A Quick Tale of Two Christmases

My Family

My family has always celebrated the Yuletide holiday on Christmas Eve. The family gathers at either my Parents' or my Aunt & Uncle's home, we enjoy a large home-cooked meal, tell embarrassing family stories and memories over dessert, then spend the next two hours or so ripping through the gifts under the tree. We usually takes turns opening them, allowing everyone to ogle and ooh and aah at the presents, make snarky comments that bring everyone to fits of laughter, then relax and take a family photo or two (or three).

And this year was no exception, with Caesar joining in the fun. My Aunt used us a guinea pigs to test some new Spanish recipes: the chili rellenos pie was delicious, and the enchiladas not too bad -- maybe a little dry -- and the homemade flan turned out to be pretty good. After dinner, my Sister-in-Law was recruited to hand out the gifts, and instead of randomly picking one and handing it over to the intended, she organized them so that everyone would have a gift to open and not feel left out. Books, Wii games, a new Revere tea kettle for Mom, gift cards, clothes, and more -- we all made out like bandits even though fewer gifts were under the tree.

His Family

Christmas Day was the first I'd spent with Caesar's family. We stopped first at his parents to make sure they were ready, then headed to his Niece's house in La Puente.

Caesar's family is huge -- brothers, sisters, nieces, great-nieces and -nephews -- I think about 15-20 people in all. With all the kids at this time of year, his family draws names for the adults, and everyone buys gifts for the kids. And I find it amazing that we all fit into that house, mostly the kitchen and the living room. The kids immediately wanted to open their gifts, especially when they saw me hefting the three bean bags for the youngest of the bunch. But they were forced to wait until we all had a bit of food in our stomachs -- refried beans, tamales, scrambled eggs. Then it was a free for all as far as the kids were concerned. Though Caesar's sister tried to pass the gifts out in an orderly fashion, the kids grabbed gifts, ripped through them, screamed with delight and dove in for more. Controlled chaos comes to mind. It was fun standing aside, watching the kids having so much fun and remembering how it was when I was that age, the joy and surprise and finding all those boxes with my name on them under the tree.

Once they settled down somewhat to enjoy their V-readers or toy cars, or Bratz dolls, out came the karaoke machine, and we laughed our way through another hour or two of mangled songs and laughs. This particular karaoke machine scores your performance, and once one of the Uncle's scored a perfect 100 for thrashing Celebration from Kool & The Gang, the gauntlet was tossed, and we all tried to find a song that he couldn't get through. Yet he managed to score four more perfect 100's. Then, one of the kids tried his hand at Twinkle, Twinkle, but it came out sounding like the Alphabet; we cheered him on, clapping, hooting and hollering. God, that was so much fun!

I think this ranks as one of my favorite Christmases of all time.

I think this was the best Christmas ever.