This will close out my Christmas series.  Two themes:

First, Christmas morning.  As I alluded earlier, we took pride in being the first up in our neighborhood.  My sisters began this tradition, and I will be ever grateful to them.

We would typically awake at 4:00 a.m. or so to begin the negotiations.  One would be appointed to approach the still darkened door of our parents' bedroom and ask whether it were time.  Strategically, of course, the parents could never accept our opening offer...it would be perceived as weakness, and we would have arisen earlier each year.  As it was, it typically took 4-5 approaches to wear them down, so by 5:00 a.m. we were in the kitchen awaiting Dad's getting the light right for his movie camera, and filming a panoramic scene of the still pristine, gift-laden living room.  He would at intervals stick his head out and predict our disappointment at the dearth of booty to be seen.  95% of our brain wrote this off as typical Dad  nonsense, but there was always that 5% that worried that maybe this year he was being truthful.

At last we were allowed to enter, and, counter to the tradition Jeanne thankfully introduced into our family, mayhem ensued where it was every wo/man for him/herself, and you didn't come up for air until everything with your name on it had been unwrapped and undone.  The formerly lovely display (Dad had it on record!) became a wasteland of paper and ribbon scraps.  Only then did we try to sort out Mom's and Dad's gifts and take any interest in our siblings presents.  There was no thought of breakfast.

Two interesting asides: first, no matter what we had asked Santa for, we were so excited by what we got, we usually forgot what we asked for that was not received; second, because we were first to arise in our neighborhood, we had to wait to show off our new things to our friends, usually for as much as an hour, which seemed like forever.

The second theme: while Christmas Eve was a time for our immediate or nuclear family, with few guests, Christmas Day was another thing entirely.  Once we had showed off our toys to our friends and straightened our Christmas mess to a reasonable degree, we usually made a pilgrimage to Payson where 80% of my Mom's living siblings and their families resided: Lionel & Geneva; Mike and Annie; Erma and Roy (Jasperson); and Vera and Claude (Newton).  Grandma would join us in the early years (until her death in 1963), and so whatever home in which the gathering occurred was stuffed to the brim...and we loved it.  These were times of getting to know and love our extended families.  We always returned to Orem filled to the gills with home-made delights and memories to last a year.