Holiday Memory
Created | Updated Dec 23, 2012
Another Christmas memory.
Holiday Memory
My favorite holiday memory begins at the house of my father’s boss on Christmas Eve. Uncle John, as I fondly call him, is famous for his raucous and festive manner, bringing all his employees together at his house. We are usually asked to bring a dish of some sort, if I remember correctly, we brought vegetable rice.
We didn’t even have to ring the doorbell, people eagerly showed us inside. While my mom went off with Uncle John’s wife "Aunt Sally," and my dad went to get a drink, I went upstairs with his daughter Michelle, who was a few years older than me. We discussed voraciously about books and played several board games that made us laugh our heads off.
Finally, we got hungry, and went downstairs to partake in some hors d'oeuvres. I tasted a particularly interesting cheese spiral thing, and got my maximum fill (amidst the disapproving stares of my father. To comfort myself, I went into the living room to pet the dog. He was 8 years old and arrived at their house as a puppy, he was very old and had some health problems, feeling content to languish on the couch. However, in spite of having so many aches and pains, he would let you hug and stroke him without complaint, and he eventually laid his head on my lap; he was a very sober dog with a gentle demeanor.
One of my father’s colleagues, whose name was Andy began talking to me about school, that discussion ended up shifting to soccer and it was a fun discussion. Suddenly, Uncle John’s booming voice called us into the foyer, and I followed, thinking he was going to make some sort of speech. In the center was a table full of gifts and bags. We played a game in which a person may either go up and pick a gift or "steal" it from someone else.
The game started off innocuously, but hilarity soon ensued when people started stealing gifts. I had gotten a wonderfully warm and comfy blanket, at which point it was ceremoniously "stolen" from me by a young, grinning couple. I was furious for a while, and rejoiced when I managed to steal a really wordy and fun board game called Last Word. There was that one guy who was begging someone, anyone, to steal his Molecular Biology for Dummies book and no one wanted it, so he was stuck!
When we left, a feeling of happiness was rife in the air because Uncle John and Aunt Sally showed us the true meaning of Christmas.
