Over our 40 years together, Eileen and I have attended three different versions of the Schreck Family Christmas party: the Pete and Essie Traditional Christmas, the Pete and Meg Modern Christmas, and the Jim and Megan Intimate Christmas.
Pete and Essie Traditional Christmas
The first version was hosted by Pete and Essie Schreck. Essie would take a week off of work to prepare for this party and you could definitely tell. If Eileen and I were in town, we were immediately put to work as there was plenty of necessary work to host a large number of family.
While there was a plethora of delicious food, Essie’s crab cakes were particularly exceptional and there was always enough for everyone. These get togethers were a bit more traditional and gentlemen were in coat and tie or nice sweaters. Everyone seemed to come at the same time and leave at the same time.
A couple of stories. As noted above, this was an enjoyable and refined dinner. Pete and Meg’s children. Megan and Reilly were bored out of their minds and my job was to chase them around the house at full speed with them screaming and laughing at the top of their lungs. I asked Megan about it a couple of decades later and she remembers laughing so hard that she could not breathe. It is a tradition we would continue with Megan’s children.
I proposed to Eileen in 1982 on Christmas Eve. I planned to ask her father for permission at this Christmas party. It proved impossible as Eileen was glued to my side all night and set world records for fastest bathroom breaks in the world. It all worked out when they learned of the successful proposal the next day but I was a bit nervous the next morning.
Our schedule during this era was Pete and Essie’s Traditional Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve followed by midnight Mass for Eileen and I. Christmas day lunch was with the Carver family and Christmas day dinner was back with Pete and Essie with only immediate family.
When Pete and Essie passed, the only thing that Eileen wanted from the estate was the Christmas dishes as they reminded her of these family holiday celebrations. We still use these settings every year.
Pete and Meg Modern Christmas
One year, Essie broke her arm and the party moved to Pet and Meg’s house. Pete and Essie discovered they really liked this as Pete and Meg’s house was larger, they did not have to do the house prep, and they could still prepare all the crazy good food that everyone desired.
With the extra space, the party split into the living room crowd, the dinning room standing crowd, kitchen crowd, and the sunroom crowd. Eileen and I were normally in the sunroom as it was were the kids congregated to chill, play, and eat. TVs were actually on during this “modern” Christmas and there was music running in the background from the living room TV. The dress code became a little more casual and with more children attending the event, the event had different appeal to the different audiences. For the older folks, it was the food and conversations. For the younger folks, it was opening the gifts.
There were some other variations. Everyone did not arrive and depart at the same time and the more immediate families would linger and savor the conversations, company and children. Board games started cropping up at the event for the kids and kidlike adults. It was just a modern Christmas for a more heterogenous family.
Pet and Meg’s Modern Christmas continued at Pete and Meg’s house until something more even more extraordinary happened – Pete and Meg’s grandchildren moved to Athens, GA. This led to the advent of the Jim and Megan Intimate Christmas.
Jim and Megan Intimate Christmas
Jim and Megan’s Intimate Christmas is at their house which is more rural and on ten acres of land. This is more casual than the previous