Christy’s Christmas Snapshot

A quick jaunt to London last week was all it took for me to get into the Holiday spirit. There the streets and store windows were practically screaming Christmas. I returned home to multiple advent calendars newly opened and in use, a chocolate and Lego version for each child - thank you Aunt Mary and Grandma!

We finally picked out our tree over the weekend and now it stands partially decorated. Tonight will be phase two of the process. There are only a few weeks before we head west for the Christmas break. We take turns each year alternating between spending the holidays with the majority of my family in California and my husband's family in New York. This year we will pray for good enough weather to fly out in time to spend a few days with our west coast family and friends before Christmas eve. One year it took us three attempts during a snowstorm before we finally made it. I get together with all my high school girlfriends and their families every time I get the chance so our children can play together and we can catch up.

Christy's first Christmas, with sister Kelly...and Santa

My mom still lives in the house in northern California that we moved back to in 1983 after a few years in Miami. There is still plenty of history in the walls there to recall and pass along to my kids. Holidays are always bittersweet since my Dad and Grandmother's passing but their memories live on in our traditions.

My Grandma, who we called "Baba" was from El Salvador and very Catholic so this, and Easter of course, were favorite times of the year. She had a small antique ceramic baby Jesus that she would swaddle and place under our tree when she came to live with my mom after my dad died. My husband's family is also Catholic but they are Irish, not Latin so our traditions differ quite a bit. Latin families tend to celebrate on Christmas Eve. We grew up going to Midnight Mass. Then we would come home and my sisters and I would quickly change into our matching Christmas PJs, a tradition Baba started that I have carried on to include everyone, not just the kids. My mom would warm the eggnog and turn on Christmas carols, while my dad, who wasn't Catholic, would start a fire and question why we were opening anything before Christmas morning, even though we did the same thing every year. My older sister was always in charge of handing out the gifts and we would go youngest to oldest, one by one, until we got through them all. It was always a really late night but this insured deep sleeps and late waking hours the next morning, even when we were very small.

On Christmas morning we'd come downstairs to see what Santa had left us, first on the cookie plate we'd left him and then under the tree. It was like having two days of Christmas in our house and we pretty much stayed in our PJs the whole day and never left the house. Now that it’s just mom living there, with one sister and her family living close by, I do my best to recreate all of this for our kids. We'll spend Christmas Eve with my sisters and half siblings and all the kids between us. We never make it as late as midnight for Mass, but we do get to church with them. We will be late, as usual, and stand in the back through a children's Mass. My grandmother will be smiling...