Remembering the Joy of Christmas by Anita Stansfield

Author:Anita Stansfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Covenant Communications, Inc.
Published: 2015-09-21T00:00:00+00:00

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by Jennifer Moore

Grandma Rachel never gave me a Christmas present. Or a birthday gift. She wasn’t really the sentimental gift-giving type. Instead, she drove around town in an old station wagon with a huge plastic flower attached to the antenna and stopped at second-hand stores, yard sales, and farmer’s markets to see what she could find for a good deal, and then she delivered her treasures to us and other people unlucky enough to get a box of outdated fashions or overripe fruit.

Grandma Rachel was a hippie. She loved bright floral prints on her mismatched clothes and never ever allowed food to go to waste. When she wasn’t collecting stuff, she was finding homeless people to work in her yard and sometimes bringing them to our house to see if there was any work they could do for my parents. She didn’t go to church—at least our church. She was even convinced she’d seen a UFO once in Arizona. As kids and teenagers, my cousins, brothers, sisters, and I rolled our eyes, whispered behind our hands, and even laughed at her antics. To say she was eccentric was an understatement. Grandma was weird; that was all there was to it.

On that side of the family, we didn’t have regular Christmas parties with our cousins. Grandma Rachel took us to the Nutcracker ballet instead. We’d roll our eyes, get dressed up in our Sunday clothes, and grudgingly go to the matinee at Capitol Theater in Salt Lake every single year on Christmas Eve. She always bought too many tickets and found strange people every year to take the extra seats. None of us ever wanted to sit by the strangers, and quite a few under-our-breath arguments and silent scuffles ensued when Grandma sat an unfamiliar person next to one of us.

But the year my aunt and uncle returned from their mission, we decided it was time to get the entire family together for a genuine Christmas party: a nice dinner, presents, games, caroling—the real thing.

Grandma Rachel, of course, did not plan it. We weren’t even sure if she would come since she forgot most special occasions and rarely answered her phone.

On the day of the party, my mom and I spent most of the afternoon in the kitchen or wrapping presents. I was newly engaged and wanted to impress my fiancé, Frank, with the food and gifts and classy extended family that he had yet to meet. I even had a brand-new outfit for the occasion.

That evening, we arrived at my aunt’s house to find her decorations stunning and the tables set with beautiful matching tablecloths and dishes. The meal was elegant, arranged and presented beautifully. We gathered with our cousins and aunts and uncles and chatted about Christmas, school, wedding plans. We were excited about the yummy food and brightly wrapped presents under the tree. I couldn’t wait for us to all play the game I’d prepared.

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