December 24

It’s December 24^th. Christmas Eve Gift!

Since I was a toddler, it’s been a tradition in my family to try and be the first to surprise the other person by yelling out “Christmas Eve Gift”! The person who was “got” then had to give a little gift to the person who did the “gotcha”. As the years rolled by, it was not so much about the gifting as it was the “gotcha” part. To this end, family members would go to great lengths to surprise one another.

One Christmas Eve, I had gotten up very early to bake a huckleberry cobbler to take over to my parents next door, for breakfast. Nothing beats a nice, warm-from-the-oven cobbler. So I traipsed over to their house with the food, set it down on a chair outside, and unlocked their back door. The house was dark and I knew my parents (then in their early 80’s) were probably still asleep. As I entered the dark house, my parents jumped from behind the door (where they had been hiding in wait for me) and yelled “Christmas Eve Gift”, scaring the bejeebers out of me. They definitely “got” me! They were quite tickled with themselves, and I was glad I had put the cobbler on the chair outside…..otherwise we would have been eating huckleberry cobbler off of the floor