The Goff Family’s Traditions

by Bonnie Ramsburg

I don’t remember when we started doing it. Probably after my brother was old enough to understand what was going on. But we would decorate our tree on or around my mom’s birthday, which is December 12th. And we don’t usually take it down until after the New Year starts.

Our tree isn’t fancy; it’s been a fake one for more years than I can remember. And mom absolutely HAS to have thousands upon thousands of lights on it. We still put handmade ornaments on it from when my brother and I were kids. I’ve added new ornaments over the years, but they fit the scheme of our tree to perfection, which isn’t a set theme. It’s homey; it’s us and our likes and tastes. We don’t let fashion dictate what we should do; even though I’ve often thought about doing a tree in a certain color scheme and style, I just can’t bring myself to start from scratch with all new ornaments, and besides, we aren’t that kind of family. And we have a system for decorating it. Mom puts on the lights and garland; then my brother and I would put on the rest of the decorations. When we don’t have pets, mom would put icicles on after we were done.

Ohhhh, and we cannot forget the “Special Ornaments.” My mom has a box of ornaments from her grandmother. For the longest time, mom was the only one that was allowed to put them on. Because of the reverence we all showed these ornaments, I thought they were priceless heirloom pieces. When my cat broke one, I thought for sure him and I both would be disowned. Then I found out they were from a Five and Dime store and I was floored! Yet they are still priceless heirloom pieces, because they are something that came from my great-grandmother.

Then there’s Christmas morning! My parents wouldn’t let us come downstairs until after they had went down, turned all the Christmas lights on and made sure all the presents were under the tree; sometimes there were gifts that couldn’t be wrapped, so just in case any little nosey nellies decided to make a trip downstairs to see what Santa had brought, they would wait till Christmas morning to put those gifts out. I’m almost 100% positive that they waited until the first pot of coffee was made for my dad before they let us come down too.

And who can forget Christmas Dinner? Oh my! We’d have turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits, dressing and some sort of vegetable (ALL of it homemade, just to make you jealous!), plus mom always made homemade pumpkin pie! We usually only had a meal like that one other time of the year and that was at Thanksgiving!

I hope you enjoyed reading about The Goff Family Traditions. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! One of the two reasons the presents didn't get put out till morning