Tradition

A week or so ago Barbara wrote about some of her Christmas traditions. It was a funny and sweet post and it brought back many Christmas memories for me so I thought I'd write about some of the traditions we used to have when I was younger and one that Sparky and I have developed over the years.When I was little and the anticipation of Christmas morning was killing us my folks would send us to bed on Christmas Eve and then as soon as we said our godless Roman Catholic prayers and we were tucked in bed we'd hear bells jingling. I'd always jump out of the covers and squeal, "It's Rudolph! Santa's here!" Of course the fact that we had no fire place and therefore no chimney for him to slide down never bothered me. Then we'd get calmed down and then my cruel parents would giggle and jingle those bells again. Finally we'd all drift off to sleep and then we'd wake up at around 4 or 4:05 AM and run down stairs in our underwear ready to open presents. Don't believe me?
That's my Dad and my big brother Charlie on the left, my sister Sandy in the middle, my Mom behind me on the left and that's my sister Linda to my right. Yep, that's me with what looks like a boner standing in front of everyone, I had to hog all the attention even then. My brother Karl must have taken this picture. I'm betting my Mom bought all our underwear at the same place, she probably got it a good deal on it.

When I was in college my friends Lou and John and I had a tradition of getting rip roaring drunk on Christmas night and going out to see the worst movie we could find. One year we got smashed on red wine, Seagram's 7 and 7 Up, Budweiser beer, and we went to see Leonard Part 6. The movie was so bad that it almost sobered us up. After Lou moved to NYC and stopped coming back to see his old college buddies we stopped this tradition. If he's still alive I hope he still does something like this in New York.


After I grew older and my cousins started having kids we'd all get together some years. One tradition I had during those times was I would play with the neat toys the kids would get. I'd tell the kids that if they didn't let me try the toys out that I'd tell Santa on them. Okay, it wasn't so much a tradition as much as it was me being an ass. Once I tried to get my cousins, their spouses, and their kids to stand in a circle and sing the song from the Grinch, the one all the citizens of Whoville sing at the end. I never could get everyone focused long enough because we, the adults anyway, were too stoned to remember the words to the song.

As far as traditions that Sparky and I have, one of them is we usually go visit her parents on Christmas Eve. Her mom makes finger food and a fruity punch. Then around 9:30 PM we'll say our goodbyes, we see them the next day for gift giving and Christmas supper, and we head home. Once we get home we watch some Christmas episodes of our favorite Brit-coms on DVD, I'm partial to the Father Ted Christmas show, while Sparky likes the ones from the Vicar of Dibley. We also open one present each. A few years back we opened one present each and we found out that we had bought each other the same book, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. Hilarity ensued and then after it ended Sparky let me open another present. It was the short story collection The Interpreter of Maladies by the same author. What can I say? It's non stop holiday excitement at our place these days.