If you’re from anywhere near the Midwest, particularly Minnesota, you may have heard of our infamous long goodbyes upon leaving family or friend gatherings.
I won’t bore you with the details but basically everyone sits around, conversations long wilted or completely dried up. Guests wait to be physically picked up by the host and tossed out the door. However, escape doesn’t happen even then, as the host walks you to your car and starts yapping some more, even as you buckle your seatbelt and begin to back away.
But let me begin approximately an hour and a half prior.
I want to leave, from wherever we are. I begin by staring at the husband and boring holes through his skull, willing him to finally announce our departure.
I decide to take matters into my own hands. I start by standing up from the couch and heaving a big sigh. Then I grab my coat under a huge pile of other coats (lice, dog or cat hair, anyone?) and a few minutes later put it on.
Not being a hint enough to anyone, least of all the husband, I usually end up sitting back down and even at times taking my coat off. And so the cycle continues until one brave soul decides that they too will forage for their coat and attempt to make a break for it.
In dissecting this Midwestern phenomenon, I realized that every invitation I’ve ever received, whether formal or informal, states the time to be there. And you had better be there at that time. Other parts of the country have this thing called “fashionably late.” Uh-uh. Not here. When guests don’t show up on time we think they don’t like us and we begin to plot our next get-together and smugly not invite them. (By the way it’s always a get-together; party suggests the idea that we’re to have fun and that puts a LOT of pressure on both the hosts and the guests.)
Then it dawned on me. Though there always is a start time, an end time is rarely if ever mentioned.
For decades I’ve dealt with the elusive end-time to Christmas Eve’s spent with my husband’s family. Hours upon hours we’d stay, our young children falling asleep on the couch with gifts at home still to wrap and food to prepare for the next day.
Twenty years later and though my kids aren’t young anymore, recent years have found us still lolling around til the wee hours solely to not offend anyone by leaving.
Well, lo and behold, this year a Christmas miracle happened.
The in-laws, citing oldness and tiredness as reasons, have no longer decided to host Christmas Eve.
In their stead, my husband’s niece has graciously offered to have the gathering at her house. And her invitation to the affair would alter a decades-old tradition:
Please join us for a Christmas gathering (NOT party! 😊) at our house from 2 p.m. – 6 p.m.
An end time? Did they want us gone by that time or walking out the door at that time? Or in our car at that time? Were they actually going to physically pick up each of us and toss us out the door at 6 p.m.??
Doesn’t matter.
In fact, it inspired me to send out a text sent out to my family regarding Christmas Day:
Please join us for Christmas Day from 2 p.m. – 6 p.m.
And not a moment later…
49 and Counting 