ᴍᴀᴅᴇʟɪɴᴇ ᴀɴᴅ sᴀᴍ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ʙᴀsɪᴄᴀʟʟʏ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴘᴇᴏᴘʟᴇ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ᴄᴏɴsɪᴅᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴇxᴛʀᴏᴠᴇʀᴛs ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ ɢʀᴏᴜᴘ. Me? I was the (mostly) doom-and-gloom introvert. Work broke me out of my shell somewhat, but I was still the one who preferred to sit at home with a cup of coffee and a book rather than do anything else. When I was sitting on the couch with my feet up and watching Netflix, the front door opened with a squeak. I yawned and pressed pause on the movie.

     "Lila? Nico? Are you and Abuelo back from food shopping already?" I called into the hall. Then the light bulb went off. Why would they use the front door especially when they had a key to the garage door? C'mon, Ella, I thought to myself. I took a wooden broom and held it like a bo staff as I walked into the hall.

     The broom dropped to the floor with a thud and a clang. The two people turned around and I glared at them. "¡Ay coñyo! You have a key, yes, but knock first! I was ready to kill you if I needed too!" I said in between bouts of hysterical laughter at my response. The two women seemed to have just realised my train of thought and broke out laughing.

     "Did you think a person trying to break into the house would use the front door? Really?" Madeline asked me with a raised eyebrow.

     "Maybe? But also, you know I never really rely on common sense when decisions are being made!" I replied easily.

     "It has been over twenty years and things never change," Madeline muttered.

     "I heard that," I told her before turning to Sam. "I thought you would be in Armenia wayfaring around all of Eastern Europe performing music therapy for the elderly or the orphans. What exactly are you doing here?"

     "SURPRISE! I AM HERE TO CELEBRATE JESUS' BIRTH WITH MY NONCATHOLIC BEST FRIEND!" Sam launched into a hug and almost squeezed my ribs to the literal breaking point. I heard cracks in odd places. I could not breathe. I was the smallest person of the three of us. I broke easily too.

     "Ah, ouch! Ow!" I hissed as I tried to breathe. "Samantha Marie, get the frick off me now! Before I go all Buffy on your arse!" The extremely hyper twenty-six-year old let me go at the threat of my slightly superior combat skills. I wouldn't actually go through with it, and everyone knew that, but I normally only threaten when I get my ribs crushed... or something of the sort.

     I rubbed my ribs and glared slightly at my friends before yawning and changing the mood. "Want to help us finish decorating the house?"

     "YES! YES! YES! I LOVE CHRISTMAS DECORATING!"

     "Sure," Madeline replied. "What do you need us to do?"

     I thought about this for a second. I glanced around the room and found that the angel was not on the Christmas tree. It was never my job to place it up there because of my vertically challenged stature. I normally left it to Matt, but, as work would have it, he was working until four today. Not that I was bitter, not at all. It was really my fault. I had been too lazy to start the decorating until—

     ["Ella, you are self-deprecating again."]

     ["Let me self-deprecate, Matthew Ryan Evans."]

     ["Nope. Not a chance. I hadn't for the entire time I have known you, and I won't start now."]

     ["Can I continue?"]

     ["Right. Go ahead."]

     I was too lazy to start the decorating until now. It so happened that my best friends were extremely tall. An idea formed in my head and I gave them a smile. "I need you to put the angel on the tree," I explained.

     "Really? That's all?" Sam whined.

     I glanced at Madeline with a raised eyebrow as if to say, "And you say that I am the childish one?".

     Madeline and I had known each other since we were nine-years-old. As we grew older, we had different beliefs and personalities but we always stayed in touch. And, aside from my sisters Jo and Nic, she was the first person I called if I needed anything. Nan, her grandmother (and my third grandma by extension), had passed on around our freshmen year of college and I took off work and school just to be there for her. I knew that she needed me before anyone opened their mouths. And she did the same when my grandparents passed on as well. We knew each other better than anyone.

     "I think it's a good idea to start with this job before taking on too much," Madeline interceded after she gave me the "Yes, and you still are" look.

     "But what about the tinsel? And sparkly things? And the mistletoe? I don't see any of that! I wanna have sparkle and Christmas and popcorn garland!" Sam exclaimed all in one breath (and rather loudly).

      "Sam, you are twenty-six and acting like you're five," I reminded her. "Sparkle and tinsel aren't the biggest concern. Even Lila would agree if she was here." The younger woman pushed up her glasses and gave me her "disappointed-that-you-don't-agree" look. I gave her a look of my own. It was a quick glance and Sam sighed. "Fine," she muttered and slightly stomped off into the blue formal living room.

      "She is more childish than you," Madeline told me with a wry smile. "But you are childish in your own way."

      "I'm aware. Slightly." Together, the two of us started to laugh and then Sam yelled for one of us to help her. It was times like these when Madeline decided to make lunch because she did not want to deal with another minute of Sam's over-hyperactivity due to it being Christmas. 

     I understood, but I trained well for this day. I walked into the blue formal living room and a wave of cold nostalgia hit me. For a moment, I was a child again. My mother hung two ornaments from her ears and made Jo laugh at her absurdity. The laugh became infectious and everyone began to laugh. Even my grandmother who had been reprimanding my mom only moments before. The lights were dimmer than usual in the blue room as my sisters and I decorated the plastic copy of a true fir.

     My grandfather brought back pizza for dinner.

     This was a happier time in my childhood, roughly five years before I knew how bad things were going to get for both of my grandparents' health.

     I could literally hear my grandmother screaming, "Gerald! We're in here! Come look at your daughter!", to him betwixt the explosions of laughter that erupted from her chest like lava from a volcano. I had never seen my grandmother laugh that hard until that point.

     Then Cards Against Humanity got introduced a couple of years later...

     That's a whole other story.

     "G-Girl? A-are you okay?" The question broke me from my flashback and I grinned at Sam with a bit of melancholy.

     "Sometimes this house has too many ghosts," I replied perhaps a bit too cryptically. I shook my mind free of the thoughts and clapped my hands together. "Ready to put the angel up?" I asked her.

    "Ooh! Yes!" Sam practically hopped out of the room. "I'll get the stepstool!"

    Well, it took us a while but we finally got the angel to be straight and well-balanced on the tree's top. Sam had practically collapsed on the couch afterwards but popped back up again when Madeline raised her eyebrow at the food she "made". "This isn't healthy. I thought we talked about this in senior year," was her only response to the confused look I gave her.

     I shrugged and took a handful of jalapeno poppers to place on my plate. "Hey, they're a good, quick snack for the kids. I also have pop tarts in the pantry."

    "Yeah, I saw that. I thought you hated s'mores pop tarts?" Sam questioned with some remnants of food in her mouth.

     "I do. Matt, on the other hand, doesn't. So both flavours live in a chaotic harmony in our pantry."

     A collective "oh" filled the bright blue formal seating area. (My grandmother must have been rolling in her grave if she saw us eating the fried food in her formal area.) After we finished our quick snack, I took out the Bluetooth speaker from its hiding space. "So, who wants to help me put up the lights? We can listen to Mariah Carey and have some eggnog," I told the two conspiratorially. Both women laughed at me and nodded.

     I did not think this through.

A special thanks to h-hurley for the beautiful banners you see at the beginning of the chapters now! I hope, if you read the book, you have enjoyed the loosely connected short-stories of the Evans' family Christmas. Up next, light checking, eggnog drinking, and parents dancing on coffee tables! For my question of the note: What is your favourite Christmas/Holiday tradition?