All families have them. Stories and memories that are unique to us or so we think. The time the cat climbed the Christmas tree and knocked it over or the dog grabbed the ham off the table. The uncle who drank too much and ended the evening wearing his underwear on his head. I’m sure you have one or two. Today, I share a couple of ours.
Shortly after Thanksgiving one year when we were living in Cincinnati and Bill was working for Xavier University, a local television station asked the pr office to suggest a family for a story about budgeting for Christmas. Now, we are certainly not poster kids for budgeting, but we are pretty much game for an adventure, and we agreed to be that family. The crew came out and filmed us in our living room discussing what the budget would be, $800, and we set up times for them to film us shopping. Jeff was in high school and Scott was in pre-school. I’ll have to try to dig up the video to refresh my memory, but I mostly remember two things: the female reporter had a fake name and a male reporter applied make-up before our final interview. The rest is a blur, but I don’t think we embarrassed ourselves too much, and that was the only Christmas we’ve been able to stick to a “budget.”
Our second media Christmas encounter came last year. The little neighborhood we live in, Cloverdale-Idlewild, has a traditional Christmas caroling parade, and the leader called me to see if they could visit our house to carol. Seems we have a dearth of elderly and infirm who are the usual recipients of the caroling. I need to backtrack one little bit to explain why I was called, though. The first week in December of last year, I tripped over our Samantha and broke my arm. So, I guess I officially qualified for the infirm status and my arm WAS still in a sling. A few evenings before Christmas, the carolers, about 75 strong, showed up on our doorsteps, guitars and voices strong with “We Wish You a Merry Christmas!” And oh yes, there was a local television camera crew with them. Not only did all of my neighbors know I was a klutz but quite a few more people in Montgomery did too.
If you have a Christmas story to share, I’d love to hear it.
Christmas Countdown –– 25
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