Friday, December 23, 2005
Traditions
We have sort of a sordid history with the holidays in my house. For instance, previous Thanksgivings have featured 1) my sister slapping me in the middle of dinner at one of Quincy's finer mid-priced restaurants, 2) me accidentally spilling an entire glass of ice water in my sister's lap at the same restaurant, though a different year, and 3) my 94-year-old grandmother loudly "whispering" a variety of deprecating remarks about our waitress within her hearing. This year's Thanksgiving passed largely without incident, however; my feeling is that this means that at Christmas we are due for disaster.
We have a number of merry traditions. For instance, each year we laboriously assemble and decorate our fake Christmas tree. We stand around shouting at each other about which color-coded branches are shorter than the others and which ornaments have disappeared under mysterious circumstances or been chewed on by the squirrels that broke into our attic. Each year, at least one strand of lights stops working between testing it in the outlet and putting it on the tree, and my dad spends at least an hour muttering swear words to himself and replacing the bulbs one by one before ultimately giving up and driving to Wal-Mart for more lights. It makes the house so much more festive.
We also have a fun holiday tradition of deception. For reasons I am not sure I have ever known, my 94-year-old grandmother does not know that we own two dogs, have four cars between the four of us, or (and this is the weirdest one to me) subscribe to cable. My parents, however, remain committed to keeping her ignorant of these circumstances. So each year, before she comes over for Christmas Eve, we park our vehicles at various undisclosed locations all over town, bribe the dogs with people food and hide them in the laundry room, and turn off MTV's Slammin' XXXmas Eve. Who doesn't love the holidays?
We have sort of a sordid history with the holidays in my house. For instance, previous Thanksgivings have featured 1) my sister slapping me in the middle of dinner at one of Quincy's finer mid-priced restaurants, 2) me accidentally spilling an entire glass of ice water in my sister's lap at the same restaurant, though a different year, and 3) my 94-year-old grandmother loudly "whispering" a variety of deprecating remarks about our waitress within her hearing. This year's Thanksgiving passed largely without incident, however; my feeling is that this means that at Christmas we are due for disaster.
We have a number of merry traditions. For instance, each year we laboriously assemble and decorate our fake Christmas tree. We stand around shouting at each other about which color-coded branches are shorter than the others and which ornaments have disappeared under mysterious circumstances or been chewed on by the squirrels that broke into our attic. Each year, at least one strand of lights stops working between testing it in the outlet and putting it on the tree, and my dad spends at least an hour muttering swear words to himself and replacing the bulbs one by one before ultimately giving up and driving to Wal-Mart for more lights. It makes the house so much more festive.
We also have a fun holiday tradition of deception. For reasons I am not sure I have ever known, my 94-year-old grandmother does not know that we own two dogs, have four cars between the four of us, or (and this is the weirdest one to me) subscribe to cable. My parents, however, remain committed to keeping her ignorant of these circumstances. So each year, before she comes over for Christmas Eve, we park our vehicles at various undisclosed locations all over town, bribe the dogs with people food and hide them in the laundry room, and turn off MTV's Slammin' XXXmas Eve. Who doesn't love the holidays?
