Christmas Checklist

Some people like to do it at night. Others enjoy it in the morning. Yet others do a little the night before and finish off when they wake up the next day. I am talking about the tradition of opening Christmas presents, of course, and the time of day when your family has their gift-opening, is just one tradition in an endless series of traditional choices every family makes to create their version of “the perfect Christmas”. One of the most enjoyable aspects of Christmas is the time-honoured traditions we, as a family have developed over the decades and we, as a culture, developed over centuries. I find it fascinating how that each family forges their own set of traditions which are as unique as the individuals that spawned them, as they create their idea of the Ideal Yule.

Here, then, is a collection of my own Christmas checklist; traditions that must be observed for me to feel I have had the complete Yuletide experience.

Forwarding Christmas jokes via email is a relatively new tradition, given the age of the medium, but one already entrenched in our culture. They start about the same time as the Christmas sales and are almost as plentiful. My favourite so far: Did you hear about the dyslexic devil worshipper? He sold his soul to Santa.

Watching Christmas movies is a centuries old tradition that dates back to times before electricity when they had to watch their portable DVD's by torchlight. However, in my books, you can keep your “Jingle All The Way” and “The Santa Clause”. I'm an old-school kind of guy (What a surprise).”It's A Wonderful Life”, “Miracle on 34 St.”, and of course, the most classic of them all, “Charlie Brown's Christmas” are my style. I even like Rudolph and Frosty although I find “Little Drummer Boy” a bit disturbing. It's not often, after all, you see a cartoon where the protagonist's parents die at the beginning of the show unless the protagonist becomes a super hero.

On Christmas Eve, driving around the town looking at all the gorgeous Christmas lights is one of my favourite customs. Who cares that the carbon footprint of this activity is the size of the tar sands (sorry we call them the “oil sands” now), Cupcake and I have been making the annual pilgrimage around the town since the boys were just wee lads. Luckily, Calmar is so small you can actually drive down every street and still be back home in time for “A Christmas Carol” with Alastair Sim.

Letting the kids open just one gift on Christmas Eve is another of our traditions that began when the kids were still young enough to intimidate. Ah, the good old days. In our household, Cupcake invariably selects the Christmas Eve gift and her annual choice is always, without fail, pyjamas. Kind of takes the fun out of it but, hey, Cupcake needs her little traditions, too.

Opening stockings on our bed is a tradition in our house I've never agreed with. When I was an anklebiter, the whole point of the stocking was to keep us kids busy for an extra half an hour or so for my folks to get a little bit more sleep. Our kids always demanded that we open our stockings together, however, and our big, comfy bed appeared to be the best place. So much for extra sleep.

There's another tradition I've come to expect, happens annually, as sure as Boxing Day sales follow Christmas. That tradition is having Cupcake fret over whether this dish or that didn't turn out the way she'd hoped. It cracks me up. This is a centuries-old phenomenon, considering Dickens took great pains to include the fact that Mrs. Cratchit was concerned about the amount of flour in the pudding. It is amusing to see Cupcake in a flap over over-done glazed carrots or dry stuffing, despite the fact the whole tableful will be attacked with such gusto, afterward, it would appear a plague of locusts had joined in the meal.

Baking Christmas treats is another wonderful Christmas tradition. The goal is to create desserts and snacks with the most amount of calories per square millimetere. Take the traditional Christmas fruit cake. A 1.5 ounce piece, which, given the substantial weight of the cake, is about the size of an Icy Square, contains 139 calories. Given that the portions doled out by elderly female relatives, a major source of the delicacy, are many times the 1.5 ounce serving means every slice is worth about the average person's 2000 calorie/day limit.

Last but certainly not least is our tradition of making home-made Irish cream, with the following recipe:
1 bottle cheap rye whiskey
4 tablespoons of chocolate syrup
4 tsp instant coffee dissolved in
1 cup of water
1 egg well whipped
2 cans Eagle Brand condensed milk
1 500 ml container of whipping cream

Okay, I've got my checklist ready. Bring on the holidays! Merry Christmas Everyone!