Sunday, September 4, 2011

Day 186 of 365

It appears I'm not the only one in my family with Christmas on my mind. Just a couple days ago when my mom and daughter were here there was a discussion of Christmas gifts for my daughter. Then I wrote about Christmas crafts here yesterday, and just today my husband told me about something he wanted on his Christmas Eve list.

We have a Christmas Eve tradition of opening one present early, with the rest being opened on Christmas Day. Our tradition started because of a Batman Helicopter. 

Growing up, my husband's family let kids open one gift on Christmas Eve. The kids got to choose one wrapped present from under the tree to be the special Christmas Eve one. One year, the particular present my husband picked wound up being a Batman Helicopter. A plain, plastic, toy helicopter. A present he didn't ask for, a present he didn't even want. A present that forever tainted that eight year old's Christmas Eve experience.

After we were married, he made it clear there would be no early gifts. But that changed.

With both of us being educators, books are important in our lives. We have hundreds (probably thousands) of books of mine, his, ours, and our daughter's. And we have a tradition of giving books on Christmas Eve.

Every Christmas Eve, we open an early present. And every Christmas Eve, it is always a book we want. We look months ahead at books of interest. Books we can put on our Christmas Eve book list. And every Christmas Eve when we open that book, we spend part of the evening reading before going to bed. It's an important tradition to us.

So today as my husband was reading the Sunday paper, he saw an article about a new book coming up. A book about John F. Kennedy. Being a history teacher, he's big into JFK. Particularly JFK and conspiracy theories. He has videos, and we have more than one shelf here at home full of JFK books, and it looks like come Christmas Eve he'll be adding one more.

He's big into JFK, history, and patriotism. While I was working on getting ready for my tutorial, he came in all excited about having cut what he called a "Labor Day Special" bouquet. Unfortunately, he had to explain it to me - red, white, and blue (okay, purple) roses.

And the name of the white rose in there? It's the rose called JFK.