Every year my entire family gets together to celebrate Christmas. On Christmas Eve, my gigantic family that includes my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, cousins-in-laws, and cousin nieces/nephews, met at one of my aunt's or uncle's home. Sometimes family friends, church members, and distant relations come over too. All in all, there is usually over 50 people in the house on Christmas Eve. Which equals not much room, so there is always someone in every room. Sometimes that can be a lot of fun, but other times it can get a bit annoying. For example, during dinner all of the adults and some of the older cousins get to sit at the dining table or whatever table's available, but the younger cousins (and that includes me) don't get that luxury. Since we are younger we sit wherever there is free space, and that usually means in the hallways, which isn't necessarily the most comfortable spot, but it is fun to sit there and observe the commotion happing around us.
Christmas gatherings are always special, because they differ from other get-togethers, because of the large amount of people. Every member of my family comes to this gathering if they can get to Calgary. Sometimes some people are just too far away to come, like if they were in Singapore, but they would still keep in touch for Christmas. Every year, my house gets swamped with cards from relatives and friends that are far away, but are still continuing to write to us. Another thing that makes this Christmas gathering special is that during that night we get to chance to do ordinary things that we don't usually get a chance to do with our family. For example, during the year everyone's just too busy to get together and watch a movie at someone's house, but during Christmas Eve we get to do just that. A tradition we do every Christmas is to hand out presents, but to be more specific, we give out Hong Baos. Hong Baos are little red envelopes that have money inside of them and they"re given out to unmarried people.
