Oh, oh, oh. I mean, Ho Ho Ho. Ha ha ha. Oh, man I crack myself up. *blink. blink.*

So anyway, we find ourselves at “O.” I checked the dictionary again. Some how oil cloth and oscillate don’t seem to fit. I like oyster because when I was little my grandma always made oyster soup [I only drank the broth], but we talked about that last year. There’s always the obvious ornaments, but how many pictures of my tree do you really need to see? [Don't get me wrong. If you want to see more I'll be happy to share. Have I mentioned how excited I am that we have a real tree this year instead of that ugly fake one?]

That left me with overdo and overwhelming. Both very good Christmas words. Ok, maybe you never hear “get in to the Christmas spirit and overdo,” but somehow that’s what always seems to happen in my family. We overdo it on presents. We overdo it on the amount of money we spend on those presents. We overdo it on food. It seems to be a holiday of overdoing.

For years we drew names on my dad’s side of the family. Even before the days of searching the internet for great programs to make your life easier, my grandpa created an easy little program for drawing names. [Yes, my grandpa, who is in his 80's, has had a computer since the days of DOS -- long before Windows -- and is far more computer literate than 90% of the men his age.] He wanted to be sure we didn’t get somebody in our immediate family [like my dad wouldn't get my stepmom because he was buying for her anyway] and he wanted to make sure we didn’t get the same person we go last year. And every year at Thanksgiving we got a little slip of paper telling us who we were buying for.

Of course, when I was a child, I wasn’t part of the drawing. People just bought me presents because I was cute. But when I turned 18 I wasn’t getting by on my good looks anymore and it was time to start paying up. And every year, when I was getting ready to do my Christmas shopping [on the day before Christmas], I forgot who I was buying for…always. I’d have to call grandpa and ask him who I got. I’m sure he loved that. He was the one who was old and supposed to be forgetful. But here I was forgetting who I drew for Christmas…every year.

After my grandma died, we continued to draw. [And by draw, I mean grandpa's computer picked for us.] But the siblings stopped coming back for Christmas. At that point we were just shipping packages across America to each other with a card wishing them a good new year. It was a little impersonal, but we were trying.

Then when my uncle had his skiing accident some family members decided it would probably be too much to continue to exchange gifts. Keith quickly piled up a LOT of hospital bills and he was still on the path to recovery, including remembering who we all were. I know my grandpa was disappointed when the family suggested the gift exchange was just too overwhelming, but the exchange ended in 2004 anyway.

But we still get Christmas cards and keep tabs on each other. And every year I wait on pins and needles for my aunt and uncle’s Christmas letter. My uncle is a writer and editor by profession. His Christmas letters are so funny, he should seriously think about writing an anthology of past Christmas letters.

My mom’s side of the family is the exact opposite. We all still get together for Christmas and we don’t draw names. The idea has been mentioned before, but we’ve never gone through with it. Why? Because everybody enjoys going overboard. [Oh, there's another "O;" Overboard.] Ok, maybe “enjoys” is the right word. But every year we say “this year we are going to cut back at Christmas because it’s getting too expensive.” We decide some people in the family just have way too many kids [umm...me] and it’s a bit overwhelming to have to buy for everybody. And then every year the tree looks like this.

See, you didn’t believe me when I said “overdo” was a Christmas word. Now you know.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 6:56 pm and is filed under ABCs of Christmas. Comments are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.