Saturday, 14 December 2013

What Are You Doing There?





So...Gene and the plastic Santa suit are a thing of the past - Thank God!

A few years later, my cousin’s two boys were staying with us for Christmas.  Jeth was five and his younger brother, Chad, was almost four.
Now, when I was growing-up, we had this horrific tradition of having to stay in bed until our parents arose and then having to have a sit-down breakfast before we could go into the livingroom to see what Santa had left.
This agony was then mollified by a tradition which I truly loved.  The oldest member of the family went into the room first and was expected to make the appropriate oohs and ahs, get comfortably seated and then call for the next in line – according to age.
Having endured the agony of creeping Christmas waiting, I must admit that I now did a bit of adult tradition tampering. I maintained but modified the convention. Our kids were expected to wash and brush their teeth, while we prepared toast, coffee and juice and then, of course in the traditional order, each of us could take our breakfast into the tree – a minimum of torturous waiting.
On this particular Christmas, my husband, being the oldest, went first but instead of the regulation howls of delight, his shocked voice called, “Jeth!  What are you doing there?!”

...to be continued...


Copyright © 2013, Robyn Gerland

No comments:

Post a Comment