Get granny to play the organ and everyone else should get a pot or pan or plastic tub. you may even have a washboard hanging around. Use spatulas, wooden spoons, wire whips, egg beaters (the old fashioned kind. everyone has those, right? :) etc. etc. and make music. granny plays the carols on the organ, everyone else bangs, taps, shakes, rattles, and rolls away.
then, mom drags everyone out out to sing carols at the neighbors.
and check it: we are not a family who drinks much, so it's not b/c everyone's toasted. we are just weird. After caroling, everyone must make snow angels, then it's inside for peppermint patties: hot cocoa with peppermint schnapps. Whereupon, granny will get tipsy on the schnapps and smoke a corn cob pipe gramps used to smoke. Yeehaw!
NPR had a great story on yesterday. well it was up to half way through. I got distracted and out of range of the radio so i didn't hear the rest. So i looked and they have an archive of short stories here:
Also, I'd check out Mark Twain's bio to see if it has a story around xmas. When I read Twain, it was like the third course I'd ever had and I was trying to sneak in time to do my studying while taking care of four kids plus bartering for childcare. So, I'd have this houseful. For awhile, what I did was tell them I needed just five more minutes in the bathroom. They'd be good. That only worked for so long. Then I had the bright idea of reading the books to these kids, all under 4, my homework. They LOVED Twain. And I loved reading it aloud.
when I told my tutor (we had tutors b/c of the egalitarian nature of the school, you didn't call them profs), she said that Twain's work was often read aloud at the time, since so many people didn't have books or newspaper/magazine subs. They'd go to a public meeting place and someone would read the story. She said Twain wrote as if he were telling the story aloud.
Oh, uh, huh. here's one. Letter to Susie Clemens: http://www.twainquotes.com/santaclaus.html
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