Well readers, it was a close one… and a tough one. But, by golly, we survived Christmas 2022! And we did it without freezing to death or declaring bankruptcy. Or, worse still, being poisoned by Aunt Mosey’s dreaded holiday prune cake. I’m so proud of you that I can hardly stand it! I certainly hope that all the fun and frolick of the season which we waited all year long for came to pass for you while making some joyous memories together with your loved ones. As for me I certainly had myself a lovely time despite The Great Christmas Eve Bomb Cyclone of 2022 blowing in and making this year’s Christmas holiday colder than midnight on Pluto. But no deep freeze is gonna stop us Skinnell’s from coming out and having ourselves the hurrah of the year while busting our gizzards from eating way too much home cooking. The kind of home cooking that’s guaranteed to add ten pound to your frame and which even the pickiest of eaters couldn’t possibly turn down. The tables were buckling under the weight and, naturally, after it was all over I felt like a pufferfish afterwards. I would have loved to have wandered off somewhere and hibernated for the winter but you know how it is when you’ve got a house full of guests running amuck through the place. The cardinal rule in such affairs is absolutely NO hibernating allowed! So I forced myself to stay awake and even to watch some football with the guys while they did their best impressions of being the armchair broadcasters they always dreamed of being. Personally I would have preferred commentating on the cheerleaders rather than the players but nobody listens to my great ideas anyway. Alas, I’m stuck in a world of primitive savages it seems!
On Christmas morning we all gathered together for round #2 which meant being treated to our traditional Christmas morning breakfast consisting of my Mom’s legendary coffee cake which she stubbornly refuses to make any other time of the year. This year’s coffee cake was feeling a little mischievous and had a few tricks of its own to pull because when Mom hauled it from the oven it immediately fell apart. Such an unprovoked and unexplainable event had never happened in our parts before and caught the chief cook totally off guard. The Christmas heebie-jeebies strikes again!! But hey, not a problem because we’re all adults. And hungry ones too! And we weren’t about to let that unexpected wrinkle roil our Christmas breakfast, no siree!! We didn’t waste any time digging in and that coffee cake was soon reduced to coffee crumbs that we all fought over. You just ain’t lived until you’ve had some of ma’s coffee cake, a recipe she picked up from her own grandmother as a youngin. It tasted as heavenly as ever. From there it was time to open all those darn gifts and see who scored what while offering the obligatory thank you’s irregardless of whether the gift giver deserved them or not. Which they usually didn’t. But hey, they’re still family! And after today I won’t see them again for months which makes another swell gift that I will surely enjoy all year long.
