Advent Calendar - December 7 - Holiday Parties

At Geneabloggers.com (a group of worldwide genealogist writing about their family history) the prompts or suggested ideas for the month relate to the Advent season. This is my third (hopefully not last) post using the Advent prompts.

Our prompt for today is:  Holiday Parties

Did your family throw a holiday party each year? Do you remember attending any holiday parties?

I don't remember parties for Christmas as a child...but it seems that after marriage the month of December was one BIG party...there were church parties, school parties, girl scout and boy scout parties, a party for the soccer team.  And although there was not a 'party' for the annual 'Holiday' dance recital our daughter was in - we would always make a big party out of it by eating out afterward or just going to Bob's Big Boy for Ice Cream Sundaes.

There was the year we had all the family at our house - my parents and 4 brothers and sisters, with their spouses and children.  I think there were about 30 of us total.  I think this was done to surprise my parents. Santa arrived with gifts (books) for all the kids.  My nephew Danny went up to Santa after all the gifts were given and asked him: 'can I trade this book for a truck Santa?'...too funny!

After all of our kids grew up we continued to 'party' (just not as often)...we call them 'reunions'....all the family we had would come - cousins, second cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, first cousins once removed, etc, and the list goes on.  

In 1995 we used the clubhouse near where my cousin lived and filled it to the brim with about 50+.  Santa again had time to visit! 

Alas, the parties have dwindled and we don't do nearly as much 'partying' as we used to do.  It's been 15 years since our last 'reunion'...the matriarchs and patriarchs of the families have died and there just does not seem to be the interest there used to be.  I tried to organize a 'reunion' this year but it 'plopped'....I sent invites to 130 descendants of my mom and her sister, Margaret Troyer Post and Dorothy Troyer Haines, only to get less than 25 positive responses.  We're still going to do a small 'reunion' this weekend at my sister's house with those 25 'positive' people....I LOVE POSITIVE!

We must remember though that the biggest party of every Christmas day should be the one celebrating the birth of Jesus....it's His birthday after all!

Mary Post Warren

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