Remember, Remember the First of December

My family has many holiday traditions, starting with what we like to call, "December First"

We typically like to hold this occasion on December 1st.

You would think that with the high percentage of English teachers that make up the Yost/Stegall/ Hubbard clan that we would have come up with something more original by now. Unfortunately, we have not.

(We also like to call our weekly Sunday evening gathering, "Sunday Night." Go figure.)

Anyway, we have a party every year on the first of December. This annual tradition was started by my mother, aunt, and grandparents long before I was even thought of.

I don't think I'm supposed to end sentences with, "of." Oh well. All's fair in love and blogging.

The originally mission of December First was simple. Give each other gifts that can be used in the weeks preceding Christmas. I suppose my ancestors were tired of receiving holiday-esque gifts on Christmas day only to have to wait an entire year before putting them to use. Or they just liked having another excuse to spread Christmas cheer. Besides singing loud and clear, of course. Either way, our annual holiday kick-off celebration was begun.

I just love it when I am able to use sports in a semi-intelligible way.

For the past sixteen Christmases I have started off the season with my family's party. We have dinner, usually the last of the turkey made into my grandmother's amazing soup and cranberry Wensleydale cheese, open gifts, and then eat the Yost/Stegall/Hubbard TOP SECRET RECIPE Christmas Cranberry Cake.

It's so good I wish I could give you the recipe. But it's also so secret that I don't know it.

But this year, all that changed! Well, only one part of it changed, but when have I not been overly dramatic? No sense starting now!

This year we all kinda agreed that we had been given so, so much, and it was high time we shared with others. So instead of starting out the evening eating, we all met at Wally World to buy Christmas gifts for the ladies and gentlemen living in Miracle Hill facilities. The entire clan spread out all over the stores to fill shopping carts full of toys and soap and clothes and jewelry and balls and notebooks and just about anything else imaginable!

Yes, we got some strange, strange looks.

It was so great. Not the strange looks, I mean. but the whole shopping endeavor. Just wonderful. I am so incredibly blessed with absolutely everything I need, but there are so many people in my little Baptist, Republican, Southern community who aren't. And giving to them, especially around this happy season, was the best gift I could have received.