Delivery!

Pigment ink on Bristol Board which turned out to already have a drawing started on the other side.. 11"x14"

Christmas has officially begun at my house. The tree is up and most of the decorations are hung. I love Christmas! I love everything about Christmas. I make no apologies for Christmas. I make no apologies to those who do not celebrate it or celebrate a different form. They are welcome to my home and my parties if I know them and if they are my friends. I greet them a Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays or Have a nice day. It's Christmas and so it shall be. It has no other name for me. I celebrate it as much as I can.

We have many traditions, mostly from my childhood which was a lot of fun, austere in materialism yet rich in joy and mirth, food and sharing. My parents loved Christmas and they did not lecture us about the true meaning of Christmas because we knew and the lessons that come with it were taught to us everyday. So we did not have practices or say things to appear politically correct or avant-garde that year. In fact there was hardly any of that, we had a traditional Christmas, a religious celebration. I received a new pair of shoes and a new dress to wear for church and the family portrait. My sister and I shared a new doll. If we were lucky, we received toy gifts from our relatives but we did not ask for much. We had no list, we did not want to stress our mother by asking for things we could not afford although I remember asking for toy guns every year and I was so happy to receive them. They had powder bullets and I pretended to be a cowboy. Since we have Chinese relatives we also had Chinese celebrations and food, a lot of sticky cakes wrapped in red and gold, even though some of them were Buddhists. Mostly we cooked a lot of food. My favorite cooking chore was grating the cheese for the macaroni salad and my favorite foods were but-ong, a sticky rice wrapped in a banana leaf cone and cooked in coconut milk; ibus, which was intricately wrapped in palm leaf and puto and bibingka cupped steamed in cupped banana leaves.

I love Christmas parties. I met The Viking at a Christmas party. Christmas parties are a good place to meet men, better than meeting them at a bar which I never visited, therefore had no chance, because I do not drink except twice a year - half a glass of Piesporter Auslese on Thanksgiving and Christmas. I do not like champagne. I never had beer all my life, I have no desire to taste it, yet I love stemware and will fill it up with some other drink. I also love reading about wine; I buy the latest edition of Hugh Johnson's wine book and I like buying bottles of wine. I was nine months pregnant with my son and there I was at Spec's pushing a cart full of wine cases and bottles for our Christmas and New Year's Eve parties and who do I meet in the German wine section?...my primary physician!

I do not like people who get inebriated and intoxicated. As a nurse I worked every Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Eve so the nurses with families may celebrate these holidays with their families. I always worked the trauma rooms and said the same prayer every time I entered them, that no one will die or be maimed by a drunk driver. The smell of alcohol and blood lingers in my mind. It's an awful smell and visions of our trauma room with blood everywhere are still vivid. Christmas is not joyful for everyone. I hated calling the families to tell them of their dead relatives. I try to be cognizant of that in my merry making and remind my children that some holidays are painful for others, so it's right for them to be sad.

I love Christmas carols. I love Ella Fitzgerald, The Carpenters, Dean Martin, Manheim Steamroller, Burl Ives, and Brenda Lee singing Christmas carols. I especially love Bing Crosby and David Bowie (yes) singing a medley of Little Drummer Boy and Peace on Earth.

We all love to watch classic Christmas movies like A Year Without a Santa, Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer. I watch A Christmas Story and I get excited every time I see the Fiesta dishes.

We have a family tradition. Every New year's Eve we get together as a family and have a family photograph. It is a tradition my father started and I love it. In 1973 I left home before Christmas to attend an international Girl Scout encampment. I arrived in Manila and was met by my sister. She was unable to go home because of her professorial responsibilities, so we celebrated a very quiet Christmas together and then after camp, we celebrated New year's Eve together again. I remember walking hand in hand with her at the university campus, I am so proud of my eldest sister! When I was in New Jersey, I celebrated my holidays with another elder sister and friends and we had our photographs taken on New Year's Eve. I sent them home to my parents to show them my extended family. My mother loved to hear me talk about every one of my friends. She always asked about them. How I wish I could tell her about my sisterfriends.

I wish you a happy Christmas season celebration with your family and friends.