Christmas Eve!

Growing up, Christmas Eve was Christmas. Well, at least half of it.

When you have a family as large as mine, it’s almost a guarantee that even if you do manage to make it to a holiday, you won’t see everyone, even if everyone is in the same house. And while many people feel obligated to attend Christmas celebrations when invited, especially couples who may have both family sides to compete, add the fact that many people are divorced and remarried and suddenly you may have upwards of eight different places to go! Now you’ve practically gotten yourself in an impossible situation. Strategically speaking, there needs to be some wiggle room. Enter Christmas Eve.

I don’t know when the tradition began, but I remember thinking that Christmas was always a two day celebration. Christmas Eve was at my mother’s parents house, Christmas Morning was at home, and Christmas Day was at my father’s parents house. After my parents divorced and remarried, Thanksgiving weekend we spent with my stepdad’s parents and we had an early Christmas there, and Christmas Morning was spent at my stepmom’s parents. For a kid, it was Christmas Overload! Double the grandparents equaled double the gifts!

By spreading out the celebrations, it allowed quality time to be spent at each locale we went. My gramma on my mom’s side used to say that they switched to Christmas Eve after the kids started getting married and wanting to spend Christmas with the in-laws. So, she changed their Christmas to Eve to allow them to do so, which meant that Christmas Day at their house was reserved for eating, drinking and gambling. Yes, I said gambling. Poker, dice, whatever it was you’d better have brought your money because NOBODY was allowed at the table unless you had money put down on it. Some people celebrate Jesus’s official (though not technical) birthday differently. We did so by playing a game simply referred to as Dice and a poker game called Shit on Your Neighbor.

Whatever your family traditions are, I hope you pass them on. But please, feel free to add in some new ones along the way. Merry Christmas Eve!