Ok, several years ago I decided I was too much of an adult to let my parents buy me a plane ticket to go home for Christmas. If I was broke, I should just stay in my Seattle apartment and have a grown up holiday with my friends. What I didn’t realize was that none of my friends shared this conviction, and they all flew home. So it was just me. All alone in Seattle feeding everyone’s cats while they were eating turkey and their moms did their laundry. It was lonely and miserable.

The next year I was grateful to accept that plane ticket home.

For much of my childhood my dad and my Godfather Jim were engaged in holiday wars. These all-out challenges usually revolved around who could erect the tackiest, most overdone lights display first. Dear Old Dad upped the ante one Christmas, when I was about 11, by planting a particularly garish singing, bleeping, blinking Santa head in Jim’s yard. He was pretty proud of himself, thinking himself to be that year’s victor in campiness. The poor guy had no idea what he was in for; the corny smackdown that would be delivered to our unsuspecting family.
It seemed like your everyday lazy Christmas morning. I was kicking back on the couch in my fancy new PJs, sucking on lifesavers, and reading a Nancy Drew, I’d wager. Then, lo and behold, on my porch there arose such a clatter…
My Godfather was clad in long white robes, a bleach blond wig, and a tinsel halo, running back and forth on our porch singing arpeggios and waving his hands in the air, occasionally crying “A CHILD IS BORN! A CHILD IS BORN!!!” I warily stepped out on the porch to see more, and my eyes were met with a full-blown live nativity scene. Essentially, Jim had drummed up all our wackjob theater friends to execute his diabolical plan. We had shepherds with drawn-on mustaches, a not-so-virginal Mary, and a stuffed monkey portraying Baby Jesus. All of them (save the toy), were emphatically humming “Silent Night.”
Oh yeah. And let’s remember that I was raised in Fairbanks, Alaska, so my Godfather and his disciples were traipsing around in the snow.
My dad was forced to admit defeat.

There was one Christmas that ended with my grandmother falling down the stairs. (She took off to get something from the basement in a hurry before everyone left. This stair is long & steep.) Luckily she came out alright, nothing broken or anything. But it sounded BAD and scared everyone. Cherry Mristmas!

My daughter,Sharon, and her husband Steve arrived home from Ft. Hood Christmas to celebrate Christmas. My husband worked for the Forest Service and a co-worker owned a tree farm near Bull Run. Steve, a forestry major took great care to find just the right tree. On the way back we decided to stop at the Shingle Mill, a restaurant owned by a friend in Estacada. When we arrived, Sim, the owner, assured us that there were so many trees in the area, no one would bother. He was wrong! When we finished lunch, our tree was gone!