A Good Christmas

As soon as Thanksgiving was officially over, my 10-year-old sister started writing her Christmas list. She composed it in alternating colors of red and green and designated which items she could purchase herself and which she could not. They were typical requests for a fifth grader: CDs, video games, an iPod. What puzzled me was #9 on the list: “A Good Christmas.”

A good Christmas? What does that mean? Perhaps that meant her single-handedly assembling our six foot tall Christmas tree while my mom was napping and I was at school? Maybe her obsessive counting of the number of wrapped packages addressed to her?

In my mind, I flew back to last Christmas. It was 7 a.m. when my little sister Michelle threw the door open and grandly announced “IT’S CHRISTMAS!”