Last night was spent at the ancestral home. Drawing from memories of winters spent under my parents' roof, I piled on half a dozen blankets and fitted myself with a wool cap. There was only one interruption after lights out, that by the combined, stifling retention of heat from half a dozen blankets, one wool cap and a feline trio which made itself a living comforter at the foot of the bed.
Wide awake but fervid, and so perhaps of somewhat impetuous judgment, I stumbled down the hall and broke the sleep of the occupants of the bedroom at the end of hall — leaving only when the question of my having tightly closed the door to the church after Christmas Eve service, something I couldn't, for the life of me, place in any certain memory at four-thirty in the morning, was answered in the affirmative. To bed I returned, minus cap, pajama shirt, worries, and one of three cats.
This morning, the gift exchange around the tree began the latest it ever has, about nine-thirty. Coffee, juice, chocolate, light breakfast on holiday plates; all intercalated among the unwrapping, thank-yous, laughs. I got books, books and more books. And one copy of A Charlie Brown Christmas, which is said to be as vital to the season as that from which it is in spirit derived, the Bible.
No lunch — chips and York Peppermint Patties took care of any lingering hunger. We all got ready, retiring at three-thirty to my apartment for dinner and fellowship. My kitchen was finally cooked in, inspected and cleaned by my mother, which is a little like having royalty christen with a bottle across a hull. I taught my father the card game Magic. The game is intuitive but complicated, and he started out from a position of disinterest. When the old man grew eagerly impatient with my tutorial I should have realized that he was two steps from catching on — three out of four rounds went to him.
The evening ended sweetly at half-past eight. I write this now, then I will nurse coffee with cream, and then Christmas, God bless it, has passed for one more year.