My Family is Better Than Yours: Holiday Edition

I should have posted this a week ago or so, but I was literally on my death bed on Christmas Day puking my guts out (lost 8 pounds, YEAH!!!) and didn’t have the mental capacity to brag about one of my favorite family holiday traditions. 

Everyone has things they judge other people about – it could be clothes, religion, what they eat, what TV show they watch. I judge people by their family’s holiday traditions, specifically Christmas. If you tell me that you sit around and crack nuts and drink wassail all I hear is…blah, blah, I’m super boring.

I’m a horrible person.

But, I can’t help it my family really brings their A game to the holidays. It’s a dog eat dog world out there and I’m just along for the ride. THE TROLLEY RIDE.

The Belly of the Beast (circa 2010)

Let me explain. There are some people in my family (Hi, Mama!) who have beautiful voices. So, we rent a trolley – like a real-life, red, decorated with lights trolley – and travel around Dallas caroling at people’s houses. It’s pretty serious. We start practicing AT LEAST 10-15 minutes before we leave and our song repertoire consists of 4-5 Christmas classics.

If you’ve never tried to get a group of 30 people of varying degrees of singing capability to harmonize on “Walking a Winter Wonderland” then you just haven’t lived. If you haven’t seen a fight between two eight-year-olds break out over who is going to bring a bottle of wine to the front door, then you’re really missing out.

Even though it sounds super fun so far, it’s actually very stressful. First of all, you have to claim your trolley buddy early in the evening. If no one wants to be your trolley buddy, it means you smell, you’re over 25 and single, or you drank a little too much one year and accidentally broke a window on the trolley trying to open it too forcefully (not that I know who would do such a thing…) If you choose the wrong trolley buddy, they might sing too loud or tell boring stories. Then, you could choose a trolley buddy who commits the ultimate betrayal and switches trolley buddy mid-trip. Choose your seatmate wisely is a good life lesson.

Then, there are no seatbelts in the trolley so you have to be aware at all times. Don’t try to walk from seat to seat while the trolley is in motion because you or your drink will become a Christmas casualty. (UPDATE: Yes, I’m a car safety nerd/freak!)

Finally, don’t plan on having any original ideas about this 20-plus year tradition because someone will have an opinion about it (usually it’s me, actually, but I’m the one with the idea this time!) I know it’s a total cliche, but I wanted to wear tacky Christmas sweaters. I floated the idea out there on Facebook expecting a chorus of “Hooray!” and “What would we ever do without you?” Do you think that happened? No, it didn’t. You would have thought that I asked my brothers to eat a bag of nails set on fire with the outrage it caused. I mean, an actual quote from my little brother: “tacky christmas sweater theme is the most overrused thing since K (ed note: K is our little sister) would only eat chicken nuggets.” I mean, super harsh, Grinchy McGrinch-a-lot. But guess what? I got my way, everyone finally came around to the idea and they looked super precious in their sweaters. You have to stay strong to make it in this family.