The quagmire that is cleaning my father’s house kind of took the urgency away from reflecting on this year’s Christmas Day festivities. It also probably helped that nothing overly remarkable took place as we each fulfilled our Christmasly duties of unwrapping, thanking and eating to excess.

This was our first Christmas where we didn’t have a husky reliably sitting on the periphery, awash in crumpled wrapping paper and looking completely mystified as we tore into the mountain of presents. Also, my oldest sister was absent as she was on call in the town of Hingham, ready at a moment’s notice to rescue any budding Top Chef who might set their house on fire. Still, my sister was very much with us as her four year-old daughter and husband did a fine job of representing as little Dharma showed up sporting an “Obituary” death metal t-shirt.

“Dharma, what does that say on your shirt?”

“Slayer.”

“No honey, that’s an Obituary t-shirt.”

Also, and this is probably the most exciting bit, for the first (and probably last) time in history we got to watch something other than The Irish Tenors play on the fabulous flat screen television system that consumes the living room. It was an excellent bonus Christmas gift since visually Ray Allen is vastly superior to Ronan Tynan – no simplicity to scorn there. 

Dharma, my niece, gets the Nobel Prize for Honesty in terms of letting us know what she thought of her Christmas presents. Thinking that I could actually control the mayhem that is present dissemination, I volunteered to hand gifts out one at a time so that everyone could see and appreciate the thoughtfulness that went into a month’s worth of credit card charges.

As the first recipient of Christmas charity, Dharma opened the inaugural gift to a room of hushed family members by loudly proclaiming with disgust: “I didn’t want this!”  As a family that always insists on manners, we didn’t know how to respond to such candor. I looked around at the presents nearby, and I swear to God each one had a gift tag made out to Dharma. Maybe a different gift would evoke a better response, I thought, but alas, this was not meant to be. You can imagine how the cockles of our hearts were thoroughly doused in gasoline after she described her follow-on gift as “They’re just pencils!”  It quickly became comical after she opened the box to her third gift (from me), where the actual item was wrapped up in newspaper; she refused to see anything beyond the newsprint that was laid inside the box and told us “It’s just trash!”

 She really is a cute kid, but just like all Hallinans, it takes time for her to warm up to a situation.

I don’t have kids, so I really can’t say much more on the subject, except that it was kinda funny. Besides, I personally got what I wanted for Christmas -namely, to be home with my family. On top of that I was served an excellent wine treeside that helped grease the gift dissemination skids, and I even got my very own wolf t-shirt. My mom put on a great spread of food and my father actually stayed at the turkey carving station long enough to cut more than a slab of bird for himself before heading to the table. 

The nicest thing about family gatherings and relations getting older? No one can be sent to his or her room for outlandish shenanigans or requests for tax advice; instead we are all stuck to cope with such theatrics in our own special ways.