Holiday Traditions

My family has a handful of holiday traditions, including the reading of the Night Before Christmas (purchased the year I was born) and eating sugar plums (the cookies, not the Nutcracker participants) on Christmas morning. The most active of these rituals, though, involves a kids v. parents Trivial Pursuit game. We play every Thanksgiving and every Christmas.

This year, the kids suffered a crushing (and I mean crushing) defeat on Thanksgiving. We were so off our A-game that I'm not sure how to describe it. So we had a score to settle. (I should also mention that going into the Thanksgiving game, our record was somewhere around 2-25 - my parents aren't into letting the kids win for the sake of self-esteem, obviously).

The momentum shifted on Christmas Eve, though. We had all the energy of a Bring It On-caliber cheerleading squad going into the finals. We were pumped.

My dad started the game saying, "It doesn't matter if we win or lose - either way, we win. If we win the game, we win. If you win the game, we win because we have smart kids." That attitude lasted for about 30 minutes, until he realized that he might not win. At that point, he stopped smirking and started getting extremely picky about the exact wording of our answers.

And yet, we triumphed. All four of us (Cooper was there) just had what it took.

So, until next November, all hail the new Waskom house Trivial Pursuit champions.