About three weeks ago I ran a competition on these hallowed pages in which I invited you, my patient readers, to regale me with tales of how Christmas officially starts in your house. I promised a prize for the one which made me laugh the most.
A few days later I promised I had not forgotten that I had to award a prize.
Then today I realized that I had.
For which I am truly ashamed.
Anyway. The belated, although thorougly deserving winner is J. whose story made me laugh so much I nearly did a wee:
It is here:
We have the teetering pile of Christmas cards, too. Usually I hang up a ribbon and pin them on (with cute tiny clothespins or rusty nasty paper clips–whatever comes to hand first) but we are preparing to move house and I can’t be bothered this year.
Christmas officially kickstarts in my family with several of us seated around the decorated tree in my dad’s family room with glasses in hand, carols tinkling on the stereo in the background. The doorbell rings, and my stepmother leaps up and says “That’s X! [Insert horrifying new revelation about X's life here] but don’t say anything!!!” before running to open the door and ushering X in with hugs and cries of “Merry Christmas!” (X=any one of the various relatives in our huge family.) Previous horrifying revelations have included X breaking up with their spouse, X’s spouse being sent to prison for dealing cocaine to support her habit, X getting back together with a spouse he had previously divorced, X’s illegitimate pregnancy, Xs losing his/her jobs, X’s house being foreclosed upon, X’s miscarriage, X’s horrible new medical diagnosis, X abandoning his spouse on vacation in China, etc. No one knows why our stepmother does this, but she does it without fail every year.
So J. If you are still around and haven’t flitted off to blogstures new, drop a comment in the comment box and I will e-mail you about a prize. As previous winners of my competitions will attest, the prizes are random, bizarre and unpredictable. It all depends on what I feel like when I go out to buy it. So I can’t tell you what it will be, but it will be something you probably haven’t got. You may wish you still hadn’t got it when it arrives, but it will make an interesting raffle prize in the summer fete tombola.
Note to J – Katy does amazingly good presents
Sharon
Why thank you for the big up.x
Here I am! However, I am in the U.S.A. So if the prize is 3-D (vs. virtual) and you would like to save postage and send the prize to someone closer to your postal code, I’ll understand.
p.s. This year’s horrible Christmas revelation was that one of the grandchildren is being sent to behavioral therapy for, among other things, being unable to control his anger. After my stepmother made this announcement, the child in question came bouncing in and kicked my dad (his step-grandpa, the only grandpa the child knows, and who is coincidentally the most laid-back grandpa ever in the history of grandpas) in the shin.
J
Have mailed you. Prize is going to be on its way eventually.x