Christmas Dinner

Once upon a time, I lived in one of those families. You know, the one where the kids get shuttled back and forth for holidays. Christmas was always especially crazy. We would spend the week before Christmas with our Dad and Stepmom, then on Christmas Eve we would have THREE celebrations. One in the morning with just family, one in the afternoon with Stepmom's family, then one later in the evening with Dad's family. (Dad's family is HUGE!)

We would then go to a late night Christmas service with Mom (and usually her parents). We'd go to bed, wake up and do ANOTHER round of presents, and then settle in and have a big meal for Christmas dinner.


You can see why even as a child I thought Christmas was fun but exhausting. Everyone was stressed and I hated that feeling.

The first Christmas that Fisherpapa and I spent together was the one we got engaged. It took years, but eventually we got the running around to a minimum, in part due to Fisherpapa having to work every Christmas eve (working for a church is like that).

I was usually so exhausted by the time Christmas dinner rolled around (and having some rather traumatic memories of Christmas dinners I made as a 12 and 13 year old that turned out HORRIBLE) I just didn't want to stress about it. SO Christmas is our no-stress day. We wake up and have cinnamon rolls (I made these this year, and OH MY are they good!) and then hang out. And somehow in the last 10 years our tradition as become having chicken nuggets and tater tots for Christmas dinner. It's really funny - others have come and shared this holiday tradition with us and love it too - because it takes the pressure off the holiday.

This year with Fisherpapa and I watching our waistlines, we'll make chicken strips from scratch and have sweet potato fries. But ti's still our funny, weird tradition, and I love it!