The Christmas Festvities

My family, every Christmas, would gather together on Christmas Eve and open all of our presents from each other and snack on finger foods all night while listening to Elvis singing Christmas songs. The next morning, my sister and I would wake up early to find out what Santa brought us. It was lovely and it worked well for many, many years... and then came marriage!

I didn't even think about differing family Christmas traditions when we got married in June! That wasn't on the church's "things to discuss before you get married" list of important things to figure out before you tie the knot. And for the first few years, we took turns at each other's parent's houses so we just did what they did. This year, my sister and I are both married and both of our husband's think the Christmas Eve presents thing is dumb... MEAN! Not only that, but I just found out that Paul (gulp) hates Elvis! AND we were to have a ton of family here at our house... that would be Paul's parents, my parents, and my sister and her husband... that meant 8 adults and Abby (whose stack of presents was all of the rest of ours combined) in our little home- half of whom opened on Christmas Day. So, to appease the masses, I did the humble, respectable thing and relented... for this year only anyway!On Christmas Eve, my parents took us to breakfast at this little dive they found in Orem called, Callie's. It was good food but I don't know if I would have gone 4 times in 5 days like my folks did... That night, we had a mass Family Home Evening on Christmas Eve and read the Christmas story... then Paul and I gave everyone a dollar-store type gift to open that night (hey, something was better than nothing... I never told him about all the times Carrie and I talked Mom into letting us open a little something on Christmas Eve, Eve!). The next morning, we gathered together and opened the rest of our gifts and that night had a nice ham dinner... I always wanted to do ham, but it was always too big for our small family. It was a wonderful time and Abby just loved her gifts despite Yoda's predictions!