"Traditional" Christmas

The Targo's family doesn't have many traditions. I find this very strange because they seem like a fairly tight-knit group of people. But, these thoughts of "what the hell have I married into" and looks of horror have multiplied since we started talking more and more about Christmas.

Over the past six years, I've split Christmas with the Targo. This year, I am spending Christmas Eve with his family. Unfortunately, I have no time off, so I can't go home. That means I have to leave my mom alone with my most AWFUL and HEINOUS sister-in-law. She knows who she is. *cough* Succubus. Anyway, the whole marriage thing really made me wonder what the Targo family did for Christmas when he was a little boy. I asked him over crack coffee the other night.

The scene: The Gayest Caribou Coffee in Chicago. Two or three very beautiful couples and a random homeless person occupy the coffee house. We're on our third version of "Winter Wonderland" in fifteen minutes. I'm trying to talk seriously about our future. He's enjoying the peppermint bark he just purchased for $5.

Me: What did you and your parents do every Christmas or Christmas Eve? Did you and your brother open one present that night? Did you go to Midnight Mass? Anything like that?

Targo: No. We didn't really do anything like that. I think my tradition was playing with all of my badass toys.

Me: That's not a tradition. Traditions are something you want to pass down to your children, not something you'd do anyway.

In my head I was totally bitch-slapping him for his lack of ability to think outside the box.

Targo: What Christmas traditions did you have?

Me: Omigod TONS! My dad's family gathered on Christmas Eve. We'd, well they, would drink terrible wine from a box, sing carols, and eat an entire ring of shrimp!

The Targo looked at me with what could only be described as complete "What-Everrrrr."

Me: Ok. On Christmas day we would go to my great grandparents' house and eat until we could hardly move and finish the night up by going to a movie.

Again with the eye-rolling.

We started talking about what we'd like to do as Christmas traditions. I'm a huge fan of midnight mass. Our family did it when I was little, but got away from it when the boxes of wine got too popular. The Targo doesn't seem to have much inspiration.

We'll have to continue thinking on this. In the end, all this conversation did for me was make me realize that if we have kids, we have really got to be a little more creative. I mean, come on - we're probably going to spend our Christmas Day watching TiVo, marvelling at global warming by the Lake, drinking coffee, and an enthralling three hours of Apocalypto. I guess I would have enjoyed that as a child, but I've got a little more hope of normalcy for my offspring.