Tradition!

You'll have to forgive me for my absence on this blog. Go ahead and blame the egg nog, frosting-smeared sugar cookies, and packages of socks for that. 

Christmas season sure does have its effect on all of us. In fact, that's what I'll write about this afternoon. I...wait....something's off here...I uh...oh yeah...For full effect download "Tradition" from the soundtrack to Fiddler On The Roof and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post. There we go, that feels better. 

We all have traditions this time of year, that is a certainty. Some people give out pajamas on Christmas Eve and take pictures in order of their birthing. Others have extravagant parties in trailers involving alcohol and the game Twister. Krystle Bailey's Father once told me he takes their family out for cheap Mexican food and goes out to a movie every year, which honestly I find to be a quirky yet honorable holiday tradition itself. Whatever it is, we've got them. Annual things we do on cue that trigger moments of reminiscing the years past of all the good times we shared with each other. Weird Jell-o recipes, ugly sweater contests, diverse members of your family standing up and singing a horrendous yet beautiful rendition of Feliz Navidad. Traditions are what keep us alive these holidays.They are the moments we look forward to with a cringing eye. They are memories that we shudder over, yet appreciate all in the same sentence. 

My family sure has traditions I'll tell you. Every year we go up to my Uncle's house in Logan, gorge ourselves on some of the finest dining my family can concoct, sit in a giant circle and exchange a bunch of random white elephant gifts to one another, and at the end of the night we all hand over a set of pajamas to the same old fart pretending to be Santa Claus. For the record, don't you dare comment on this blog with the sarcastic question, "There's no such thing as Santa?!" If you do, I will hunt you down and punch you right in the coccyx. That joke stopped being funny back in 1991. At this point we all look around the room and have what most people would misconstrue as a half-empty version of AA, confessing our sins and revelations to each other while the MC of the party makes us feel rather uncomfortable with his chopped up rendition of "The Giving Tree."

Swamp Thing: "Hi, my name is Brock, and I have a problem."

My family: "Merry Christmas Brock! Show us your pajamas!"

From here the night concludes with a Grandmother and her girls singing "The Aaaah Song", my sisters, my mother and yours truly doing our own Partridge Family impersonation, and a random Asian person that no one has ever met before bearing witness to us that Communism is the true light of Christmas. At least that's what I interpret his gibberish to mean every year. After that there are awkward gift exchanges and side hugs aplenty as we all share our love for one another with monetary objects. This year I got a blanket that feels like sex. Sure beats the broken nosehair trimmer from a few years back. 

These are my traditions. Every. Single. Year. And yes, I did just use the formerly popular sequence of periods in between individual words to drive the point home. Don't tell my cousin Alicia about this, she still thinks that punctuation is trending. This is my Christmas festivity on cue the last week of every December of my life thus far. A living room full of bold personalities taking pictures, forgetting names, shedding tears, all while a group of lovely ladies sing their song about vowels, creepy couples dressed in snow suits ask little kids in a semi-pedophiliac tone to come sit on their laps, and random Chinese people bump their faces on barstools. These are my traditions, and this is my family. 

And as odd as they all sound. I sure love 'em.