Freedom of choice Pt 1
It was like blood and guts had been pulled from some alien’s body and flung to leave smears on the wall …okay, maybe not THAT gory but it sure FELT a bit like that. I doubt that I am the only person to have this revelation but here goes…‘you may THNK you know your relatives but until you have hosted a family gathering with them and had them all in your home at one time, you don’t know them!!’.
We used to have a strict rule that every Christmas eve was spent at Nana & papa’s house. No excuses could validate one not being there… you were there or disowned. Since we have lost our grandparents we have all worked really hard to keep the family together and keep with the tradition as it’s the one promise I think we have all made to our grandparents.. the only major changes that have been made is we now pick an evening that works for everyone rather than working everyone around the actual Christmas Eve date. And though we somehow still haven’t been able to sell Nana’s home in this economy, we decided to have our gatherings at other houses. Cousin Traci has had it a few times now and last year we went to Beths… a Mistake in ‘wording’ on my husband’s behalf (& my mum’s bad hearing) magically volunteered our house for this year and it spread so fast that the way I learned about it was when I was called by a relative that seemed way too ecstatic and thanked me for supposedly volunteering. I should have guessed then something wasn’t right.. this level of excitement has not been attached to Christmas eve since we were kids and there were toys involved (our grandparents spoiled us… how many kids could brag they had their own pin- ball machines?) and I actually ALMOST corrected this person but instead I shrugged & told myself “how hard can this be? Besides we can show off the new house.”
There were the select few that treated my ‘volunteering’ as if I had a halo and wings attached… I almost wanted to laugh. There was no way I deserved praise for something like hosting a party but gosh (Looks at nails vainly) if they wanted to put me up on this pedestal I wouldn’t stop them.
Okay… so it wasn’t quite as easy planning as I had thought but that was ONLY because I was trying to work on MY Christmas things at the same time. With no money to I was (am) crafting my gifts & I figured if economy was hitting my family as hard as it was hitting me- I would make this party a bit different than usual Christmas gatherings. Instead of BUYING gifts , I went along with the “white elephant’ tasteful gift from home and I because I didn’t want people dashing out to purchase something nice to wear either (why does my family do this every year!!!).. I thought I would just theme the whole night and have people come dressed in anything ‘white trash’ that they could throw together. Only thing that would cost anyone was the single dishes I had emailed out to everyone to bring so we could eat.
I spent HOURS & days trying to find parlor like games for us to play… I wasn’t sure how many to plan, how long each game would take.. and at the last second I figured if I was having games- there would have to be prizes (drats… money spent)
(to be continued...)