Just wanted to make sure I don't lose this. I wrote it last year, Christmas Eve, 2019.

Scattered memories of Christmas Eve through the years . . .

Daddy always went shopping for last-minute gifts. Sometimes I went along. Mother and Neenie were furiously wrapping, to a frustrated chorus of "Next year, I'm wrapping EARLIER!" That thread carried forward -- my son is shopping somewhere now, God help him, and there's a table temporarily staged in my living room with boxes and bows and God knows what for God knows whom. And you know what? Next year, I'm wrapping EARLIER!

Dinner was always red-sauce something or another. Daddy was EXQUISITE at that. Most years it was just meatballs and rigatoni (Mother had issues with spaghetti for some reason). One year they decided to get fancy and eat sea creatures. That was the year Mother blew up a pressure cooker full of clams.

After dinner, Daddy would start a fire and Mother would turn on/plug in the eleventy craptillion tree lights, lighted bells, lighted Santa faces (kinda creepy), lighted "Christmas chapel" (I still don't quite get it, but it played "O, Come, All Ye Faithful" on a legitimate music box, so okay, fine), and lighted God knows what else. Besides the huuuuuuge tree in the living room (Dan Serber), they ALSO lit the silver aluminum tree in the family room. It was only allowed to have red ball ornaments and white lights.

Around junior high-ish, I started taking over the Christmas baking, to my mother's great relief. God bless her, she did a yoeman's job of powering through so her little girl would always remember a tradition of Christmas cookies and the all-important nut roll (de rigeur for southwestern Pennsylvanians), but she hated it and it really wasn't her best talent. Before long, all the Christmas baking was mine. Took a couple of years and a few phone calls to Aunt Katherine to get the nut roll right, but I eventually did. (And DAMNIT, why can't I find cake yeast in central Orange County anymore?)

Some years Uncle Rich and Aunt Helen and their kids came over. Randy Dugan, Cynthia Carter and their brothers and I played and we exchanged small gifts (Aunt Helen took a much more enlightened view of plastic candy canes filled with M&Ms than my mother, who was a huge meaniehead about tooth decay). We might or might not have gotten into some unsanctioned shenanigans while the adults were socializing and largely ignoring us.

After the cousins went home, we sometimes did family presents. Neenie always knew what her gifts were, because she peeked weeks ahead of time, but she graciously feigned surprise to preserve my parents' feelings. One year Mother (declaring thrift) declined to buy gift tags because she'd "definitely remember" which packages were for whom. (Somehow spending a bajillion dollars on presents was okay, but twenty-nine cents worth of gift tags was a shocking extravagance.) Imagine my father's delight when he opened a box of little-girl pajamas, or Neenie's raised eyebrows when one of her gifts was a gentleman's leather wallet.

Some years Mother and I went to the late service at St. Anselm's. It was a beautiful and moving event, in the tradition of "Midnight Mass" but dear GOD, could Fr. Habiby drone on endlessly. I think we abandoned ship kinda early in that (my slackerism about attending church has ROOTS).

Later, when D and I were dating and married, the years we had Christina were SO MUCH FUN. She and my mother and Neenie would look for elves in Mother's enormous tree early in the evening. They usually found quite a few.

The first year I had my son, the in-laws came for Christmas Eve dinner. Everybody wanted to "give me a break" and ALL I wanted was to hold my baby. Didn't care about food, gifts, festivities -- I just wanted to hold my 11-day old baby. But they all insisted I "needed a break." As I choked back tears, Neenie, into her 90s by then and well under five fee tall, stood up and sharply addressed the table: "That girl wants her baby. She's exhausted and worn out and sore and ALL she wants is her baby. She doesn't want any help. NOW GIVE THAT GIRL HER BABY!!!" Nobody messed with my baby for the rest of the night. Later, after the mob dispersed, SHE grabbed my baby but that was "different."

The first year I was divorced, Joseph somehow disappeared from a miniature glass Nativity set. I looked high and low, never found him, and finally decided it was cosmic humor. Others found my interpretation blasphemous.

All in all, I've never had a bad Christmas Eve. Most have been fraught with something -- exploding clams, mis-tagged gifts, toy Jeeps that won't fit through the door, the heartache of the first Christmas Eve after a parent has died, but it's all part of the fabric of a blessed and abundant life, and a series of experiences and traditions for which I'm increasingly grateful.

Wherever you are and whatever you do to celebrate (IF you celebrate) Christmas Eve, I wish with all my heart that all my friends have a beautiful, magical Eve. I wish you peace and joy and good food and laughter and safety and all the beauty your hearts can hold.