Campus Life

Christmas Morning Thoughts

I always love waking up when I am at school. In the little apartment that I share with three friends is always full of laughs, stories, and jokes. Most of the time, one of us (if not all) will always be up to post pone work to hang out for a little bit. I love the mornings where we have to rack our brains together to figure out what to make for breakfast, having it take forever because we get distracted with events from the previous night or past memories. But with that all said, there truly is no place like home.

As I awoke this Christmas morning, the house was filled with the smell of good old fashioned mom’s cooking. I don’t know how she does it, but I will go as far to say that my mother is the best cook in the world. She prepares everything so that it is piping hot when served and she makes sure that she has something on the table that everybody likes. My brother David was cleaning up the wrapping paper from the previous in lieu of playing with his over-sized Nerf gun he received from his best friend since early childhood.

My Christmas morning is not like the traditional Christmas morning in America, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Our Christmas starts on Christmas Eve. We have a dinner that we have had for as long as I can remember, with just a few additions and subtractions. We have the breaking of bread, Spanish rice, green beans, shrimp, some sort of fish, Cole slaw, and bread. We don’t have meat at our Christmas Eve dinner, nor will I ever for fear of the repercussions that Grandpa Orzell will have upon us. For dessert we have home made cookies, candy, and mom’s homemade dessert rolls. Her biggest hit is the pumpkin roll in which she makes. Everybody raves about it and fortunately for myself, I know the secret recipe. Hopefully one day, I will be able to make one just like she does.

I’m not sure how it got started, I am assuming from a Polish tradition of Grandpa O. As a child, after dinner Uncle Chet would take my two brothers, J.T and David, on a Christmas walk to look for Santa Claus. On our walk, which sometimes was a drive because NEPA gets very cold at this time of year, we would leave cookies outside of our house for Santa and carrots for his Reindeer. After about fifteen minutes of searching and thirty false sightings, we would return home. Every year, as we approached the front door to our home, sleigh bells would ring. Wide eyed and grinning my brothers and I would run into the house searching for him, but Santa always out smarted us. When we would walk through the front door, the den would be filled with packages to the ceiling. We would have to wait patiently for the presents to be passed out, but being patient seldom worked. As we tore through packages, we would sometimes forget what we got. However we never forgot about our favorite present; mine was an Upsey Daisy Doll. She was dressed in a white t-shirt with pink overalls, blonde hair, big blue eyes and white shoes. She would crawl across the floor and then would fall to the ground.

Over the years Christmas has changed. We have gone from asking for toys, to asking Santa for clothes and the latest gadget. No longer do we go on Christmas walks, Santa just secretively drops the presents up in an upstairs bed room while we are eating dinner. However we still have that twinkle in our eyes when we get something that is just out of this world, or that one thing we wanted more than anything else. We also have grown to realize and understand the importance of family. It is around this time that people realize how much their family means to them. Things change, people change, and time changes but one thing is for certain. My family will always be my family and for this I am grateful. I am a very lucky girl.

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday, and a Wonderful New Year.