by Danielle Dusold

Created on: January 06, 2009

When it comes to families, I have a fairly dysfunctional family. They tend to drink a lot, one has schizophrenia, and most recently one has paved the way to spending the rest of his life in a federal prison, at least he will if he's convicted of his crimes (nothing violent of course, but never the less, it's a bad situation). Before prison and the passing on of most of my family, we would kick off the holiday season with a Thanksgiving feast that would rival anything that the food network could produce. Thanksgiving was never complete without eggnog. My cousin and I would consume enough eggnog to make us both feel ill every year, and it was a requirement at our Turkey Day feast. One year grandma forgot the eggnog. Settling for chocolate milk was just not the same.

Generally we gathered for the Turkey-induced-coma-day at my Grandma's house, but occasionally we'd go to my Aunt and Uncle's house or, on that rare occasion, it was held at our home. My Grandma was never much for the cooking part of things. For every large family gathering she made this awful green bean casserole that nobody ate. Every year it would just sit there on the table. But she made it every year anyways because it was a holiday classic. It think she was missing a crucial element in that casserole, like flavor. She made a good pumpkin pie though. Even though she wasn't much of a cook, her pies were always the best part of Thanksgiving dinner. When I got older I found that she really knew how to mix a drink (and drink with the best of them) as well.

My family used to go all out for Christmas Eve. We reserved Christmas Day for staying home and spending time with our new treasures. Every year we would gather at Grandma's house and eat a feast. In my college years, the feast also consisted of multiple glasses of Cran-Raspberry Slush, which was a concoction of Frozen Cranberry Juice, Frozen Raspberry Juice, 7-Up, and Vodka, and by the time it was time to go to the Christmas Eve service at church Grandma and everyone else were half in the bag. Grandma would belt out her tunes in her perfect pitch soprano and we'd all sit in the back hoping we weren't going to hell for drinking before church. After the service was over, we'd rush back to Grandma's house to open gifts. It was a holiday tradition that my cousin and I would hand out each of the gifts to each member of our family, which included Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt, Uncle, Mom, Dad, Tyler, our schizophrenic "aunt" (my grandma's cousin), Grandma Grandma

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