Family and Holidays

Family is everything to me. Family is how you learn to ride a bike, how you learn to cook, how you learn that your alcoholic uncle likes to crash into stores, and many more outrageous stuff. My favorite time to spend with the family is Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Christmas is not only about presents to me. Christmas to me is also a great time to spend with the extended family. On Christmas you are able to sit and have a talk with that cousin that lives in Sacramento, or even have a decent and civilized talk with your alcoholic uncle. The same goes with New Year’s Eve in my family. Everybody celebrates Christmas and New Year’s Eve with the family a different way. Now with my family, since 3/4 of us live in the same city, we always gather in the biggest house to celebrate the two Christmases, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and the two New Year’s, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. On Christmas we bring all of the presents, the ones for Secret Santa, the ones from 'Santa', and our personal ones. At around 3 PM Christmas Eve, we arrive at the chosen home and just hang around with the family. Our Christmas meal is a little different from the rest of America. The meal consists of tamales, posole, ponche, buñuelos, champurrado, tacos de cabeza, tacos de carne adobada, atole, and ensalada navideña, oh and my cookies. After the meal, we hang out some more until midnight comes around. At midnight we go around and wish everybody 'Feliz Navidad', then sit in the living room in a big circle. Everyone hands out their own gifts, and we act surprised by Santa’s presents as well. After the opening of the presents the families all go to their own homes until later on in the morning. Us kids however, we always ask our parents if we could sleep over. In the morning, we go back to the house with our gifts at hand, hang out some more, and eat yummy leftovers. At around 4 PM or 5 PM we would go back home. The next six days are always brutal for the young ones. We cannot wait to hang out with our cousins for a day or more yet again. Personally, I wish Christmas and New Year’s Eve were back to back. In no time at all however, New Year's sneaks up on us with a very similar schedule as Christmas in mind. Then we wait for winter do it all over again! In conclusion, family in my mind is tied to Christmas and New Year's, because Family, Christmas and New Year's are almost synonymous in my heart.