What is the power of Christmas?

So what does Christmas mean to me? and why does it make me feel so warm and fuzzy? FAMILY! and especially my sisters...

I have the most wonderful memories of my family get-togethers at Christmas. From being a little kid in Don Mills and waking up Christmas morning to not only seeing our Christmas Tree for the very first time, but it was also full of presents. You see my mom and dad were great at keeping us kids in suspense and making a big production of Christmas. Christmas morning we were aloud to sneek out of our ' bunk beds' and get our stocking that was hung on the staircase banister.

It was full to the brim of all sort of small toys,games, and candy ( pez) . Then when my parents finally woke up, around 9am, we would get our ' best' dressed and come downstairs to see the wonderful surprise of the Christmas tree and presents. The tradition was that we were aloud to open one present before our breakfast. The traditional Christmas breakfast was a boiled egg with some toast, and a slice of Dutch Christmas bread. So after breakfast was done, we helped clean up, then we all sat on the floor in the living room in front of the tree waiting to open the packages. We were only aloud to open them one at a time. Stretching out the excitement of the gifts for as long as possible.

By the time all the gifts were open, it was 3 hours later. We happily played with our new toys, and games the rest of the day! My sisters and I were real ' Games' lovers.

This year at the Santa Claus parade, which rolled into Toronto yesterday, there was a float from ' Hasbro' , a very old long standing games company.

Seeing the games on the float brought back a flood of memories to me. Operation, Clue, Monopoly, Twister, Kerplunk, Jenga, Masterpeice, Life, Mousetrap, Mastermind, Battleship and of course Scrabble where all our top loved games. I especially loved Masterpeice, but that was always a bit ' artsy fartsy' for my siblings!

So the answer to the question for me, ' what is the power of Christmas'... I guess when I think about it, is the time I spent with my sisters playing hours and hours of games together on Christmas Day . My sister Melinda was the most powerful Monolpoly player, and my older sister Ineke always won hands down in Scrabble. My talents were always with Clue, Battleship, Mastermind and Masterpeice, the more logic games.

I only wish now that I could find that same enthusiastic game playing attitude with my present family and friends... no one seems to want to take the time to play a game now a days ! Sad really, you create the best laughing memories in those game moments!