For the 2nd of the 3 Christmas Memories posts I’m gonna talk about Christmas Eve when I was a little girl. Growing up we did the majority of our holiday celebrations on the night of Christmas Eve. My parents would load all the presents into the car and we would begin our journey for the night. We would always start at my grandma’s house.
Everyone in the family was there from my mom’s side. My aunts, uncles, cousins, everyone! We would all show up around 6:30ish and have a big dinner together. My grandma was the best cook ever and she outdid herself every single year. After dinner, we would open up our gifts. This was always my favorite part, I got to play Santa and hand out all the gifts and then we all tore into them! There was no order to this madness, it was a tornado of wrapping paper and shouted ‘Thank you’s’ until everyone was done. One specific year I remember we played a game and my little cousin won. My St. Bernard had just had puppies and I told him he won one of the puppies! He was so excited that his parents couldn’t tell him no, so the day after Christmas they showed up at our house to pick out their puppy. His dad was not happy with me for a while but he ended up loving that dog more than anything so it all worked out.
After we opened the gifts there, we would load them back into the car, opened this time, and head to my other grandma’s house. Again, the entire family was there, except it was my dad’s side of the family. Let me just say, my dad’s family is nuts. They are so much fun and there was never a dull moment to be had as long as they were around. Since we had just eaten dinner, we just opened presents at her house. We would laugh and play games and just have a great time together. We usually didn’t leave until well after 10 or 11 at night but that didn’t stop us from continuing our Christmas Eve festivities.
After we left grandma #2’s house we would go back home and open our own presents. Just my mom, dad and I. Even though there was only 3 of us it would still take a good hour or 2 for us to open everything. I got mountains of gifts, looking back on it I believe it was a bit overkill and I’m hoping I don’t spoil my kids the same way I was spoiled. Anyway, we would actually take turns at home so we could all see what we all got. Once the gifts were open my parents would shuffle me off to bed so Santa could come and leave me even more presents. It was always hard to fall asleep on Christmas Eve because I was so excited!!! I tried to stay awake and listen for sleigh bells or hoof steps on the roof but after the long night running around and opening all those gifts, I was beat. We would put out the cookies and milk (and carrots for the reindeer) and then snuggle up in my bed and I was usually asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
I try to have Christmas Eve traditions for my own family now. One that we used to do was read “T’was the Night Before Christmas” before bed but now that my kids are getting older we don’t do it as a family anymore. Instead I read it to our daughter as her bedtime story. We always watch “A Christmas Story” on TV and we set out the cookies and milk for Santa. Sometimes we do carrots, sometimes we don’t. Every year but this one we have made Reindeer Food to lay out in the yard so the reindeer know where to land. This year it totally slipped my mind to get glitter, so it didn’t happen. Nobody said anything about it, so I didn’t mention it either.
Tomorrow is going to be a long day for us. We are driving 3 hours (one way) to see my family for Christmas and having breakfast with the in-laws before that. Merry Christmas everyone!
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