New Christmas traditions

Growing up in Runnemede we had several traditions. One was the visiting of relatives, either they came to us, or we went to them. My mom was the one with the "relations". Daddy had only one cousin and she (Alberta) would always get down (from Philly) to see us sometime during the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. But visiting my mother's family, if they didn't come to us, really kept us busy traveling away from our town to South Philadelphia or Springfield (Delaware County).

I loved going to visit mom's sister and her brother and seeing their trees. Back then people didn't put much into outdoor decorations, the focus of the home decoration was the tree, and mostly the trees were live. The other choice was a mealy looking fake evergreen that looked awful, or a silver/aluminum tree with a rotating light. You could hang balls on both these type trees, but lights were not recommended because back then the lights could become an electrocution (being electrocuted) problem. So, while you could hang balls, you couldn't put lights on the artificial trees. Therefore, back in the 50s we had live trees.

Well, all this is to lead up to new traditions. I haven't really addressed my family (Alan's and mine) traditions and I will do that some other time. But after my children married, the third set of traditions started. And last night one of those traditions was experienced.

For the past few years, because of Alan's and my health, we have been visiting our children's families one at a time. And last night it was Cyndi's turn. She cooked a wonderful meal for us. And made a spectacular dessert. Her home was beautifully decorated (see the pictures?) and we had a really good time. The children were bored, I think, because we adults were talking and sort of ignoring them.

Ellie was hard to ignore because being not quite two years old, she's at that "cute" stage, and her antics made us laugh a lot. The change in the children's faces from last year to me was very noticable. See Toria? She is the spitting image of her mother. And that's a development of the last year.

So this newer tradition was such a treat for Alan and me and we thank our children for providing us these pleasures at this season each year.

NOTE: The top picture is the children horsing around, and that is Toria, not Cyndi. Then the other two pictures are pictures of Cyndi's family room tree and the fireplace.

ttfn