Of holly berries and celebrations

26 December 2008

December 25th is Christmas because of the traditions that have made it so for hundreds of years: St. Nicholas with his red robe and gifts, the manger scene with kneeling shepherds and adoring angels, Christmas carolers out in the snow, and a Yule log in the fireplace.

My family celebrates with variations on the theme beginning with yards of popcorn-cranberry strings and four days of caroling to everyone we know in the valley. On Christmas Eve, after clam chowder dinner, we produce a spectacular Christmas pageant (complete with all the regulars plus King Herod, four or five sheep, a chorus of angels and usually a couple of Marys). We kids give the parents a talent show (the price we pay for our years of music lessons) and then everyone takes turns opening their new Christmas pajamas.

The kids pile into one (often small) bedroom to watch movies and wait for Santa to visit. At the appointed hour (always hours and hours before I'd like to be awake) Mom and Dad come in for Jesus' birthday party. We sing Happy Birthday and eat cake while we discuss our new-year's-resolutionesque presents to Jesus and decide on new gifts to give him in the coming year.

Then we open presents. The aforementioned traditions were established, for the most part, by our dear loving parents and are based on decades of their own family traditions. So we the children have decided to create a few traditions of our own.

The electronic whoopie cushion was first given to me by my brother Isaac, and has since been regifted to various members of the family. It is a delicate matter as to who will next receive the revered EWC because they must be old enough to know better than to open the box and use it but young enough to recognize the importance of passing on the tradition. Thus far, my parents have never been gifted the EWC; we are not sure if they qualify in either respect.

Isaac introduced the tradition of giving alternatives to current technologies: A few years ago, he gave me a real-genuine-imitation cell phone which doubled, for a week or two, as an edible banana. It came with instructions on convincing your friends that it was, in fact, a real cell phone. This year he gave me an i-pod (see fig. 1).

I'm not really sure how the tradition of movie-marathons developed but this year we carried it on with the Mission:Impossible trilogy beginning at 11:30 pm Christmas Night and culminating in six children sleeping through hours of explosions and intrigue.

I've decided we should make a tradition of sleeping all day on the 26th.