would grab the camera. These pictures, are like time capsules. I can look at it and know exactly what year it was and know why I got what I got in the picture. These pictures are priceless treasures. The custom later evolved, once we were a little older, into us opening our stockings while we were waiting for our parents, but God help us if we touched anything else. Upon examination of our stocking items, which ranged from tissue packets, ties, a CD, Christmas candy (Santa was known for bringing those huge plastic candy canes filled with Reese's peanut butter cups or Hershey's Kisses) these were small tokens but very personalized. If you were to take our unwrapped stocking stuffers, throw them in a pile and sort them accordingly, you would have no problem figuring out to whom they belonged.
Opening presents soon commenced after this. One at a time and in orderly fashion, always making sure we were actually opening a gift meant for us. These gifts again were highly personalized to suit each of us, you could look at the spread of gifts after all was said and done and it all made sense. Opening each gift slowly, so to savor the moment and joy. We would usually be told once we got to the headliner item to save that one for last. We would then haul what we could to our room, making nothing important got thrown out. We would then have the 2nd course of breakfast (Christmas candy was the 1st course), watch the Christmas parade, watch more Christmas specials, call our grandparents, aunt and anyone one else to say merry Christmas. Get dressed and get ready to head to Grandma's around 12:30- 1PM.
For a refresher on the magic of Grandma's house see the "Grandma's House" entry.
When we were younger we would bring over 1 or 2 new toys that we couldn't wait to show them. Soon enough we would sit down to dinner. Pasta of some kind, ham, lamb or roast beef various sides and a parade of deserts and snacks. This would go on for hours. We would usually move onto the living room to watch the 24 hour marathon of "A Christmas Story" on TNT or TBS. I would always find time to play Deuces Wild with Grandpa and Dad. The entire afternoon and evening was a glad time of spending more time with each other, basking in the glory of another Christmas, wishing each year that I could freeze this moment in time and have it never end. Soon night would come and it would be time to go home. One last drive around the neighborhood near my Grandma's, down by the Bay and around our house, looking at all the houses all fancied up with excessive Christmas light displays. More of moving over our new stuff into our room and cleaning up the living room, as people would be coming over soon for my sister's birthday (whatever the weekend of Dec. 27th was). One last good belt of egg nog, one last viewing of A Christmas Story and it would all be over for another year. One last look at the tree it all it's heavenly glory and a smile.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
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