Elizabeth is over at Velvet Ashes today . . .

Money was so tight my freshman year in college that my family cancelled Christmas. We were struggling financially, and the three jobs my dad was working afforded him only four hours of sleep a night — with too little monetary margin to waste on presents.

When my parents told us there wouldn’t be any presents that year, my two younger sisters and I were unruffled. We were completely fine with a low-key Christmas. We’d each saved up a little bit of money to spend on Mom and Dad and each other, and that would be the extent of our gift-giving. But after all, presents aren’t what Christmas is all about, and we could still celebrate in our usual way.

Which is exactly what we did. We cracked open the special popcorn tin that was reserved for Christmas Eve. We munched away at the three different flavors of popcorn as we watched “It’s a Wonderful Life” –another one of our Christmas Eve traditions. Then, in a deviation from the norm (and because we weren’t planning to wake up early to open presents) my sisters and I stayed up late into the night, past midnight in fact, laughing and joking and giggling over who-knows-what.

Finish reading this post here.