When I was 19 I was invited to my girlfriend's family Christmas dinner, the one for her mother's family, with two aunts and an uncle and their families, assorted cousins thrown in. I didn't know at the time that it was a big deal for a boyfriend or girlfriend to be invited to these things. I'm not sure what kind of impression I made but I imagine that it was somewhere between unnoticed and disappointing, though I sure my hair was neatly combed and my shirt tucked in. We sat at a little table in the library I think, far away from the business executive elders who were the real reasons for the gathering. I met most of them and received the quizzical looks one gives to a young interloper who shows up holding the hand of a beautiful neice or cousin that you have loved for 20 years. Only a few of that generation are still living--my wife's godmother, two aunts, the wife of a cousin. The others have all gone on. With the passing of the last of the major characters some years ago, that party faded away, a reunion no more.

Somewhat to my surprise, by an accident of geography as much as anything else, the Christmas party for this generation has now come to rest at my wife's doorstep and so also on mine. The older generation are now she and her brothers and their wives, with a few older aunts and cousins whom it is our delight to see again. I noticed the scrungy looking boyfriends and girlfriends of the younger generation and thought how they must look at the older generation as masters of capitalism, with our fine house and all the fine cars, expensive clothing and jewelry. It is quite a journey from a card table in a distant room all the way to the head table. As I thought about it the other night, during our party (35 for dinner at 6 tables, all formally set with real linens, china and flatwear), I realized that while we are not the eldest, the wife and I are now far and away the old married couple with 34 years under our belts, a journey we began three years after that first Christmas dinner in 1970.

It was a lot of work to put on such a party, but I'll say also, it was a joyous thing to have them all together and in our home. Smiles and hugs and lots of questions. Did you graduate? What company? Will you have any more? There is a color to these events, a reddish, yellowish glow, and a sound of conversations and laughter, punctuated by song, the piano, the squeals or giggles of little ones from time to time, a smell of so many fine foods mingled together, the taste of cheeses and spiced meats, casseroles, wassail and coffees, the feeling of warm faces pressed against your own, firm handshakes and pats on your back, with blasts of cold air as people go in and out. For those not lucky enough to have such experiences in their life, experiences which define the best of the word family, I am sorry for their poverty. As for us, we rejoice in the wealth of our love for one another or to put it simply, for our family. You could not be luckier than to have the family Christmas party become your burden to bear.