Traditions are really important in my family. We always went to pick out our Christmas tree at a nearby farm, which are all over the place in Oregon. Rain or shine (usually rain) we would tromp around in our mud boots until all five of us could agree on the “perfect” tree (no small feat, I assure you) and then my dad would lay on his back and saw the thing down with the cheap, flimsy saw they give you. After that we would go eat hamburgers and french fries at the hole-in-the wall burger joint down the street. For as long as I can remember, we visited Santa Clause at Meyer & Frank somewhere around the 15th of December. We’d eat dinner near Pioneer Place in Portland, Oregon and then wrangle the troops to go sit on Santa’s lap and get our picture taken. Sometimes we would wait in line for hours. That’s how important this tradition was. When we were little, my brother and sister and I enjoyed riding on the little toy train that circled a room that looked like it had thrown up Christmas decorations. We would ride around and around and around while my parents stood in line holding our places. The older we got, the less appealing that miniature train became, so we would just wait in line too. It was never clear to any of us when the tradition was supposed to end (how old is too old to visit Santa?) so despite some resistance from certain parties which shall remain unnamed, we just kept at it. Up until last year (my brother, 31, my sister, 24, and me, 29) have a Christmas picture with Santa. Needless to say, Santa’s lap is getting a little full. So you can imagine the surprise I felt two Christmases ago when my mom suggested, out of nowhere, that we change our tradition for Christmas morning. What if instead of our usual Christmas pajamas, performance of The Christmas Story, hot cocoa, cinnamon rolls, and happy unwrapping — What if we packed lunches, and took them around the city? What if we handed out food to people who didn’t otherwise have anything to eat? My mom, usually the upholder of tradition (or the tradition hall-monitor, however you like to put it) gets all the credit for this great idea. So on Christmas eve, instead of making our last minute shopping runs to complete our gift lists, we went to the grocery store instead. We bought bread, lunch meat, fruit, little bags of carrots, bags of chips, bottles of juice, bottles of water, and peanut butter and jelly. Instead of distributing the “Christmas Eve gifts” (which are always Pajamas), we made sandwiches. We cleared off the every kitchen surface we could find and laid out bread like blankets across the table, island, the counters. We made every combination of sandwich we could think of. We put them in brown paper bags, and labeled them. Then we stuffed our fridge. [...]
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