Joey Dee’s Christmas Memories #2: Nobody Wake Up Before 9am!

See the old man in the back? That's Papa. Even though he is the old man of the family, he's the biggest kid of them all.

Every Christmas Eve, after coming back from whatever family member's house we were at for dinner, he would always tell us the same thing...

"Nobody wake up before 9am! I want to sleep in this year!"

The first 5 or 6 years, I believed him, and stayed quiet in my room.

Well... that is until I heard him out in the kitchen at 4am.

Papa would wake up at 4am to get into the kitchen to start making Christmas breakfast. Home made cinnamon rolls, hot chocolate, and waffles. Now, since he was the one to give the directive to not get up before 9am, you'd think he'd try to keep as quiet as possible...

... Yeah.... that's far from it.

He would be out there slamming cabinet doors and clanging pots and pans together, creating as much noise as possible. When I was younger, that was my cue to get out of bed and go check out what Santa left for me. As I got older, it was my cue to break out the ear plugs and try to salvage a few more hours before the insanity of Christmas day began.

To this day, he still tells us "No waking up before 9am." Only now I don't have to hear the clanging of pots and pans at 4am. Now I have my son and daughter come in and jump on me at around 5am, even though they just got to bed around midnight or later.

Maybe I'll have to start telling them that there's no waking up before 9am.