Christmas, Part 3 - Wisconsin

We had our last Christmas celebration on Sunday.

We’re a family that likes to stretch these things out, what can we say? I will admit that it was a bit more stretched than we’d planned since we were supposed to do this the previous Saturday, but the weather forecast looked snowy and Saturdays, it turns out, are not that great when you have multiple people who work as bartenders so it got pushed back a week.

Naturally it snowed Sunday too. But nobody was bartending, so we had that going for us.

We all met at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, with me and Kim coming up from Our Little Town while Lauren and Shai drove in from Main Campus University. Oliver was already off at school and rather too far away for a quick visit so he was unable to make the event, but we have reached the point where we just try for the maximum number who can. Rory and Amy and most of their group were there, as were Justin and Christine, and we had a lovely time.

There is a certain pattern that happens at these events. For the most part we cycle between hanging out, eating, and gifts, and as far as patterns go it’s a pretty tough one to beat though given the prevalence of snacks laid out – heavy on the home baked cookies but not limited to them, of course – the line between eating and any of the other activities can be pretty thin.

Good food in good company – that’s the secret to life.

So we hung out for a while.

Eventually it was dinner time, which is a fairly amorphous sort of thing with this group since it involves a constant swirl of people sitting, eating, leaving, and being replaced by others doing the same thing so specifying a precise beginning and ending point is probably more trouble than it would be worth. It starts with the Call For Borscht and spreads outward from there into a feast of Ukrainian food and if you left hungry well whose fault was that?

This was followed by the gifts given to those who were not playing the Dice Game, which is mostly the younger children and Uncle Randall these days. It was a joyous swirl of paper and things and a good time was had by all, even those who had remained at the table to fill in the edges a bit.

This was followed by further hanging about because we could.

And then it was time for the Dice Game. This started years ago as a way for the people in my generation on both sides of the family to cut down on the chaos of Christmas shopping and has since become something of a rite of passage. Only the younger kids do the regular gifts these days – when you’re old enough, you’ll play the Dice Game. And play it we did, with abandon.

You never really know what you’re going to end up with when you play the Dice Game and that’s most of the fun. Also, it’s nice when people like the stuff you brought. I was pretty happy that the gifts I brought got traded for a few times. After the dust settled I gave away both of the things I ended up with to people who wanted them more which at this point in my life is a good way to end the game really.

This was, of course, followed by more hanging out.

Though not too much more, since we had to get home. Lauren and Shai came back as well since she had an appointment the next day that was easier to get to from our house than from Main Campus University. The snow had mostly but not entirely ended for the drive home and while it was a sloppy drive (and Kim and I had to stop to get more washer fluid about halfway home) we all got back without changing the shape of anything on the road.

We ended up in the living room for a while, just sitting and talking and sampling the ginger and hops flavored mead that I had received for my birthday from a friend. It was very tasty, and a nice way to end a good day.