Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Holiday Tradition
Tuesday
December 24, 2002
Hope you're having a great Christmas Eve, wherever you may be tonight. For my family, Christmas is one of the big events of the year.
We have an interesting tradition as to how we handle when to open the presents. My mom's side of the family always opened their presents on Christmas Eve; for my dad it was Christmas morning. So my parents reached a compromise -- we open one gift on Christmas eve, then the rest Christmas morning.
The result? Some classic memories. The detective work becomes that much more important for the pre-Christmas planning. If there's one present you're dying to open, that can make all the difference.
Usually it works out pretty well. Standarization of video game boxes helped with that. One infamous mis-pick happened in 1988, when my brother Matt opened what ended up being a big box of baseball cards. A nice gift, but not quite what he had in mind (I mean, what can you do with cards?) Or the time in 1987 at my grandparents' house in Harriman where he opened Kung-Fu for the Nintendo (only thing -- the Nintendo was a gift from "Santa" coming the next morning). Made for some interesting quick spin control. Heh heh.
Hope your Christmas is a great one. I'll spend part of mine travelling on a plane back to Tampa. That's the price I pay for having this time off. The news doesn't take a holiday (okay, that's not quite true, there's no X-Mas morning newscast on WTSP). But the next day one has to go on the air, and this guy has to make it happen.
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