Sibling Revelry and Christmas 2k10: Reflections on Break

Crazy siblings on Christmas Eve

Well, it’s a new year, and the new semester has been underway for four weeks now. Which is crazy because it’s my last semester of undergrad. But besides that, I’ve been reflecting on the past year and on this past break which has been the best Christmas/holiday/between semesters break ever! I’m not even kidding. I say that a lot about various breaks, but this one has been exceptionally good. It’s been pretty crazy busy and it’s made me realize how wonderful my family, siblings, and friends are.

Rudolph!

First off, I have the best brothers ever and I love all our crazy weird sibling traditions. We decorated the tree together as per usual, listening to our amazing Christmas music mix of obscure and popular 90’s bands, Elvis Costello, the Chieftains, Relient K, Ben Gibbard and other Indie stuff. (On a side note, this song I discovered by Slow Club is probably my new favorite version of that Christmas song. Their regular non-Christmas stuff is pretty good too). Nothing like some good old 90’s pop renditions of your favorite songs mixed with rowdy Christmas Irish music while you’re decorating the tree with all those beloved ornaments you made in 1^st grade, the old wooden ones, and to the prettier nicer ones. I had my ceremonial placing of my favorite wooden Rudolph ornament on the tree first, front, and center. And for some reason, sibling decorating is still fun as an adult, albeit much different than when we were kids; for one thing it doesn’t take as long.

Cheesy tree decorating poses

The goal is to look like you're on a JCPenney Commercial

Then there’s our Christmas Eve tradition of me working like a Donna Reed fiend in the kitchen, doing woman work in an apron like I should. (And that was meant in good taste). Followed by watching it’s a Wonderful Life on TV before going to Midnight Mass. The Aged P’s had opted for the early morning Shepherd’s Mass, so we snapped some pics of us in our Christmas duds to surprise them in the morning. I guess what sums up sibling revelry the most was while watching Elf until 4am and those deep discussions we tend to have late at night, my brother Conor said: “When we’re all married with kids and stuff, we’ll still all get together like this and it’ll be like Parenthood!” And we all agreed, although I hope with certainly much less drama. It has been a lot of change over the past few years with all of us getting older, and now I’m getting ready to finish college, and my brothers are in their third year of college and high school respectively. But I think we’ve all grown to appreciate each other even more as we’re all nearly grown up. In a way, we’ve grown closer, and even though I’m excited about being back at school for my last semester, I will miss our sibling revelry.

Doing his best Kenny from South Park impersonation

Jamming around the Christmas Tree

Sometimes this holiday season is jokingly known among my family as the season of hard feelings and blame, which ironically is a Kelly Rippa quote. Because you know, everyone always seems to dread having to deal with family and :shudder: people you knew from high school! Really, I’ve learned that it’s not so bad. There are only so many times a year you get to catch up with all these people. Over break I was able to spend some time hanging out with old friends from high school again, which is always fun. Because break would not be complete without chilling at B-dubs, a thrifting trip to the Salvation Army, or gallivanting through downtown Royal Oak. Similar to how sibling relationships continue to grow as you do, it’s the same with my best friends from back then. You picked your best friends in high school for a reason, and it is often for those same reasons that they remain solid friends even after that. They were the friends you picked not based on popularity or the status it gave you, but because they were the people you could relate to on a more complex level than that, based more on common interests, ideas, and beliefs. And even now that we’ve all moved on with our lives and gone on to do awesome stuff, there is still a part of us that’s essentially the same and that’s why the friendship still remains intact. I guess I’m being all nostalgic and gooshy, but I am graduating soon, so I’m allowed. That's another thing I came to terms with over break, I am 22 now. My birthday was this month (January). At first I was like eek I'm getting old, but really life goes on, and I enjoy being an adult and making adult decisions, like watching Phineas and Ferb at 10:30pm while drinking a beer!


So while this was late in coming, (hey so were the Wise men), I'm hoping I can be a tad more timely with my next few posts. Wishing all of you a Merry and Happy new year in 2011!