Christmas Eve never started until Mom got home from work. We spent days previous rearranging the presents under the tree, my sister shaking and guessing the contents of each package. It was straight to the kitchen for Mom to prepare for what we called the Junk Food Feast, which was a wild assortment of any food imaginable. Each child (there are five of us) was allowed to choose a food, anything was allowed, to be on the table. We had crab rangoon, summer sausage and cheese, sweet potatoes, fondue, lasagna, and the usual spread of Christmas cookies.
We would go to church and sit expectantly, hip to cheek in the packed church, minds wandering to the feast ahead and the gifts we would open that night. The second we sang the final note of “O Come, O Come Emanuel” or whatever the closing song was, we ran to the car and waited expectantly for the crab rangoon to be fried and the oil to heat for fondue. We ate more than we should have, and we waited some more for presents.
Mom and Dad only gave us each one gift, pajamas. Santa brought the rest. We opened our pajamas and gifts from an angel from Michigan that had a nasty habit of spoiling us. Then, it was bed time.
My younger sister and I were ushered up to my older sister’s bedroom. It was the farthest room in the house from the Christmas tree so we could not peek at Santa. We slept restlessly, too excited for the morning. We woke up before the sun, tiptoed into the bathroom, and made my parents coffee on the bathroom counter so they would be obliging to get up so early. We even remembered that Mom likes one packet of Sugar Twin in her coffee. One of the older kids had to sneak downstairs and verify if Santa had come; he never let me down.
~Victoria “Snowy” Chargo, Jefferson
