Ann’s family is arriving this weekend to celebrate Oolie Christmas. Yes, it is Christmas in February. Why Christmas in February? Because her family (large family) was too busy to gather at Christmas. What’s an oolie Christmas? It’s a family celebration of Christmas started by Ann’s grandmother, who suffered a brain injury in a car wreck. After the wreck, she couldn’t do a lot, but one thing she could do was go to thrift stores. So, she’d go to thrift stores all year around until she had a huge collection of pretty bizarre presents (they’d fill half a bedroom). The presents weren’t addressed to anyone; instead, they were passed out until everybody had one. Then, everyone shouted OOLIE and opened the presents all at once. Then they would hand out another round of presents, yelling ‘oolie’ together again and unwrapping commenced once more. The goal is to have ten rounds.
After Ann’s grandmother passed away the tradition died. However, last year the family decided to restart it. Everyone bought ten thrift store items or made presents from scratch. We all have so much fun, we thought we’d repeat it. This year, as I mentioned, we put it off until February. In fact, we still have the christmas lights on the house, the tree still stands, and decorations still line the banisters. I admit it is strange having christmas decorations up so long you have to dust them. 🙂
Because of all the activity, I’ll be rerunning some old posts and maybe a couple new ones during some down time.
Happy OOLIE Christmas!
