Christmas Present (No Not A Gift) and Christmas Past

Today is Christmas Eve. There is so much to do today that I started yesterday. I planned on having smoked brisket for Christmas Dinner this year. I had to trim the brisket and season it yesterday. It has been resting in the refrigerator since noon. I will fire up the smoker this morning and start the brisket around noon today. It will need to smoke for 12 hours; give or take a couple of hours. I chose a smoked brisket this year because I got a new smoker last month. I smoked a turkey for Thanksgiving and it was great.

Yesterday I also prepared a ham and a pot of broccoli and cheese soup. I suppose I cooked the ham too soon. Most of it is gone now.

Later today I will make a couple of desserts for myself and Chris' dad, Hank. The desserts are sugar-free since we are both diabetic. This year I will make a pinwheel type of pastry using pie crust and sugar-free preserves; strawberry and orange marmalade. Also, I will make a cream cheese and cherry dessert using no sugar added cherry pie filling. The crust will be ground up sugar-free pecan shortbread cookies.

Later this evening will be the grand event of the day-opening presents with the kids. The best part of this is seeing Jace open his presents. It seems that when he finishes opening all his presents he wants more to open. I am not sure if the fun is in getting a lot of presents or in opening a lot of presents. Tell me if you've seen this before: Child tears into present and barely notices what is inside then sets it aside for the next present; Procedure is repeated until all presents are open; Then the child announces, "Is that all?" or "Do I have any more?" Better yet, the child plays with the wrapping paper or the boxes and forgets the toys altogether.

I can remember when I was much younger waking up on Christmas morning and walking down the hallway to the living room. My parents were standing in the doorway. No one could go in until my older sister and brother were there also. I was always first, I was the youngest. Then, my sister Michal and my brother Lance appeared in the hallway and we were all allowed to go into the room and see the tree. Underneath the tree were the toys and things that "Santa brought" to us. Somehow Santa was always able to arrange things so that all the toys he brought were next to all the presents that my parents already placed under the tree. It seemed like the entire room was filled with toys, and yes clothes. We got clothes for Christmas too. We always got stockings filled with candy, nuts, fruit, and a coconut. I can remember my brother and I spending a portion of the day trying to get into the coconut. By the time you got into it the coconut wasn't like the kind in the store but it was still great anyway.

One year I remember snooping in my parents room for the Christmas presents. My parents would buy through the year and hide them in their closet. One day while snooping I can remember seeing something that I really wanted for Christmas, although now I haven't the vaguest idea of what it is. The important thing is that I really wanted it then. I could hardly wait for Christmas. Christmas Day came, I looked for my present, and there it was. On my brother's side of the tree. It was his, not mine. I didn't snoop much after that disappointment. The most memorable Christmas was the last Christmas before my father passed away. He had always wanted a model train set and had never been able to get one. My dad got an electric train set for Christmas that year. He was so excited about it. We set it up and we all got to play with it. He passed away 3 months later,

I better stop for today. The keyboard is getting wet and I need to find the Kleenex.

Have a safe holiday.


© 2007 Barry T Horst



This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.