Now that Christmas 2024 is over, I find myself reflecting on our family’s holiday traditions, including Christmas.
When our kids were young, we lived in the Twin Cities. We counted on a tradition my dad began, unknowingly, to celebrate Memorial Day, Labor Day, and even the Fourth of July. There was no real pre-planning for those days. My dad would call the house in the morning and say, “Yeah, shall we have a picnic today?” Having no other plans, because we knew the tradition, we always said, “Sure. When and where?”
I don’t know if that counts as tradition or habit, but we’d always get together for beans, chips, and hotdogs on those days. On the Fourth, after the picnic, we’d go to Veteran’s Park in Richfield to sit in the grass, munch popcorn, dodge firecrackers and sparklers, and watch the fireworks.
We lived in the Twin Cities for the first twenty-plus years of wedded bliss. So did my parents and sister and both sides of the Bohunk’s family. Moving around to two or three family gatherings for Easter and Thanksgiving was pretty easy when it was just us. We overate, but we showed up for them all. However, when the offspring started to sprout, it became clear we’d have to start making choices. One year, we’d spend Easter with my family and Thanksgiving with hers. The following year would be the opposite. As our kids grew, we started hosting whatever family, hers, mine, and ours, wanted to join us at our house.
Christmas was a bit easier–my family had a Christmas Eve tradition, and hers made the 25th the big day. So we had pasties, opened gifts, went to candlelight church services with my family on the Eve, and showed up wherever her family was celebrating Christmas day. Christmas morning was at our house with our family of six, seeing what Santa brought, opening gifts, and having a sumptuous brunch whipped up by the Bohunk.
As kids grew up, elders passed on, and people moved away, the Twin Cities traditions fell by the wayside. So we made our own.
Our kids are older, but they all love Christmas. Their mother, blessed with an Obsessive Christmas Disorder, makes sure the house is decorated, gifts are lovingly purchased, and food is abundant every year. She started a tradition 30 years ago that is a holiday highlight for our kids and grandkids.
It’s a White Elephant gift exchange dice game. Everybody wraps a handful of unique, inexpensive, and silly gifts. They’re piled up in the middle of the floor, and dice are cast. If you roll a pair, you choose a gift. Once the pile is empty, a timed round of dice shaking occurs. Roll a pair, and you can appropriate someone else’s gifts.
When we lived in Nevada, our daughter Jessica and her family, call them the Kaniries, lived nearby and spent every Christmas day with us. After we moved to Illinois, we only saw the grandkids on FaceTime at Christmas.
In 2022, the Kaniries moved to Carlton from Las Vegas. That year, we started a new Christmas tradition, gathering in a rented condo at Grand Superior Lodge in Castle Danger.
Grand Superior is rustic and offers a compelling view of Lake Superior. It is about halfway between the Carlton and Cook County families. We played our traditional dice game, opened presents, and had a nice dinner.
Early in December, the Bohunk said, “After two years of Grand Superior, how about we find a VRBO close to the kids’ house in Carlton for a couple of days? We can spend more time together, bring our dogs, and be close to the Kanirie house.
She convinced me, and the family agreed.
Online, Becky reserved a small cabin adjacent to Jay Cooke State Park. It sits on a half-acre lot bordered with mature pine trees. Pictures of the 500-square-foot cottage showed a genuine, decorated Christmas tree at the front window. That sealed the choice for the Bohunk.
We made it, had a wonderful and relaxing Christmas, and survived our first-time, two-night VRBO stay.
