Merry Christmas

I love when I'm overwhelmed by funny and sentimental memories from childhood. Not that I want to live in the past, but sometimes it's just fun to remember the silliness and excitement of being a child on Christmas morning. Family traditions are so interesting to me. Each family develops their own and makes them unique, yet there's usually something common to so many of the traditions we share.

One of my favorite childhood family traditions on Christmas morning was how my parents made my brother and me wait to see our tree with all the gifts. We had an enclosed staircase with a landing part-way up. My parents would hang a dark sheet from the ceiling and make sure that we couldn't easily see around it. Even if you did see around the sheet, all you could see was the rest of the staircase. My brother and I would wait upstairs for what often seemed like hours (and as we got older, it was usually hours) before being permitted downstairs to start celebrating Christmas as a family. The anticipation and excitement would build to the point that we could barely tolerate it.

I hope the anticipation of Christmas has built to the point that you can barely tolerate it today! Merry Christmas!!