Happy belated Christmas, I hope everyone had a fabulous time with family, friends and Santa! In typical prep fashion, I had a Christmas full of traditions and a small army of family.
Since preps especially have a hard time adapting to change and value the importance of family tradition (why do you think every boarding school and Ivy are full of legacies?) Our Christmas follow this unwritten commandment and are blissfully the same year after year.
Our tradition starts with our Christmas tree and our carolers:
On the 23rd, we always have a family lunch in the city, this year we had a fabulous meal at Gramercy Tavern (HIGHLY recommended) followed by the girls heading to Lincoln Center to take in the Nutcracker and the boys off to do their last minute shopping at Saks, a steam at the R&T and/or attending some sort of sporting event.
The 24th bring all the cooks to the kitchen at an absurdly early hour. This year, we had 17 people to our house for our formal Christmas Eve dinner. My tasks for the day were red velvet cupcakes, mashed potatoes and to get a manicure-all of which I completed successfully!
We had a delicious dinner of filet, mashed potatoes, green beans, orzo with mushrooms, sundried tomatoes and other stuff, smoked salmon, plum pudding and red velvet cupcakes. After dinner we headed to bed-the kids crash in the basement and we always have a great time watching Christmas movies and indulging in a cocktail or two.
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| kids table |
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| adult table |
the kids
On Christmas morning, my little brother is usually trying to drag me out of bed around 7:30. This is a kid who is never up before noon if he doesn’t have to be, and without fail year after year I’m up way too early and almost always missing my pillow and blankets as a way to get me out of bed. This year was no different. Then comes the excruciating stair waiting. Mother has a strict 9am policy-she will not get out of bed on Christmas morning before 9am. So we spend typically an hour and a half on the stairs, while Father lights a fire, takes a shot of Rocky with his dad, makes it look like Santa came all while yelling “five more minutes, almost ready!”
This year, heaven forbid, we forgot Mother’s Starbucks. So the kids managed to execute the fastest Starbucks run in history (all while still in our pajamas…classy) so we could finally open our presents.
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| the prizes |
New to the Christmas day lineup-at our place at Christmas breakfast we each had a wrapped t-shirt that indicated what color team we were each on for the First Annual Reindeer Games. A complex bracket of ping pong, pool and beer pong so fiercely competitive it might make the Olympics look like a t-ball game. We had a blast. And I am pleased to say, Uncle Jeff and I (the red team) were this year’s champs.
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| the fierce (and victorious) red team |
the camo and green teams hard at work
the teal and tar heel blue team in a tight match
ping pong champs
game face
The best part of our Christmases is not the presents, the festivities or the food but it’s the fact that for 30ish hours my whole family is together enjoying each other’s company, something I try never to take advantage of because as we all get older I know that each year we get to keep on celebrating the holiday all together is a gift.
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