“Christmas is like candy; it slowly melts in your mouth sweetening every taste bud, making you wish it could last forever.”
Earlier in our life, we hosted Christmas Dinner and had as many as forty people join us. We would cook for days and buy the biggest ham, turkey and prime rib we could fine.
This year we had Sue’s family visiting from northern California visiting plus the Chartier clan fron Connecticut in addition to my family who live locally.. about 25 or so!
Plenty of food for all 
GAthering at the long table 
Surrounded by Family 
Christmas Day 2000 in California with the Chartiers and Porters + Dave and Laurie
At the end of the evening the image that will always stick with me is our big Marine Sergeant reading Christmas Stories to his two daughters plus Hannah and Lisa. Ratchet forward and now these girls are mommies, lawyers, restaurant manager, and child care specialists!
As time progressed and families grew up we did NOT want to “force” them to come to our place anymore and have 1) feelings hurt, 2) kids driving all over God’s green acres, and 3) eating three Christmas dinners! So we decided to start a new tradition about ten years ago…we would take after “A Christmas Story” and go to the local Chinese Restaurant! Whoever wanted to could join us!
The movie took place in the late 1940’s and in the closing of the movie, the next-foor neighbors dogs entered the house and devoured the Christmas Dinner…nothing edible remained.
The Dad said something like “We are going to have turkey for Christmas dinner so everyone get in the car!”. They drove around the town and the only place open was a Chinese restaurant named Bo Ling, Chop Suey Palace/ This scene is so funny…between the singing and the entrance and demise of the “turkey” we laugh so hard we hurt every year! Every year it gets funnier!
So we started asked our friends who otherwise would be home alone to join us! We have had thirty one year and this year we had twenty including our daughter Robin and son Joe!
We make reservations well ahead of time and use their entire bar area where they have a 60″ wide screen TV. We begin at 3:00 PM and usually stay until 6:00 PM or so! We bring a DVD/BlueRay played and run the movie twice as dinner unfolds.
It’s funny how many people who enter the restaurant stop and watch the movie with us. In fact, we leave the DVD/BlueRay player there for the rest of the evening so people can continue to watch it.
Note: In the 1983 movie, a group of Asian waiters from Chop Suey Inn sang “Deck the Halls” for the Parker family on Christmas Day. That scene was supposedly “funny” because they sang “Fa la la la la” as “Fa ra ra ra ra.” In live plays today the scene was changed because of the PC Police and the wait staff sing it flawlessly…destroys the humor. PC destroys everything!
By the end of the evening, I was not feeling great so we crashed about 9:00 PM. I apparently acquired a cold somewhere along the way!
