A New Christmas Tradition

For all of my life, our big family Christmas event happened on Christmas eve. My dad would come home early, we'd play games and then eat a massive turkey with all the fixings. As a matter of fact, one year the turkey was so big that it didn't fit into the oven (this is the absolute truth) so my mom asked the local baker, who happened to be a friend of ours if she could cook the bird in one of his ovens. He graciously complied.

There was another time when mom had put the bird into the oven and a little later, we went to church. We came home after 1 1/2 hours only to realize that the oven wasn't working. I think we still had "the old stove" which still had a working oven which cooked the turkey nicely. I seem to recall eating around 11:00 PM that day.

We have kept the Christmas eve tradition for our family here in Winnipeg too. It has always worked well, until this year. We decided to have a church service on Christmas eve rather than Christmas day. This made it difficult for us (there are about 20 of us who are part of our family group) to find a day to "do the turkey thing." We'll be having our turkey dinner tomorrow evening, on January 1. But for Christmas, we decided to have brunch, rather than a dinner. This way those of our family who had other Christmas dinners to attend could spend some time with us all on Christmas day.

It was a lovely brunch and we ended up staying the whole day at George and Yvonne's. We agreed that the brunch was a great idea and I think it won't be too hard for us to agree to begin a new tradition.

I am so grateful for the family I have. I can hang out with them for a whole day and then look forward to seeing them all again the next day. I really don't tire of them. And I don't think they tire of me either. At least I've never been sent home.