Happy Christmas Eve, my friends! This used to be my most favorite day of the whole year. I say "used to" because things have changed quite a bit. Let's speak of tradition, shall we? My family is steeped in tradition, and I am not a fan of change. I want to raise my kids the way I was raised, no exceptions, no matter how silly that may sounds.
So this is what my childhood Christmas Eve/Christmas Day looked like...
Spend the day playing in my room or reading, trying to stay out of mom's way as she cleaned the house. At some point I would wrap my presents for my brother and my parents. At 5pm, we would go to church. A Lutheran Christmas Eve service in our church was pretty painless..about 40 minutes of Christmas songs...but for a kid on Christmas Eve it lasted FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER. When we got home, Dad would set out the Swiss Colony Buffet. Every year he would order various cheese, meats, crackers, dips and dessert from Swiss Colony. We also would usually have those cocktail weinies in barbecue sauce. Grandma and Grandpa would come over at about 6:30. We would eat our buffet with coffee and iced tea, and then my brother J and I would spend a good 20 minutes rushing the adults and begging for presents. Then we'd all gather in the porch, and J and I would give our parents our gifts, and then we'd exchange gifts to each other, too. Mom and Dad always gave us two gifts on Christmas Eve, the "non-Santa" gifts. One was always a pair of pajamas and one was always a calendar. Sometimes Grandma and Grandpa would give us a family gift that night...usually a kitchen gadget...quesadilla maker, or espresso maker, etc.
So then after some chatting, Grandma and Grandpa would leave. J and I would put on our new pajamas and settle in on the couch in front of the fireplace downstairs, which would now have a roaring fire in it (when did he do that?? It must have been when J and I were distracted with Grandma and Grandpa). Then he would read "The Night Before Christmas" to us. The copy of the book was ancient, I think it must have been his when he was a kid. I hope he still has it. After that we left cookies and milk out for Santa, and a carrot on the deck for the reindeer, then it was off to bed for us. When we were kids, J would always sleep in my room on Christmas Eve. We'd stay up as late as we could, talking about Santa and presents. A few years, we even heard the reindeer on the roof! (my dad actually went outside and threw pebbles on the roof...the magic of Christmas was very important to him!) My parents left the radio on all night long...the station that played Christmas music. I suppose this was so that it was harder for us to hear them wrapping, stuffing, and assembling downstairs! J and I would usually wake up at about 4:30 or 5, and our allowed time to leave the room and wake up mom and dad was 6am. We always snuck out anyway, though...and it's one of my favorite memories. Slowly, slowly opening the door so that we weren't busted....our eyes adjusting to the dark and then looking over to the lit-up Christmas tree, hearing the carols on the radio...then looking over to the couch, where our stockings and presents were stacked...a pile for each of us...we would look at each other and whisper "Whoa!" Then we would ever so slowly tiptoe into the living room..we counted presents but didn't touch anything. Then we would peek into the kitchen and see that the cookies were gone! Santa took the cookies! And peeking outside...the carrot! It was half eaten! And there were reindeer tracks in the snow! Wow! Sometimes my dad heard us sneaking around up there and would stick his head up the stairs (their bedroom was downstairs) and say "hey! back to bed with you two! It's not time yet!" and we'd scatter back to my room, giggling all the way..then I'd read books to J until it was time to get up. At 6am we'd burst out of the room and run downstairs..sometimes banging on the piano on the way down. "It's time, mom and dad! Wake up! It's Christmas! Wake up!" My parents, who were usually up until 2 in the morning wrapping and stuffing stockings and exchanging presents to each other, would bound out of bed, my mom would hug both of us and say "let's go see what Santa left! Do you think he came?" and I would undoubtedly say "He did! He did, the carrot is half-eaten!" not even realizing that I had just admitted to sneaking out of the room. We would all go upstairs, Mom and Dad bleary-eyed in robes, Dad would start the coffee. After the coffee was dripping, we were allowed to start opening our stockings. My parents went all out on stockings. My mom made them, and they are really long and really stretchy...they fill them so that the goods are spilling over the top, and then they surround each stocking with unwrapped gifts, too. So J and I would open stockings at the same time while mom and dad watched. There's a specific smell that I remember about the stockings..they always put fruit in the bottom, so it was a combination of the fruit and chocolate and the yarn. Then, after stockings and about three cups of coffee each for mom and dad and sometimes one for me (yeah, I started drinking coffee when I was three)it was present time. J and I would take turns opening a present..we always tried to stretch it out as long as we could. The Christmas music would still be playing, and dad would be taking pictures in between gulps of coffee. After presents, mom and dad would open their stockings. Then, dad would clean up the shredded wrapping paper, J and I would play with our new stuff, and mom would go back to bed for awhile.
