Christmas Traditions

When I was a little kid we always celebrated Christmas on Christmas eve. That was when the Christ child came and brought us our presents. Then we would go to midnight mass to say thank you and sing carols. It was a really happy time.

Later I married and we changed our traditions. We opened our gifts with mom and dad on Christmas Eve, then we went to my inlaws for Christmas to open more presents. My first motherinlaw didn't like me at all. She would spend five or six hundred dollars on her son and she would buy me a pull over from the department store where I worked so that I would know it was marked down to $12.95. It always made me sad. When I separated from my first husband that year she bought me opal earrings and an opal necklace. I always thought it was a thank you for leaving my son gift. lol

Later I found Charles and my Christmas traditions changed again. We had no money whatsoever. I decided I didn't want a tree or any Christmas crap around. He said no we are starting a new tradition and we have to have a tree. He drove us to a tree farm and we found the saddest lumpiest, most wonderful tree ever. It cost $2. hahahaha. It had branches sticking out all over and no branches at all in some spots where there sure as heck should have been some. Oh it was a joy to behold. Charles' first wife had been a Christmas Nazi and the ornaments had to be placed just so. He picked up an ornament and asked me where I should hang it. I suggested he put it on the tree. He stared at the tree and carefully hung the ornament and he just looked at it for a while. Then he looked at me but by then I was busy hanging stuff on the plants. He smiled, laughed, picked up stuff and soon the whole place had ornaments every where, on plants and trees and pictures. Joy!

Soon we had three little boys running around. Once again we changed tradition. The new tradition became staying home on Christmas day. It seemed so hard to visit this person and that person with three little ones in tow, and the kids hating opening all of these great new toys and then having to leave them behind to go visiting. We stayed home and played with our presents all day. All day just us. That was a nice tradition.

As years went by I found it so uncomfortable seeing my family once a year at Christmas, buying gifts for complete strangers. After a while I stopped this. The Gale family has welcomed me in and they are a joyfully crazy bunch of people. One more wonderful than the next. My new tradition became being with my new family. As painful as it was to leave my family behind, I soon found out what it was to be loved by new brothers and sisters. Gales and Airds and Rosses, oh my. I had never known this joy. I'm sure my own family loves me, and I do love them, but oh my new home made family is a hoot. Christmas day at Brian's is the best day ever!

The boys grew into men. The world pulls them in many directions. One year it became evident that one of them couldn't come home for Christmas. Time for a new tradition. Fakemas was born. After all, what is more important, having Christmas on December 25th, or having all of my boys and their adorable girls friends all together? Some years Fakemas is a couple of weeks before the 25th, and some years it's after, but we try hard to find a family get together day.

Some day our traditions will change again. Some day there'll be grand kids and the boys will change the traditions according to what works for their own families. Someday Charles and I will be too old to travel and someone will have to take us to the celebration, or come here and do all of the work for us. Hard to say. I don't know how it will change, but it will. It doesn't really matter to me how the traditions change as long as I can have my family around, those that I have married, those that I have birthed, and those that I have adopted and have adopted me.

I love you guys.
Merry Christmas

secret keeper

The secrets I keep are my own. Smiles that hide the pain. Lies that hide the truth. Good days followed by bad days followed by bad days that look like good days. I love the people around me, Charles, kids, friends. I love where I am. I love God. I love my pets. I love to quilt and paint and create. It's me I could live without. Sometimes I feel like this great and wonderful person trapped in a shitty body that slows me down.

That's the tip of my secret keeping ice burg. if you have read this then you must also keep my secrets.