Sometimes you just can’t write blogs because you can’t say anything much. Family Christmases at my parents’ house tend to happen in January because that’s when my older sister and her husband can get away from his demanding job as a high end woodwork guy. He’s the only one who knows how to run the machine that does the specialty stuff and specialty stuff is a BIG DEAL for rich people around Christmas.

We don’t mind the lopsided holiday season. I tell everyone we’re Orthodox and that’s why we usually celebrate on Jan. 6. (We’re not but it’s easier than explaining family dynamics.)

Our family Christmases put the fun in dysfunctional. My dad grew up on a poultry farm, and once he left home, he refused to eat another bird for the rest of his life. He’s 86 now and still holding to that promise. My mother grew up on a poultry farm and likes turkey and chicken, just not eggs. “I know where they come from,” she says.

So cooking for my family on Epiphany Day – ehm, sorry, Christmas – can be, in a word, silly.

Start with breakfast. My father lives for bacon. Apparently the pig farm next door to his parents’ chicken run didn’t dissuade him. So he makes bacon in the microwave while my mother scrambles eggs for him and egg beaters for herself. And don’t forget the biscuit. This sounds not too weird, but the biscuit is made in an air fryer that doubles as a toaster, and it uses infrared waves instead of the usual convection, because my dad loves gadgets. So the label of the fryer has “Pizza, toast, baked potatoes” instead of the usual bake, broil, warm kind of thing. I refer to it as bake, cattle, and roll. Which no one in the family thinks funny.

The microwave doubles as a convection oven. Yeah, they make those. I have never actually explored whether dad is making bacon using microwaves or the more conventional–sorry, convectional–kind of heat. I am afraid he will start asking me to make it. I loath bacon, even the sight of it. That stuff is gross. I accept that this makes me unAmerican.

After breakfast, we open presents. All the women in my family are addicted to thrift stores. We tend to give each other interesting things: wicker baskets stuffed with little soaps, still marked 25 cents each. Habitat for Humanity tags have the kind of glue that could solve earthquake construction problems worldwide. This year I got a Snoopy and Woodstock that sing when you push the button (Goodwill). Tracy got a sweatshirt of Scotty dogs decorating a tree (AmVets). Mom got a bag with her first name embroidered on it (Salvation Army).

Then, because it is Jan. 6, we take down the tree. The tree is small, four feet high, made of plastic. Actually, you can’t see the tree because every square plastic inch of it is covered in ornaments.

My mother lives for Christmas. 19 plastic totes, two of them alone holding angels, adorn the corner of our garage. So after the ritual breakfast and presents, they adorn the living room. It takes two grown women an entire day to dismantle the tree, the seven nativity sets, and the outside decorations, replacing each in their designated box, and each box in a Merry Tetris Christmas sort of way back into their plastic totes. I started wrapping a non-box Nativity in paper towels in the tote, and my mother said, “Those pink ones are for the other nativity. Use the brown paper towels.”

Control issues aside, my mom really does Christmas up. There’s not a room in the house unfestooned with something red, green, or sparkly. During the pandemic, out of sheer boredom and unwillingness to buy one more plastic thing from Amazon, Jack and I made her a Christmas tree out of stacked and glued cat food cans, decorated with stick stars. She still has it. It’s hideous but you know, we made it. And it’s a Christmas decoration.

The ritual Replacing of the Totes (with their carefully repackaged objects in their carefully aligned boxes) back in the corner of the garage signals the end of the season. All is calm, all is right. Until next Thanksgiving, when we will pull it all out and do it again. Because, family.