Silent Night, Holy Night

When Bryce and Annie were babies, we started the tradition of having a live nativity on Christmas Eve. In theory, it should be the epitome of everything I like about religious traditions-- it's familiar, we sing good songs, the story is simple but meaningful, and it's over quickly. We have a quick dinner of chili, cornbread and salad (a weird Christmas Eve dinner, I know, but tradition nonetheless), then open up our Pandora's Box of costumes. But as our kids have grown, the even has gotten less, ahem, reverent. This year the wise men presented Baby Jesus with gifts of Coke Zero, Mountain Dew, and a whoopee cushion.

"Atari is basically the oldest gaming system so it works as part of my costume"

Booted from her longstanding role as Baby Jesus, Maren attempts to look angelic

Joseph's ride to Bethlehem was pretty tiring

Wise guy #1

#2

#3

Inkeepers rehearse while Granddad tries to keep a yet-to-be-born Son of God quiet

Red-- it's my color

The inkeepers are now shepherds-- we multitask in this house

Holy Family

Baby Jesus has two Mommies too

The good news is that it's over in about five minutes, which gives us a chance to redeem the Spirit of Christmas. It may not be as quiet and reverent as it once was, but I don't see us giving up the tradition any time soon. We soon sat down near the Christmas tree for the other big tradition of the night-- the Christmas book and jammies. Every Christmas, the kids all get new jammies and we get a Christmas book for the family. This one has a long story including my parents' one copy of a rare Scandinavian book that had one US printing, a sister who is a thief, a search of used book stores over the course of several years, an impulse purchase from eBay, a slow shipment from media mail that made the book arrive after Christmas in 2010, and two sisters spending most of Christmas Eve dividing up their hale and hearty mother's earthly possessions to ward off future thievery on the part of the aforementioned younger sister. That's why I look so happy in the pictures. I made her read my kids every page of the dang book as penance (also, I had laryngitis).

We drugged all the kids and sent them to bed, then got down to the real work of the night-- setting out the presents:

That was way, way too many pictures, but I have a new camera. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.