Christmas Time

Christmas time is one of the happiest times of the year. The whole month of December is exciting, full of anticipation and merry wishes. I really enjoy this season.

My family probably celebrates Christmas different than many other families. On Christmas Eve my family and I go to the first Christmas Eve masses at our church. Afterwards we head over to my grandparents house and eat dinner with everyone. All of the cousins come over, and we have a grand meal. I love the togetherness almost more than the presents. After an hour or so of eating and half an hour of cleaning we all get ready to open presents. We all do a drawing and everybody gives one other person a present. Then all the grandkids pass out the presents piled high in the living room. Once everybody has one, we all start to open, but one at a time starting with the youngest. Some gifts are cute, others are funny but we all have a great time regardless. After the presents are opened the kids get a little downtime with their toys and then everybody leaves ready to celebrate tomorrow.

On Christmas Day, my sister is always the first one up. She checks to see if Santa ate his cookies and drank his milk and then comes to wake me up. It takes persuasion from the both of us to get our parents out of bed in the morning. It seems like my parents take an eternity to get to the living room. My mom gets a garbage bag for the paper and a knife for the difficult presents. My dad sets up a video camera and records the present unwrapping. Then we all sit down. At my house we too open presents from youngest to oldest. We all grab our presents from Santa and my sister unwraps, then me, then my mom, and finally my dad. After those gifts are opened we start opening the ones from everybody else. One year my parents both got each other mini deep fryers, and we had them open them at the same time. They were so confused, but it was so cute! After the presents are all unwrapped and the oohs and ahhs and funny stories all told, the Christmas morning magic ends and we clean up. As the living room is being put back in shape, I pop open a can of cinnamon rolls and make our traditional breakfast. A few hours later, my mom's family comes up and we enjoy yet another Christmas dinner. There are less relatives at this one and my sister and I are left to our own devices.

After 17 years of celebrating Christmas this way, I wouldn't change any of our amazing traditions. It truly is the best time of the year.