Holidays.

Rest easy, my redeye to Boston never crashed. And neither did I – even after two drinks. So I arrived in Boston at 5AM looking like Lindsay Lohan on a typical Tuesday.

An hour later, my sister and I were sitting on her couch. Practically comatose, I was minding my own beezwax when my 5-year-old niece approached us. She looked me up and down, and then turned to my sister and said with severe disapproval, "Your sister is no better than a juice box." It was both weird and oddly sophisticated, and yet still highly insulting.

That afternoon we made it up to Maine. Have you ever been in Maine in December? It's freaking freezing. Yet, if you walk into my parents' house, you'd think you were sitting in a tanning bed on the equator. And in the horrific event that the thermostat creeps below 80, everyone is offered a round of cashmere sweaters and sifters of brandy. Each night, while it hovered near 20 outside, I actually slept with the ceiling fan on, all my bedroom windows open, and it still felt like the Beach Boys should be singing "Kokomo" from my closet. (If only!)

Tradition is big in my family, so searing house temperature is nothing new. In fact, there are very few "new" things introduced into the Christmas festivities, and there are 5 things you can always count on:

1) At 6PM sharp, my father begins asking, "Can I get anyone anything...?" And everyone politely declines.
2) At 6:03PM, drinking becomes acceptable, and everyone asks my father to get them a drink.
3) Christmas Eve dinner is served at 8PM. (Crab cakes or lasagna.)
4) By 9PM, we are gossiping about the crazy relatives who are a perfect combination of both creepy and boring, and we still obsessively talk about the same stories every. single. year. as if it's the first time we've heard them.
5) Christmas dinner consists of beef tenderloin with Bearnaise (don't get saucy with me, Bearnaise!), mushroom souffle, Italian green beans with tomato, onion, and garlic, roasted potatoes, copious amounts of wine, and some kind of kitchen-related disaster. (Last year my Bearnaise separated, and calling 911 was seriously considered.)

Food and drink are big traditions and trump all.

The other big tradition is the Christmas tree ornaments, in that they are traditionally weird.

We take a lovely evergreen and smother it with: retainers, hospital stay bracelets, my mother's Child Psychologist ID from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (note: my mother is neither a psychologist nor has she worked at a hospital), the fake ID I made when I was 16, business cards from first jobs, my brother-in-law's wedding boutonniere, turkey bones, my deceased Meemaw's hair roller which includes some of her white hair (naturally), the key to my deceased Paw's safe deposit box (I'd still like to see what that has to offer), my mother's broken eye glasses she ran over in the car a week before my sister's high-stress wedding, a pack of Kool cigarettes, one of my mother's veins she had removed from a varicose vein surgery in the 80s, my father's staples from his first hip replacement surgery, a NYC subway token, and a B. Altman's credit card.

Yet surprisingly, no one in my family is a serial killer...that we know of. Although secretly, we all suspect Anson of cagey doings. Remember him?

And just a side note, I forgot many of the bizarro tree ornaments we had, so I sent an email to my mother asking her to list some. She did, and she ended her email by asking me, "Is that enough? Are you making a quilt??" Apparently the intense heat in that house is scrambling her brains, because surely she knows that when we quilt we use dried animal organs and the ears of the homeless.

Weirdness aside...just kidding...I'm about to give you more weirdness.

When we sit down to Christmas dinner, before we cheers, we each open our "Christmas Cracker". (Believe me, a name not lost on any of us.) If you're unfamiliar with this English tradition (we're not English, by the way), you pull open the cracker to reveal a surprise treat and a colored paper crown to wear. This year, the prize in many was a nail cutter. And I can tell you with 100% certainty that those nail cutters will end up on the tree next year. But more importantly, you should know that all 9 of us sit through a 2+ hour dinner wearing our crowns, each looking creepier than the Burger King.

And again, in keeping with tradition, we did suffer another kitchen-related casualty. After a very hectic plating session in which my mother realized too late that we never warmed the plates (an important but unspoken rule of the house), she really tried to get those plates into that oven. But, she was expertly thwarted by Tad, who saw her coming and correctly thought, "Fuck warm plates" and aggressively threw a slice of tenderloin on each plate seconds before my mom reached them. It was honestly a genius move on his part.

Unfortunately for Tad, this would be his last genius move of the evening.

Still wearing his apron from slicing the beef, Tad put on a couple of pot holders to bring the hot rolls to the table, setting them down next to a few votive candles. Now Tad is one of the smarter people we know, so it was surprising that he couldn't foresee what would happen when you place a wooden basket lined with a paper cloth next to an open flame.

From the kitchen I hear, "OhboyOhboyOhboy!" As I stuck my head around the corner, I see Tad tippy-toeing around the table, clutching a flaming basket of buns. The apron and comically large pot holders just added to the scene. Had he been wearing a toque, I would've thought the Swedish Chef was in the dining room.

When we finally sat down to dinner, the Bearnaise was perfectly saucy, the potatoes crispy, the beans tangy,the beef juicy, and the rolls smokey.

As always, good times.