a xmas tradition

It always started on thanksgiving which was always at my grandmother's house. Any number of relatives and family friends would show up at grandmothers and she with help from my mother and my aunt would fix a turkey, a ham, a roast beef, potatoes, yams, dressing, fruited jello, pickels/olives, fresh baked bread and rolls etc. After dinner would be pies including mincemeat, pumpkin, apple an cherry. when all was done the men would kick back and light their cigars using their plates covered with gravy and all as ash trays. My father would then say to his 3 sons "well, so what do you boys want for xmas this year" while writing in his notbook our answers. We would each answer things like, "I would really like a warm winter coat" my next brother would say "I'd like a t.v. stand, the card-board box doesn't work all that well" and my little brother would say "I'd like a skate-board" "well all right" our father would say as he flicked his cigar ash onto a lump of potatoes, my shopping list is done.

Come xmas, we would get our presents "from santa" each and every one of us would get exactly the same thing; perhaps a BBQ grill or a electric skillet or perhaps a telescope but never ever would we get anything similar to what we asked for. One year we all got brown parkas all x-tra large. It was the same story every year, anything we might have asked for would never be our gift. Perhaps it was his idea of humour, we never knew but as we aged into our 30's and 40's we all would ask for gift certificates which we usually got. One year my mother asked for a dish-washer, he got her a case of Dove face soap. this tradition continued until both my brothers were dead.