I've decided that my family is simple. We don't have any elaborate traditions for pretty much anything. We aren't up in each others faces all the time. We're not terribly high maintanance. Like I said, simple.
This morning we had Christmas breakfast. It's really the only tradition we have for Christmas time. When we were kids, there were two sets of presents. One set was the stuff that was supposedly from Santa. Our stockings would be filled with gum, life savers, candy canes and sometimes little toys. If I remember right there were also bigger presents that were from Santa. (Now don't get me wrong, when I say bigger presents, I mean like the doll I got—Kimberly was her name if I remember right—who had roller skates. Nothing huge, we never got stuff like that.) Oh, all of these presents were wrapped in color coding. Like all of mine were in orange paper, the oldest in green and the middle sister in purple. The colors changed every year. If I recall, it was usually tissue paper.
The rest of the presents were under the tree. These were the pretty presents—nicer paper, bows and tags. But . . . before we could unwrap them Dad forced us to have breakfast. No, it was not cold cereal. It was always a hot breakfast with pancakes or waffles and bacon and whatever else he decided to cook. That thirty minutes to an hour felt like six days—it was excruciating!
So, as punishment for torturing us when we were kids, we decided that Dad gets to make us breakfast every year. I help (mostly because I lived there for so long) with the bacon, but he does most of the work.
I guess the only other tradition we have is that when the time comes to open the presents under the tree, we take turns. Starting with the oldest, we unwrap presents one at a time. Being the youngest, and therefore last, for so many years was only consoled by the fact that I usually had the most presents. Hey, I'm the youngest. I'm spoiled.
That's it. We have an unrecorded tradition of saving bows and boxes to be used through entire life times of Christmas wrapping, but that's just for fun. Nothing official. Still, I like our simple traditions. Anything more and people start to get a little crazy. And who needs more crazy this time of the year?
2 comments:
Okay, the similarities between our families still weird me out! Gads, your Chrsitmas traditions sound just like mine.
We too could break into the socks before breakfast, but everything else...Nope we had eat orange rolls, obligatory scrambled eggs and what ever else we felt like for that year. We sat down to eat, like civilized people, cleared our plates, loaded the dishes and only after we had staked our "spot" for the year did Dad hand out the gifts one at a time.
Oos, ahhhs and "pass that over I want to see" stretched Christmas into the afternoons. We still don't get done until about 2 pm and then it's a quick lunch and off to play with the new toys.
We are so living parallel lives...So if you're the rich writer what am I?
Wait, I'm a rich writer?!?
That would make you the super-cool rich artist.
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