Tradition!

Tonight we will head over to Ma and Pa Strand's for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner of Oyster Stew (it's my Dad's family's thing). Despite not being overly fond of the stew, I will eat mine, because it takes like Christmas for me. I think there has only been one or two years when I did not have Oyster Stew on Christmas Eve. Once when I hosted Christmas Eve in Fort McMurray, I made Lasagna. I think Mark and I spent one Christmas Eve in Olds early on in the marriage. After supper and after the clean-up, we will all gather in the living room and in a somewhat organized chaos, we will open all our gifts from family (Santa's gifts are for Christmas morning). Some time during the evening Annemarie and Paul will either call, or be called and in that way, we will all be there. It is the best night. After all the gift opening, there is usually game playing and visiting and eating lots of sugar cookies and possibly chips and dip.

When we were little, we used to get big boxes from the States from our Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents. We were the only ones in Canada and we would eye these boxes with such greed. They wouldn't be opened until Christmas Eve when my dad would use one of his jackknifes to slice through the tape. One Christmas I got my first Narnia book (my older brother and sister also got one, so we have the first three books of the series) from my Aunt Janice and Uncle Adam. The gifts were small, but precious, as they came from afar. And this tradition, as well as our semi-regular family reunions, helped to keep our extended family as close as it is.

As I said before, it is the best night. I would rather miss Christmas and the turkey and deal with oyster stew than miss Christmas Eve at Ma and Pa Strand's.