This year Frank and I are continuing a Christmas tradition that he did as a young boy with his family: moving the snowflake on the calendar to count down until Christmas.
Apparently, it’s not just a cutsey custom; it’s a competitive sport. I’ll go to move the snowflake in the morning and Frank will say, “You moved it yesterday!” And then when it is officially my turn, the accusations start: “I know what you’re doing,” he’ll say. “You’re counting ahead to see who’s gonna get to move the snowflake on Christmas!”
Yes, you caught me.
Then there’s the nativity scene tradition. I don’t even want to get involved in that one because Frank and his siblings have strong opinions on it. Well, just one strong opinion: “The baby Jesus can’t go in the manger until Christmas. He wasn’t born yet,” they’ll argue. So all December we’d have to have a Jesus-less nativity scene. Hey, whatever happened to him being the “reason for the season?”
At my house we have two very important traditions:
1. My grandma sends a big package via UPS a couple of weeks before Christmas. It always includes the same things: Russian tea cakes, sugar cookies, a tin of those butter cookies, friendship cake (kinda like fruit cake but better) and gold fish crackers. I’m not sure why she associates gold fish crackers with Christmas or why she sends them since we can just buy them but still, the box would be incomplete without them. Then we all eat way too much friendship cake and don’t feel quite so friendly.
Tradition #2 is Phyllis Diller.
She’s our angel that goes at the top of the tree. With her short, blonde tousled hair she resembles the comedian in her earlier days:
Whenever my mom gets her out of the box she says, “Oh, Phyllis is in bad shape,” but we still put her up. Some years we tried putting a star up there instead but we missed Phyllis.
Oh, I just thought of a third one: On the weekend before Christmas Santa would ride around on the neighborhood fire department truck with the sirens on. When we heard those sirens we would run outside and Santa would throw us candy. It was just those little peppermints but it was very exciting. I’d yell at Santa, “I want a Cabbage Patch Kid!!”
Then the neighbors (“the kids”) would convince me to pick up the peppermints that had landed in dog poo.
Maybe fighting over who moves the snowflake isn’t so weird.
4 comments:
Oh Phyllis Diller, she is like 35 years old!
All of my nativity scenes have the Baby Jesus attached to his manger. So I cheated and have him out already.
I like the advent calendars with the chocolate piece in the pocket for each day.
That's right--the chocolate piece is the best. I'm sure baby Jesus had one of those!
You're not even looking at the camera!
When we take pictures with Frank's family there are always several cameras going so one never knows where to look.
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