When I was younger, my family would always have this big, all-day Christmas dinner with mashed potatoes, a bird, cranberry sauce, ham, spinach, collard greens, and all this other stuff – basically, Thanksgiving round two, but with cool presents and shit. While our mom was cooking, we would open up cards from the tree and then we would wrap up about the time my mom was done cooking. When she was, we’d take turns opening our presents and revealing to everyone else what we got. We had already opened one the night before, usually. This didn’t stop until after we both stopped believing in Santa. We would also sit around and watch A Christmas Story all day. I think that it’s the perfect Christmas movie and it reminds me of home whenever I watch it. I’ve seen it probably a thousand times by now. Most of these other rituals were stopped after I turned eleven or so. My parents started outwardly showing that they hated each other and they didn’t have time for “holiday bullshit” anymore.