A Gagne Christmas

(Note: Memere and Pepere and Grandmother and Grandfather, respectively.)

Every Christmas Eve since before I can remember, it was the time for my dad's side of the family to gather and celebrate Christmas. It was always held at my Memere and Pepere's house, and all the aunts, uncles, and grandkids came (I should say come). This is one of my favorite memories, even though I don't have many specific ones. The tradition, I suppose, is the memory I cherish. Everyone comes around 4:30 in the afternoon, and there's enough food to feed a small country. That's courtesy of my Memere, who will never let anyone in the family go hungry. One of my sisters and I pretty much devour the shrimp between the two of us. One of my cousins and I scoop the yellow stuff out of the deviled eggs and eat the whites. After everyone's had the change to eat, we all pile into the living room. There are chairs all along the walls; four of us squeeze onto the couch (I seem to remember it being bigger when I was little!), and one or two of the cousins has the job of wearing a Santa hat and passing out presents.

When the cousins were younger (the youngest of us is well into her teens now, while the oldest is 25 (me!)), Pepere used to tell us about the night he found one of Santa's reindeer in the driveway with a broken leg. There are conflicting stories about which reindeer it was. I think it may have been Dasher, but my sister says Blitzen. We can't ask my Pepere now, because he died the July before last. He would tell us about hearing the other reindeer on the roof while he was nursing the hurt one back to health, too. It wasn't hard to believe, because he did that with animals. Once, he found a kitten in the woodpile behind the house, all squished, and they had that one (my uncle named him Ira) for years.

A lot of my Christmas stories that make me smile (they also make me cry sometimes, now) are about my Pepere. The whole family still talks about the time that he dressed up as Santa, and I went screaming and sobbing and hid under my Memere's sewing table. They tell me he never did it again after that, that one of my uncles was always Santa from then on.

Tradition in my family is relaxed, but one thing that my Memere told me is that Pepere said that Christmas would always be on Christmas Eve, and always at their house for our family, as long as he lived. I'm going to try to keep that tradition going.