An Untraditional Christmas Tradition

This weekend, I am traveling to my grandparents' for our annual Christmas get-together. I should be more specific: it's not my grandparents' house I'll be staying at this weekend but a banquet facility owned by a local company. I have a big family that will not fit all fit in one home at once. What started in 1986 at a local rod and gun club has continued through Christmas 2008. The families spend Friday night and Saturday night in a simple banquet hall on the top of a hill in a small town in upstate New York. You could say our Christmas tradition is, well, untraditional.

The first year at the rod and gun club was the smallest of the gatherings. Only eight grandchildren were there, because only eight grandchildren were in existence yet on my mother's side, two who were four-month-old babies. We were very clearly novices in this first venture, bringing only sleeping bags to sleep in on the cold cement floor. However, that cold cement floor provided ample roller-skating opportunities. In all the photos and videos from that first Christmas I am wearing a yellow and white striped shirt and roller-skates. We all brought plastic sleds and spent time sliding down the tiny rod-and-gun-club hill. The highlight of the weekend? Santa Claus, of course, who visited us on Saturday night. The grandchildren took their turns sitting on Santa's lap, having a chat, and receiving a present. Santa sat by our Christmas tree and we all took family photos, then sang a very off-key version of jingle bells, complete with Santa's jingling bells.

As each Christmas passed the family grew, and we soon outgrew the rod and gun club and moved to the bigger facility on the hill. I don't think a Christmas has gone by without adding one or two people to the group each year, whether by marriage or birth. This year we have two new wives, a new baby, and a new dog who will be there. Over the years Santa has continued his Saturday night visit. Remarkably, it's been the same Santa every year. He's seen me go from the six-year-old in roller skates to the twenty-seven year old wife and book editor (my husband was the addition last year). Every year I sit on his lap, tell him what I want for Christmas, and get a present. When the grandkids were younger we would spend all day writing and rehearsing a Christmas play for Santa. I was the director. I had fun turning my cousins into reindeer. We'd perform our play for Santa after receiving presents and before singing the off-key jingle bells. Last year my cousin proposed to his girlfriend while they sat on Santa's lap. They were married this past November. (Santa made a cameo at their wedding reception.)

Over the years my family has become quite adept at sleeping in large, open rooms with cold floors. Though we've upgraded to tile flooring, we no longer bring mere sleeping bags. We pack our cars full of cots, foam pads, air mattresses, and various degrees of blankets. Each family sets up "house" near the room's heaters, which are on the walls, and then set up a line of tables, opened and laid on their sides as headboards. Whispers, snores, creaking air mattresses, and bodily functions can be heard throughout the night as on average twenty-three to twenty-six people sleep in the same room. This follows of course the obligatory banter that occurs before we all finally fall asleep.

We've upgraded as well from the plastic sleds to inflatable tubes, and from our small slope to a large, two sloped hill. The goal, when there is snow, is to make it past the flat field and to the second hill. Granted, it makes the walk back up the hill that much harder, but it's worth it, if only for bragging rights. Our snow tube acrobatics are impressive as well, from long trains to circles and chains. We've made pyramids, we've sledded while spinning, and have sled through self-made slalom courses and ski jumps. Post-meal walks down the long driveway are common, as are touch football games. Families bring card games and board games, and sometimes we watch movies. We eat, read by the fire, and have deep, philosophical discussions, usually about sports. On Saturday afternoons we used take a horse-drawn sleigh ride through the woods, or hayride if there was no snow, but on our last trip a few years ago we almost killed the horses, really, so we had to stop. We've switched now to family roller-skating-for which of course an entire skating rink needs to be rented. It's come full circle for me with the roller skating.

The facility has a kitchen so we all bring food, then cook and eat the food together. Always for breakfast is scrambled eggs, bacon and/or sausage, and salt-rising toast, as well as Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Sometimes we throw some pancakes into the mix. And my mother's cinnamon rolls and frosting are available any time of the day. A traditional lunch is Texas Hots, with the amazing Texas Hot sauce bought from a restaurant in Wellsville, NY, called, appropriately, Texas Hots. And whenever my family gets together you know at least one meal is going to be beef on weck. Along with my grandpa's chocolates, my dad's no-bake cookies, and my aunt's pies, it's a true holiday indulgence. Naps are taken, coffee is drank, newspapers are read, and the family spends time together.

I forget how unusual this gathering is because I grew up doing it. I am reminded any time I tell friends about it (you try explaining to a future spouse that this is how he'll be spending a weekend in December for years to come), but they always respond with amazement, and statements of what a good idea it is, what a great way it is to spend Christmas. I have to agree. As years pass and the families continue to grow, I will, in some form or another, continue this untraditional Christmas tradition. Merry Christmas.