One day...

Christmas Eve!

Raise your hand if you still need to pack your bag to fly home on Christmas!

Hollllllllllllllllllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I have to admit I was mid-sentence a few minutes ago when I realized, with sudden urgency (and no, that's not redundant, because it was rather sudden and rather urgent), that I needed to call my brother Patrick.

Once upon a time, a 6-year-old Bailey made a piece of art, which has since been cultivated in the family museum of art.

Admittedly, sometimes it is on display in the front hallway bathroom.

This piece is a Christmas piece of art.

It is on a piece of that horizontal lined paper, with solid and dashed lines, that children use to practice their printing.

I wrote on this piece of paper, in alternating red and green marker, with lesser punctuation and capitalization that what appears below:

"One day Jesus made a holiday and he named it Christmas Eve."

Patrick in particular has taken to quoting this piece of prized visual decoration, and he often greets me in person or over the phone on the day it honors by reciting my famed words of childhood.

Today, when I realized, I decided to beat him to it. I whipped out the flip phone (remains to be seen whether Santa will replace this phone).

"One day Jesus made a holiday," I started.

"And he named it Christmas Eve," we finished together.

Then he told me he was trying to feed pancakes to a cranky child, so I let him go and told him I'll see him tomorrow, late. But I couldn't let the day pass without holding to our tradition.