The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 $250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
And Jake (Jsega), I think you thought you were entering the OTHER Christmas GAW tradition. The generosity around here can make your head spin!)
- GT
:thumbup: The entertainment value of those posts is dauntingly high (bleh's take-off on A Christmas Story particularly stands out IMHO). So, although I like the IDEA of winning a fine knife, like jc57, I think my plea is, "Don't pick me!" I don't think I have the imagination to meet the expectations of the "reveal" to which BF members have become accustomed! 
)
That is indeed a clouder of cats, good sir!...yes, I googled that
I love hearing folks' Christmas traditions. I like hearing how they started and how they morphed and changed with each passing season.
My Christmas Eve tradition has always been to visit my grandparents that evening. They're simple folks with big hearts and their house has always seemed to be filled with laughter no matter how rough light got. When I think of my grandmother, I will always think of her big hearty laugh....and cigarette smoke. SO much cigarette smoke. I remember my grandfather always building a fire in the fireplace and stoking it until the living room he hosted us in was hotter than the gates of Hades. It was a dry heat that sucked the wetness from your eyes like looking into a 400 degree oven, but he always had this little antique Coca Cola cooler chock full of baby coke bottles (a delicacy in his mind as being on a fixed income meant that paying a premium for something of a smaller amount didn't make much sense to a guy who grew up poor and rural during The Depression...but as Grandpa always said, "The little ones just taste better").
My grandmother would make up some sort of convoluted card or word game for us to play. We would win wrapped prizes that were almost always some sort of terrible gag gift. Last year, we drew numbers instead of playing cards, and my wife and I "won" this hideous resin statue of a Native American in full headdress atop a rearing horse....it has neon colored fiber optics in the feathers and the base that flash a rainbow pattern. It's incredibly tacky, but we actually display it in our living room (we aren't fancy folks either). My wife and I call it our "Major Award" for those of you familiar with the Leg Lamp from the modern classic "A Christmas Story".
My grandfolks are both living and north of 90. I know that each year could be our last with them. They can't host the family anymore. It's just too much work for folks their age. Instead, we go over early to visit for a couple of hours. They like watching their great granddaughter open up her gifts from them. I think their favor part is seeing how much our daughter grows and changes each year.
Hosting has now fallen to my wife and me. We have my aunt and uncle as well as my mom and stepdad over in the evening after they all get done doing their "have to" visits with other members of their extended families. The wife and I try to keep it relaxed like Grandma and Grandpa did. Our house is everyone's "Last Stop" for the evening, so gone is the expected stuffiness. We just want to host a good time for everyone to enjoy as they unwind. We play games and laugh a lot....the warm spiced wine and generously doctored eggnog helps. I build a fire, but try as I might, I simply cannot get it as hot enough to roast us in our sweaters like my grandpa does. Maybe one of these years i figure it out
It feels good to know that we are continuing a simple family tradition that my 6 year old daughter will remember for years to come. I hope that she too will always associate our house with warmth and laughter.
I don't consider myself eligible for entry in any of the great giveaways here in the Traditionals forum. I just like to poke my head in from time to time as I enjoy slippies more than my modern folders. I enjoy the kindness and generosity so many of you fine folks display every single day...not just at the holidays. You really do have a very special little nook here, and I just appreciate being able to stop by and warm myself by your fires.
It's also Christmastime, and I know my wife and daughter are probably going to get me a new flavor of Case. Our family tradition is that dad (me) has to open his "sharp and pointy" present first. It's usually found in my stocking, and its first official act is to liberate every Barbie, doll, game, and toy from the 9,348 tie downs (yes, I countd them) they use nearly permanently affix each limb to the cardboard backers they are shipped upon. I really enjoy those moments though. It's not every day that your first memory with a new knife is watching your kid's eyes light up.
Merry Christmas.
(Well, technically, RobertK gets the actual knife, but I always feel like we ALL get a gift in Ed's annual GAW! )
