Christmas in my family has to do with gathering, exchanging gifts, ideas, and getting to know everyone’s stories and most recent adventures. It rarely includes sports, often has interesting food, and the activities range from games to conversation. It always goes off without a hitch despite the odd kitchen disasters, like spilled sticky stuff, explosions of flour, or anything else, because it is all done together. Drama is a natural…

Like a lot of people, I make a point of gifting homemade cookies and such to people who are often unacknowledged but contribute greatly to the quality of my life. I am sure it would have been entertaining watching Shawn and I packaging up the candied nuts and cookies for our garbage collector and our recycling guy. Nuts were bagged and in the tin, cookies were placed in the tin,…