PUB CHAT: A close call with a stocking |
Do you recall your most memorable Christmas?
Obviously, so many things can make it The Most Memorable: a special gift … a noteworthy sermon at midnight Mass ... a visitor you hadn’t expected to see … an incredible meal or party … maybe even a crazy event such as the family pet lunging into the Christmas tree and knocking it over just moments after you had finished decorating it.
All of those have happened to me. However, none of them come close to claiming the No. 1 spot on my list of Christmases Past.
The one I will never forget came when I was 8 years old — and led me to thinking I was going to get booted out of the family.
We lived in a two-story house with four bedrooms upstairs: One for Mom and Dad, one for two of my sisters (a third sis hadn’t been born yet), one for the only boy (yours truly), and one for an 18-year-old foster sister. My folks took in a couple of foster children over the years; the first few didn’t work out so well — that’s another “Pub Chat” for another day — but this one, Anne, was beloved.
So, every family has a Christmas routine, right?
Ours at that point was a big Christmas Eve dinner at our grandparents’ house — my mom’s mother and stepfather. Not exactly the Seven Fishes of Italian renown, but a good deal of seafood and fish along with roast beef, lamb, various macaronis and lasagna, and dozens of sweet treats. Mom had a large family, so........