Finally, it is Christmas Eve at grandma's house!  The finale of the whole year is here at last.  We have always honored tradition at grandma's house, especially at Christmas.

First, our traditional Christmas Eve dinner.  Everyone is here, grandma and grand-daddy, aunt Helen, Aunt Fern and Uncle Jr. with my cousins Martha, Edward and Pamela, and my mom Peggy and dad Max, my sister Betty, and me.  Of course we are having the traditional  hamburgers and home made french fries.  The best I have ever eaten in my life!  Thick and juicy, cooked just right, and with a big piece of cheese on top, yum!  Big french fries, not those tiny little MacDonald's fries, no sir, these are real french fries made by grandma.  Now the adults like hamburgers too, but their favorite is oysters. Yep, we kids cannot understand how they can eat those slimy things, but the grown ups love 'em.  The oysters get all deep fried too!  Of course, my dad and uncle always have a couple raw, I think just to try and make us kids sick - and it usually works!  For desert we are having a big, from scratch chocolate cake with chocolate icing, and grandma's home made egg custard.  Never have I had anything so delicious.  Even today at grandma's house, we have that egg custard every Christmas.  The meal was finally over with. The ladies clean up the kitchen while the kids run into the living room and wait for the gift opening!  But not yet.

After all the grown ups get in the living room, grandma brings out all the candy and egg nog.  You'd think nobody could eat another bite, but everyone does.  Someone puts on the Christmas music and we can feel the excitement in the air.  It is almost time to move into the Parlor and open gifts!  We have to sing Christmas carols first.

Okay, we are all in the Parlor, and there are gifts all over the place!  Boy, how lucky we are!  Aunt Helen gets to work seating all of us around the room, grandma gets the big comfortable chair and grand-daddy gets the other chair, and we kids are arranged on the floor.  Finally, the gifts are passed out!  This takes much more time than we kids have, and we are getting more and more excited with each passing minute.  Finally, all the gifts are given out.  Now, let's rip them open - no, no, no!  We have to do this in order.  What?  In order?  Well, who goes first?  Grandma of course!  So the wait is on.  We start out being very excited about grandma's gifts and that grows old fast.  We just want to open our gifts, now!  Finally grandma is done, and the youngest gets to go next, that would be 2 children before me - this will be over soon!

I didn't count on the youngest, Pamela, playing with everything she gets, and trying on all the clothes she is blessed with.  Give me a break!  Get on with it.  Well, now it is back to the grown ups, grand-daddy is next.  He is very slow and deliberate about all his gifts, and doesn't seem to like anything, no comments, just seems to be glad when he is done, not half as glad as we kids are!

At this point, organization is gone with the wind.  We can't wait any longer.  With a unanimous vote among the remaining kids, we tear into everything in our gift pile, helter skelter!  I've have never had so much fun.  Of course, we disrupted the scheduled tradition, but in the end, everyone was tearing open gifts and laughing and thanking everyone, it was great!

The discarded wrapping paper is gathered up and put away for the morning fire, and we all have our private piles of toys and goodies.  Now, we have to get ready for bed because Santa will be coming.  Mom, are you sure you told Santa we would be at grandma's house this year?  Are you sure he remembers?  You don't think he will miss us do you?  Being properly reassured by mom, we all pile into bed and find sleep hard to come.  Finally, exhaustion overtakes us and we fall into dream land.  What a wonderful Christmas Eve.

We were truly blessed and have never forgotten the good memories of our Christmas Eves at grandma's house.  How blessed we were, and are.