Christmas at Ma’s

It was a big day yesterday – my Mom had her Christmas celebration. And like everyone who celebrates Christmas with their family, it’s always something to remember.

For some reason the day starts out exactly the same every year, most of us all arrive at the same time and try to pack into her entry way with gifts, food, and kids. Then we try to get our wet shoes off and usually someone will help with taking your gift to be put downstairs, putting your food in the kitchen, but the first thing that they would probably would do if you were carrying a small child is to grab them and leave you with everything else until someone else comes to help. Then we wait for anyone who didn’t come in the first wave of people, and hang out and try to get what food there was so far organized. Now even though this doesn’t sound like a big project, take my word for it… it is! We are a German family and we like to eat. So there is always about 2 or 3 times more food than we really need. We try to keep it organized in food groups and finding outlets to keep the warm food hot is always a challenge. Then it happens – everyone who can make it for dinner is there and we start to eat. We have this down and it’s pretty much routine. I even overheard someone telling one of the younger kids to just think of it as if you were in a school lunch line. That is so true. The little kids go through first and always seem to take the least amount. But some of the parents who were trying to get their kids to take more might not have known that their kids already ate 6 frosted Christmas cookies and might not be so hungry. But for the rest of the adults? We usually can go back a couple of times to make sure that we’ve tried everything. The room is filled with a lot of talking and there can be multiple conversations going on at once. But really, no one cares. After the meal it’s time to get the tables cleaned up and dishes done. We use paper plates but there is always silverware and bowls to wash up. This doesn’t take too long and then it’s getting closer to opening the gifts. By this time all the family has made it and it’s Ma’s turn to get her gifts. Out of the back room she comes with gifts for everyone. I think she said at one time that she had over 75 gifts wrapped and that was about a month ago! So it’s hard telling how many she had stashed this Christmas. She’s one of those people that can find the perfect gift and this year once again she’s proven it! There are 45 (48 with girlfriends)  in our family so that’s a lot of people to buy for – Amazing! After she’s given us our gifts, and she’s open gifts that we’ve given her… the exchange gifts come out. Now I don’t know if it’s adrenaline or the sugar kicking in from the cookies, but all of a sudden everyone rushes into this small room where we put the gifts and tries to not only find their families gifts they brought, but also tries to get back out of the room. It must look kind of funny to someone who hasn’t been to our Christmas before because in about 5 minutes (or less) we can have around 40 gifts organized into piles of ‘Men’, ‘Women’, or ‘Either’. It’s funny what can be done in a large group when you want to isn’t it? We all draw a number and then the game begins. It’s the exchange that you can either pick a gift or take someone else’s that they have. Usually each gift gets stole the limit of three times, well almost. If you can keep a low key, don’t make too much eye contact with anyone and also try not to let anyone know what you have, you might get lucky to keep it. But to be honest, this usually doesn’t work so good. My family is not shy at all and like I said, this doesn’t usually work so well. But you always seem to give it a shot anyway. At the end of the exchange, everyone has a gift that they are excited to bring home and plenty of good laughs on how they got their gifts.

Not sure who is paying attention!

What do we do next? Well eat of course! Any additional food that came since we ate the first time is brought out, and the leftovers from dinner is warmed up again. With our bellies full and gifts taken out to the cars, it’s about time to call it a night. Even though my family really misses my Dad sitting at the head of the table for the meals and usually with some silly grin on his face when we are exchanging gifts, it’s nice to still be able to get together as a family and not necessarily to share gifts, but just to share memories. So if you get together in December or June, it really doesn’t matter. But what I think that matters is that you do get together and always remember who your family is.  Oh yea, and having some good cookies and some sage dressing there doesn’t hurt either!

Ma and the kids