As usual, my family had a lovely Christmas. Between the 6am waking up of my children and the feast at the end of the day, I had a thoroughly lovely day. My family knows how to do Christmas and are quite exacting and obnoxious in our rituals. It is a day of family time, drinking, eating, relaxing, stressing, and lots and lots of thoughtful gifts. We only had my children this year as my nephews were with their father. I missed their contributions to the event. We know how to cook a true feast in our family and we have some amazing cooks. Preparing wonderful food with time and love and eating it with much appreciation. It’s all good.
We are also ritualistic in our gift opening. We take the time to appreciate the gifts so that everyone can see what everyone got and appreciate the generosity of it and the joy that the receiver had in the gift. The kids find this politeness to be difficult (and, well, so do we adults) so we tend to push each other along. “Yes, yes, it’s lovely, who’s next!” When we get to the stocking opening rituals, we are less polite. Stockings are a big deal in our family. We all contribute to the stockings with a range of silly little things (sample sizes of organic toothpaste) to lovely things (my mom has been known to slip a treasured family ring or necklace into our stockings). We open stockings melee-style so the chaos of the moment is huge. Lots of “Oooo, look at this!” and “Who put these in the stockings?” abound.
Christmas is a warm and happy day for us. I’m proud of the way we all come together — my family and Greg’s — for the celebration. This is far and away my favorite holiday!
Ruby liked it too and wore a golden bow most of the day. She had her own stocking this year filled with dog toys. She got a huge elf toy that she is currently de-limbing and there is hollofil all over my house which seems to be coming from a hedgehog’s nose. Oh, and the rat toy my mother got her has already lost its tail!
A very merry rat terrier Christmas, indeed!
mother. wife. friend. teacher. writer. reader. photographer. birder. quilter. blogger.
Liza Lee Miller 
It sounds like a wonderful Christmas.
Glad you all had such a great time Liza. :c)
Sounds sweet. It’s tradition for us to open gifts, one at a time, so everyone can appreciate them. Glad you enjoyed.