At about 9am, we'd go over to my Grandma and Grandpa Nygren's house. Grandma would have Christmas breakfast cooking, and I'd go into the kitchen to help her make the orange smoothies. We'd listen and sing to "C'mon Ring Those Bells" while we worked. Since she died last year, this song makes me cry when I hear it. Which is often since I burned it onto a CD. Before we ate, we all did stockings. The stockings at my Grandma and Grandpa's house are handknit by my great grandma. There'd be Christmas music playing downstairs and the tree would be all lit up and the couches and chairs were filled with all ten of our stockings. We'd find our own and tear into them....then we'd put all the stuff into plastic shopping bags that Grandma passed around, then we went upstairs to eat. Always the same breakfast...cinnamon rolls with green frosting and cherries(which my dad is going to try to replicate this year..grandma didn't leave her recipe!), the orange smoothies, coffee, canadian bacon, egg bake, fruit, and cheesey potatoes. After us kids finished eating (me and J and our cousin J, and later L came along) we would sit at the table and beg to open presents. We had to wait until the adults were done eating and "until Grandma says OK". After what seemed like an eternity, Grandma would smile and say "OK!" and we'd scramble downstairs. Being the oldest grandkid, it was my duty to pass out all the presents under the tree, a duty that I took very seriously. I would always pile mine up by the fireplace, because I liked to sit with my back to the warm fire. After presents were passed out, we'd go around and take turns...youngest opens first and all the way up to Grandpa. This made it take a long time. To this day I feel a twinge of anxiety when I'm in a situation where everyone opens presents all at once..I'm like "Wait! Too fast! I can't see what everyone got! Slow down! Savor Christmas!"
After our presents were opened, we'd sit and chat and I would sometimes fall asleep in front of the fireplace, on the latchhook rug that Grandma made, clutching her Santabear.
At about noon, we'd hug Grandma and Grandpa goodbye and then it was on to Grandma and Grandpa L's house. It was a little more disorderly and chaotic there. First of all, there was seventeen of us, before the youngest cousins were born. We would open our stockings right away, which were handmade by Grandma. Then all the cousins would play for a few hours downstairs. Grandma and Grandpa's whole basement was like one big playroom. Grandma would have trays of fruit, meat and cheese for us to snack on. After a while, we'd go back upstairs and us kids would open presents. Grandma usually got us girls the same things, so we'd all open at the same time. Sometimes she'd get us "big" things, like a scooter. In that case, she would tie a really long red piece of yarn to it, put it downstairs in Grandpa's workshop, and hand us one end of it..we had to follow the yarn to get to the present. After presents, the adults would exchange their presents while my cousins and I would go back downstairs and play dress-up. Grandma had a huge collection of vintage gowns, slips, dresses, hats and purses. Grandpa, my dad and my uncle D would stand out on the deck and smoke a cigar. The smell of cigars still sometimes reminds me of my Grandpa L, who died in 1999.
Then in the late afternoon we would go across the street to Grandma and Grandpa's church. This is where the extended family would meet...my mom's cousins and aunts and uncles and second cousins...probably close to 40 people in all. Everyone would bring a dish, and us cousins would go down to the rec room, it had a pool table and a TV and air hockey. We'd stay there until my mom and dad came down to get me and J to go home. We'd complain and ask for 5 more minutes, and usually my parents would sit on the couch and give us 15 minutes more or so of playing. At this point J was usually about to drop, so my mom would pick him up and he'd fall asleep immediately on her shoulder, and my dad would pick me up, and we'd go out into the cold air and mom and dad would load us into the minivan which was now crammed with presents. We'd fall asleep on the short ride home, and dad would carry us inside and put us into bed.
And so that's it. I'm used to going a million places in one day and I wouldn't change it for anything in the world.
These days Christmas Eve is a little different, because J got married and they see R's side of the family on Christmas Eve, and Grandma died, so grandpa won't be coming over, instead my parents are going over to Grandpa's house, and I see my boyfriend's family on Christmas Eve. But it's still my favorite day, and I will still probably be up at 6am tomorrow morning with the giddy anticipation of Christmas Day.
Merry Christmas to all!