All is Calm . . . Traditions are Safe

It's quiet. The only other noise in the house (besides my dog snoring) is the dishwasher running with the dishes from Christmas dinner. Everyone else is upstairs in bed. Pretty uneventful, but calm, finish to a nice Christmas.

Two days ago, I was looking for a Scrooge photo to post so I could rant about how much I hate Christmas. I really don't, but by the time it gets here, I'm right on the edge of 'in-santa-ty.'

I even had Monday off from work and still had a long, wife-induced Shopping/To Do List. This year's Christmas budget was tight, too, so I also had to battle my own addiction to last-minute gift impulses (both for my family . . . and for me).

I'm better now. We don't have a big family gathering here in Fort Worth . . . only four of us this year. We do have our Christmas traditions, however, which I thought we lost last year. But this Christmas Eve was a season-saver.

We went to worship service at Northwood Church, which has pretty much the same Christmas service every year. I like it because it reminds me a lot of the Virginia-backwoods Christmas Eve service in The Homecoming, which is the original Walton's Christmas movie: Kids dressed up for the nativity scene, someone telling the Christmas story interspersed with everyone singing Christmas carols, and a brief message from the pastor.

After church, we watched The Homecoming and Santa Clause 2 (daughter #2's preference -- we watched the original Miracle of 34th Street the night before; no It's a Wonderful Life, Bells of St. Marys or The Bishop's Wife this year . . . but there's still time). And we ate tamales. My yankee wife loves all things Texas, so we've eaten tamales on Christmas Eve for as long as I can remember.

Our Christmas Eve tradition for the last 15-16 years has been to read Christmas books and sip hot chocolate around the fire before sending the kids to bed. Last year, I thought our special tradition came to an end because daughter #1, who'd come home from her first semester of college, spent Christmas Eve with the then-boyfriend-now-sleazeball (that's the story I get) and his family. Daughter #2 crashed during midnight services at our neighborhood Methodist church (truly embarassing; she starts snoring -- loudly -- during a very quiet communion, and because of the ice, there are only about 40 people in the chapel), so it was just my wife and me to do the Santa Claus thing.

But this year, after our movies and dinner, we looked for our Christmas books, which includes the much-fought-over Polar Express (each of us reads a book), and couldn't find them (aagggghhhh!!!). We moved daughter #2 into daughter @1's old room earlier this year, and the books have been lost in the shuffle.

I did find one Christmas book that has recipes, stories, poems, songs, etc. and asked daughter #1 if she wanted to read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (when she was much younger, she had it memorized).'

Daughter #1 teaches swim lessons and is an incredible teacher for young kids. As she read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas,' she was very playful and would pause before the end of well-known lines, and we'd shout out the rest . . . NOT EVEN A MOUSE!

When she's done, she thumbs through the book and wants to sing The 12 Days of Christmas. We are NOT a singing family, so this was highly uncharacteristic of us, and, unfortunately, we couldn't remember any gifts beyond five gold rings; but we had a wonderfully goofy time.

So, all is calm . . . and all is bright. Our Christmas traditions are safe for another year.