But here's my secret: I absolutely love Christmas time. Well, the holiday season, I guess. I adored it when I was growing up. On Christmas Eve, my parents always threw a party for family (it was wonderful to see close family so happy and healthy and all dressed up; and the extended family, well, that was just for comic relief) and friends of the family. I remember my great aunts (Tillie, Nita, Emma and Rose) drinking Fuzzy Navels, sitting so closely to one another you'd think it had been years since they'd last been together. They were actually neighbors. Only one of them drove, so they'd all pile into her white cavalier - with standard issue old lady seat covers and poppy on the antenna, "you know, so I can find my car at the mall" - when they had to go somewhere.
Christmas day was always happy and calm. We didn't go anywhere too early. Until mid-afternoon, it was just the 4 of us, usually in our jammies, opening presents and dressing Tucker Dog up in all the bows. When my paternal grandparents were alive, we went to their house at 3 pm or so. I remember this so clearly, like it was yesterday: my grandmother always put out her black and white platter (it had a big flower pattern in the center) with pickled eggs and beets, celery and carrot sticks and olives. And my grandfather always made a platter of pepperoni and cheese. I can still see him sitting at their kitchen table, slicing the pepperoni. The way he held his knife made me realize that he wasn't always my grandfather, that once, he was actually a tough guy.
Then we went skiing.
Every year, as far back as I can remember.
That's what Brad and I will do this year, too, just as we did last year, although last year we were with Chris, our housemate who died last January. Chris was kind of a beginner at skiing, not super comfortable skinning up or going down, but he was always the first of us to ask, "another lap?" even though he was covered in snow and probably exhausted. We miss you, Chris.
But this is not a sad post! Not a sad! Not a sad!
No, this post is all about the Christmas funny. All about the seasonal reasons to guffaw and hoot and holler.
Not that they're always intensionally funny. I think this family just thinks of this as a regular ol' family photo:
(Incidentally, I love that they've adopted the beautiful little Asian kids - or at least rented them for photographic purposes - but do they really need to be dressed like dorks? I mean, why punish them for your own fashion shortcomings?)
All kinds of families take holiday photos. I got this card yesterday:
Sounds like all's well with the Wookie family. Chewy said "AAAAARNGH! AAAAR! AAAAANG! AAAARN!" So that's nice.
Christmas funny isn't limited to photos, either. There are funny cartoons:
More to come.
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