Something something Christmas Eve

I did warn you yesterday that I was out of pointless photos of snow for the moment. Here's an old picture of Snow in Summer to make up for it, though.

Now then. On to the post which, as you can probably tell by the title, I don't actually have a clue about just yet. My life, thankfully, has been a lot less interesting so far this morning than yesterday was. I'm sort of hoping it'll stay that way.

Not so good for the blather, though.

Well... I suppose since I put it in the post title I could talk a little bit about Christmas Eve. Probably just a little, but we'll give it a try.

My Christmas Eve when I was a kid was probably a little different than the average North American WASP's Christmas Eve generally is, because it involved presents. Every Christmas Eve we would head over to my paternal grandmother's house (usually making a detour along the way to drive up to the local mental hospital's grounds to see the decorated trees -- not as weird as it sounds, honestly -- while listening to the NORAD Santa report on the car radio. You can find it here now, but I'm old enough to have listened to it on the radio instead) to open gifts with grandma and my two uncles.

Right about now some of you might be wondering whether I have German ancestry or something like that. I'm not in the mood to do the research (you can, if you like), but it seems to me that I remember hearing something about the English royal family always opening their gifts on Christmas Eve because the tradition started with Queen Victoria (herself largely of German descent) and her German consort Albert. Well, I'm not German. As far as I know, anyway.

What I didn't know until comparatively recently is the why of our Christmas Eves. A couple of years ago my father and I were talking about... you know, I can't remember what at the moment, but he mentioned waiting every Christmas Eve for his father to get home after closing the bar so that they could open presents. My grandfather was the bartender/manager at the local Legion, you see, and because of that generally worked on Christmas Day. That's why his family had their Christmas the night before.

Um, I guess. I hope I'm remembering this story right. I know it was something like that, anyway.

Funny to think that my growing-up Christmas Eves were shaped by the job of someone who died long before I was even born, though.

Today? Well, nowadays presents happen on Christmas Day like most people's, and I don't even know if the hospital still decorates their trees. I guess it was a pretty short-lived family tradition in the end, but it's still kind of neat to think about.

Happy Christmas Eve, everyone.






Oh shoot. I was going to talk about my father's tissue-paper-filled gift bag, wasn't I? Ah well. Maybe tomorrow.