Until the day she died on the day after Christmas, every Christmas Eve for 50 years of my life was spent at my Aunt Eleanor's house. It was an occasion of celebration of all of the family being together--aunts, uncles, cousins and my cherished grandparents. Everyone brought food and we had a feast every year. We exchanged names for gifts because there was simply no way gifts could be bought for every person that was there. As gifts to our grandparents each one of us arranged a small performance, some of us would sing a song, others played a Christmas carol on the instrument that they were playing in band at school and others memorized a poem or read a short story from a book. It was delightful and we all enjoyed the evening. As the great grandchildren we're old enough they joined in on the tradition. All of the family sang Christmas carols together, and because it was important to my grandparents my Uncle read the story of Bethlehem from the Bible and then we opened our gifts. After Aunt Eleanor died we tried to keep the traditions alive, but after a few years we stopped getting together anymore, and now I only hear from those cousins on Facebook.