Advent Calendar Day 7--Holiday Parties

I am excited to begin my advent calendar blogs with this topic. During my elementary school years and beyond, our house annually held a Christmas Eve party. A number of my parents friends did not have children. They were invited to our home for a party and after the three of us Hughes children were sent off to bed, they would go to work putting toys together and arranging them under the christmas tree. Later in the evening, couples with children would arrive after they had set up their children's Santa gifts and their babysitter arrived.

As the evening continued, the adults would become more boisterous. Frankly, as a child, it was impossible to get to sleep while awaiting Santa's arrival with all the loud partying going on underneath my bedroom.

Christmas morning usually found my Mom asleep on the couch in the living room, probably exhaused from all the revelry and suffering from a hangover. I'm sure she wished we would have slept in a little later.

As an adult, Mom would relate the stories of those evenings with great laughter. The time that Peg Arthur set up about 100 small dinosaurs and accidently bumped them and they went down like dominos.....when a bicycle was put together backwards.....Dad meticulously hanging each piece of tinsel on the tree.......memories of Christmas Eve's past.

We looked forward to the ritual.....dinner out.....church services.....and then the friends arriving for the party. It is one of my favorite memories of my Christmas' past.

© 2009, copyright Linda Hughes Hiser