This was quite a good Christmas.

I was awakened at 9 a.m. when Jess came into my room with the cat and climbed the ladder to my loft bed. Oreo immediately struggled to free himself from her grasp and proceeded to walk around on my bed, on me, and come back to sit on my pillow beside my head. After Jess commented on the pictures of Julia Stiles and Sandra Bullock taped to my ceiling above my head, I told Jess that it was actually Casey who put them there, and she laughed. She then grabbed the cat and went back down the hall and downstairs -- almost. I heard a loud thud, followed by a few quick, short, successive thumps, an "OH MY GOD!" from my mother, and then laughter. I scrambled out of bed and to the stairs screaming for a re-enactment, but had no luck. Apparently, though, Jess slipped on something on the stairs, sliding down the last few on her butt, the cat in her arms. Oreo, of course, bolted as soon as they came to a rest in the living room.

Then Christmas started. We opened stockings in the TV room, as we always do after taking them down from the railing to the staircase. From there we moved into the back room where the tree was and commenced the gift exchanging. My biggest and best gift was both my smallest and not requested. As my sister handed out the boxes, I took a small square one from her and opened it. When Mom saw what I had, she said, "Oh, that one could've waited." I said it was OK, figuring it was a note with a dollar amount on it, since that's become a Christmas practice of late, allowing us to chose something for ourselves in addition to what lies under the tree. But in turning over the card inside the box and reading the note, I received a DVD/VCR system. A big ol' WOO-HOO! for that one.

After unwrapping our gifts, we headed to the dining room for breakfast, played a new game ,then showered and relaxed for the bulk of the afternoon. At 4 p.m., cousins Donna and Scott came over, with her boyfriend Sean and his wife Kathleen too, and shortly thereafter Uncle Chic and Aunt Donna. We sat and talked and opened more gifts, then enjoyed dinner and desert and a game around the table. The game (in both instances) was Chronology, a test of dates and historical knowledge. The winner is the first to get 10 events correctly in order by determining where they fall in relation to those already in his or her timeline. You start with one event drawn off the top of one of four piles -- Sports, Arts & Entertainment, History, Inventions & Discoveries. If your first event happened in 1944, you have to decide if the next one came before or after it. Get it right, your timeline has two dates on it. Get it wrong, the next person goes. As you accumulate historical dates, the choices get tougher. Now does the event in question come between 1871 and 1899, or between 1899 and 1991? Is it between 1901 and 1918 or 30 B.C. and 1702?

Anyway, enough of that. Dave came over just as we started the game, so he played along too, and then, after desert, the extended family left. Dave and I watched a little TV and called a few friends, but it became apparent that the Christmas movie tradition would not be happening this year. His friends Tom and Jen had suggested stopping by Ichabod's for a little while, so we called Gayle, whose family invited us to stop in first. We did, turned down desert, and watched The Simpsons and some of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Band, which they'd been watching and I can't remember the last time I saw. But our little stopover inspired Gayle, her sister Sarah and their friend Deliah to join us, and we met up with Tom and Jen for a few drinks.

And now I'm home with nine minutes left to Christmas 2001. I'm quite exhausted, not from anything in particular, but a day of friends and family and fun ... and five or six beers since the evening. Matt never joined us, Will was running late with family things, Casey and I talked before I went into the bar, but that was it. I missed not seeing more friends, as we usually do choose a movie to see together. I missed the family from Maine who now spend their Christmases in New Hampshire. I missed Casey, because even though it was great to talk to her, her voice and her laughter just weren't enough tonight.

Christmas for me has changed over the years. We've never spent them anywhere else, never traveling for the holiday. When I was really young -- 4 and 5 and 6 -- we'd go up to Grandma and Grandpa's in North Caldwell, about an hour away, but that was it. But that was Grandma's house, it wasn't Away. When Grandpa died in '82, that practice stopped because Grandma sold the house -- the one my Grandpa built -- and moved to a condo nearby. She started spending Christmas Eve at our house, and Christmas was spent here. We'd wake up in the mornings -- Jess and I always waking up too early, sometimes before the sun, and struggle with keeping quiet. But we'd always run downstairs, peek at the tree, and bring our stockings back up to open them and enjoy the little gifts and candy inside. Sometimes we might fall back to sleep, only for a short time, but usually we were able to make just enough noise to get the rest of the house up.

Mom's big thing every year was to "take things slow," perhaps opening some gifts, taking a break for breakfast, then continuing. Some years she'd get her wish, but not many. We'd open the gifts and enjoy what we got, then sit down to breakfast and pass the afternoon. When Uncle Chic lived with his first wife in the next town over, we'd all head over there for a big dinner with extended families. But then Dziadzi -- "Grandpa" in Polish, who was Dad's and Chic's dad -- died and the group at Chic's got smaller. Then he divorced my aunt and began spending Christmas night at our house. My cousins now take part in the holiday house juggling, trying to fit in both parents and their boyfriend's and wife's families.

... I see my future ... only mine involves the Pennsylvania Turnpike...

I remember, in those earlier years, how sad I was to leave Uncle Chic's, to know that Christmas was over, that it was another 364 days until the next Christmas. Christmas was a day you never got to see your friends, hardly got to talk to any of them. All those new toys you got? Had to wait until tomorrow to tell your friends about them. Coming back to the house on Christmas night was always solemn, and we were usually tired. The house seemed so dark, unlike the night before, when it would be so bright returning from church. I remember the sound of all kinds of Christmas music -- contemporary and classic -- coming from the stereo at Uncle Chic's. I remember Donna and Scott -- both older than me -- getting cool gifts from boyfriends and girlfriends. One year, Scott got a CD player from his girlfriend and Uncle Chic said, "You'd better hold onto her." Yeah, that didn't happen.

There was always some gift that was the big one, always something I couldn't wait to open; and once it was open, couldn't wait to play with. Now it's usually a book or CD I can't wait to dive into, or a shirt I can't wait to wear. Not wear just to wear, but wear out, to show off. I don't look at clothes and see the potential in them, I look for the very next opportunity to make that potential a reality.

And now, at 12:04 a.m. on Dec. 26, as I struggle to finish the thoughts I had, I as battle fatigue, I can't help but think of that brand new, crisp copy of The Best American Travel Writing 2001 on the bed above me, and all I want to do is shut down the computer and crack open the tome.

Hey, I can't play with the DVD player until I have the DVDs -- and until I set it up in my apartment. So for now, I'll read about far-off adventures taken by other people.

I hope it was a Merry Christmas for all.