Toooo much Christmas!

This picture is of a small portion of the Christmas gifts that arrived at my mom's house for our family gathering yesterday.
Our Christmas gathering begins with everyone stumbling through the door looking over a pile of teetering packages. The sight of all this booty, once it's piled in my 82 year old mother's living room has become a point of discussion for the last three years.
"This is obscene! We need to do something about this!"
Finally, this year, with the pounding of a fist on a tabletop and a call to, "Order in the house! Listen Up!", we have come to an agreement to change.
So, names of each member were written and drawn. Now, there will be one gift held by each person entering the house next year.
Family traditions die hard. This one's time had come.
Have a merry,
Ronnie

Early Christmas Gathering

This is an exemplary example of how NOT to take a photo of a flaming Christmas pudding in a dark room!
The family gathered early this year. Lots of delicious food and our first real traditional Christmas pudding! We have two English folk in our family.
My younger sister prepared the flaming extravaganza right out of the pages of her new Nigella Christmas Cookbook. This is a potent concoction, mind you. Two cups of sherry and then more to pour over at serving time in order to get the grand flaming entrance.
The lights were lowered and sister ignited the pud' in the kitchen, picked it up and turned for the living room. Followed by a hoard of jumping grandsons and ooooing adults the procession began. It became interesting when some of the flaming liquid sloshed over the side of the platter. Fireballs were literally rolling across the wood floor behind her! Older sister calmly exclaimed, "There's fire on the floor. One of the English yelled, "It's on my foot"!
After a lot of Stomp! Stomp! Stomp! all was well and everyone was laughing hysterically at the close call.