Grandma loved Christmas and went all out. Every year we never doubted we would get something we wanted. She always wanted a list at Thanksgiving and we knew our wishes or at least some of them would be met. She liked to give us nice things and it was important to her to show up that she wanted us to have something special that we truely wanted. My grandparents house was always decked out in Christmas decorations, tree, garland, lights, Rudolph, holly, everything you could possibly think of. I mean their carpet was even the perfect shade of green for Christmas. No one would doubt Christmas lovers lived there. A Christmas Story, the movie about the boy who wants a BB gun, playing on the tv screen, ornaments with our elementary school pictures on them were everywhere. A bag for for ribbons and bows because you can reuse them. All of theses things stirred together made a picture perfect Christmas. Now normal we had like roast or spaghetti or meatloaf, but to this day I know it happened , even though everyone swears I made it up, but it happened, I promise it happened. We had Chinese food for dinner one Christmas Eve. It was only the one time, but until my dying day I will swear it happened. To this day it’s like some bad joke I can’t get out of, but it did happened (I obviously can’t say that enough) when I was about sixteen. My cousin Kegan claimed to recall it, but was shot down so fast, he just decided to agree with everyone else, self preservation I guess. I don’t blame him as I will always be the one who received the crazy look from Grandma when I asked her about it, so sure she would come to my rescue to only hear her say, “Sure.” In a tone that made it clear she thought I was nuts. Everyone laughed, I guess I don’t really blame them. Though I do wish someone else would remember. So much laughter and love and tradition. We always stayed so late and went home with an armload of gifts. Gifts,which was great, but nothing beat being there watching everyone and participating in the family banter. It certainly made Grandma happy to see us open a gift that she bought and knew we would love. Grandma relished Christmas Eve. She loved seeing everyone together happy and excited. She loved buying us nice things that she knew we would appreciate, it was one of the many ways showed us that she loved us. It will never really matter what we ate for dinner on Christmas Eve, (so it’s ok they all forgot) what mattered was we were all there smiling, laughing, and loving one another.
