Christmas at Grammy’s

that’s me…

in the little white shirt hogging the baby in the front room of my Grandma’s house…

At least that’s the way my brothers and sisters remember it. The hogging.  And that I was bossy.

I don’t remember those parts.  And I obviously wasn’t hogging my baby brother, Devin, it’s just that I was the best at calming him down.  I’m sure that’s what it was.  There was no hogging…or bossing involved.

I’m right.  Obviously.

🙂 Okay.  Maybe they were right…

What I do remember is the smell of my Grandma’s house at Christmas time…and every time we visited.

The early morning winter sun streams through the frost covered windows of the drafty 100 year old house.  I feel the electric blanket warming my little body, my freezing cold nose peeking out from under a load of heavy blankets and the aroma of percolating coffee and burnt toast wafting up from the kitchen beneath my room.  It seems like it seeps up through the floorboards coaxing me out of bed; telling me I’m missing the new day and begging me to come and hug my Grandparents good morning.

Those little details I remember.

Every Christmas eve when we were at my Grandma’s house we would gather in her front room parlor for an evening of roasting hot dogs in the fireplace, putting on random blankets and tablecloths and bandanas and becoming shepherds and wisemen making the trek to see the baby Jesus, and reading the Christmas story.

My Grandpa or my Dad would read the story from the scriptures.  Aunts and uncles would sit on the old settee. The four black and white high school senior pictures, one of my mom and each of her siblings, looking down from their lofty perch on the wall watching over our amateur Nativity production.  The fire would be blazing, Devin nestled in a make shift manager of cardboard and blankets, everyone hoping the babe would be as quiet as baby Jesus.

I remember the rich scent of the old hard wood floors, the creak of the stairs, walking past the sweet history of pictures that lined the walls, my grandparents twin beds, and sleeping in that old room in the farthest room in the house.

And I wish that my own kids could have made the trip there.

Even though that house is occupied by someone else now and my Grandma has moved to a different town and our lives have all changed since those days…

We still do that…

The hot dogs and story go together.

It’s a little weird but I love it.  It’s my family.  And our thing.  It reminds me of sweet and crazy and beautiful times.

Times when my Grandpa was still alive.  Times when we visited that beautiful house where magic happened inside.

What’s your family’s thing?