Evolving Christmas Traditions.

This years Christmas was a little different from the Christmases in years past. Our family tradition, spanning generations, has been to go to grandmas house on Christmas eve night and open presents at midnight Christmas morning. Well since our grandparents had gotten older, we generally in recent years did these things earlier in the evening. But this Christmas eve was far different because for the first time, we were without our family patriarch. We let our grandfather go to to the next world in June of this year and his physical presence was missed. As always, we carried on and had a great time nonetheless but without our patriarch, something was definately different. With each experience being brand new, and with the tradition perhaps taking on a much different tone, it still all comes down to the gathering of the family. And its always nice to be able to get five generations under the same roof!