In southern California, the temperatures average sixty degrees in December, and the wind is still until January when the brief storms begin.  Today is Christmas and a long time ago, the family would concentrate during the yuletide season and wish good tidings to all.  Tonight, the grandparents are coming along with their relatives and business cronies, the Chivas.   The Chivas have a large family and each of the children was named for a number depending on when they were born.   Tonight, Quinto and his brother and wives are coming for Christmas dinner.   Grandfather as a trick has his relatives administer his businesses.    The contract is to keep it all in the family like they do in Vegas.

This Christmas, Mother and Grandmother Theresa are cooking a big ham.  Theresa has the Wracks insert cloves into the ham fat about an inch apart to give it flavor.  When it is done a covering of sweet honey and cinnamon will drizzle over the roast and each guest will savor a large piece.  With the ham, this Christmas season is candied yams.   Yam’s dice and are baked in an oven in a casserole dish and when they are done, small marshmallows cover the potatoes and melt contributing to the orange sweet with white. Along with the yams and ham is creamed spinach.   To make this vegetable, a huge amount of spinach dice upon a board, transfers to a large frying pan, and a quart of light cream add to it, rendering the green vegetable a silky-smooth repast.  The guests assemble and Grandfather sits at one end of the table, father at the other, Fonz next to mother, and grandmother next to the Wracks.  The Chivas sit on the other side of the table.  The food places in the pass-through and the guests get the first crack at it.  Red wine pours into all the glasses and everyone raises theirs in a toast to the past year.  Then the family bows their heads and gives God a prayer of thanks for the heavenly meal.  

Manga says father Wracks and everyone digs in.  Grandmother puts a piece of her ham on the Wracks plate and smiles and today is Christmas.   For dessert, Mom serves a huge white cake with chocolate icing homemade and everyone has a second helping of this pastry made with whole milk, and the icing with gobs of chocolate powder, sugar and butter.  When everyone is done, Mother brings in a large decanter of Columbian coffee with half and half as a creamer.   Everyone smiles and enjoys the dessert and the coffee on the day of the birth of the savior, the prophet Jesus. 

This is the first time Grandfather brings his business associates to dinner and this will be the last time and the Wracks will ever see them again.  Like a contract in a bridge game where the best hand triumphs, the guests move to the living room.   Mom passes around See’s candies and the white decanter of coffee and Christmas music plays on the little intercom speakers around a large white flocked tree that Grandfather obtained from the local market and Grandmother decorates with homemade ornaments in sequins with names embroidered on the balls.   The Wracks sit on the floor and play with his gifts.  Quinto sits next to the Wracks and tells him how he lost the tip of his index finger to an adversary in a fistfight and describes in detail how to twist your fist when you punch to cut the skin on the face.  Quinto says he has been in a lot of fights and this is how life is. He has a son named Don.   Grandfather and his business associates gather in a group and talk amongst themselves.    After a while, the Chivas get up and announce they are leaving.    With huge grins on their faces, they thank everyone in the house for the delicious Christmas dinner, they retrieve their coats and leave.   Then they walk down the steps of the brick entrance and together enter a green Cadillac coup de Ville, wave, put the car in reverse, and slide away.  Grandfather waves to them and then he and Theresa enter the house.   They then announce they are leaving also and for everyone to have a merry Christmas.  The gifts the grandparents brought to the Fonz and the Wracks were profuse and opulent as is his style.  He and Theresa enter their white Ford Fairlane, she smiles and waves, and then they are away.  

The best gift that God can bestow on his children is to give them a family, an eternity for them to celebrate the holidays with.   When someone has a family, they don’t need gifts or fancy food to enjoy festivities and special days.  All they need is each other and all the Tycoons sitting on their treasures alone cannot imagine the joy and happiness that family and camaraderie bring.    The Wracks wish his brother and his parents a merry Christmas and loads the dishwasher and clears the table and counts the sterling silver cutlery.   They have to be hand washed and that can wait until tomorrow morning, Christmas has come and gone and it is wonderful.   The Wracks turn off the kitchen lights and the lights in the living room and finally the multi-colored lights that deck the tree.   He enters his own bedroom because he and his brother have to be separated because they fight, he puts on his pajamas, gets on his knees and thanks God for another Christmas with his family, one of the days in the Twentieth century.  Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.