Sometimes, it is good to spread out holiday cheer. To this end, we went to Aunt Mary’s last week to celebrate our Riordan-Aunt Mary Christmas in March. For many reasons, the actual holiday season is very busy for us, and we tend to put it off for awhile. Last year, I think we celebrated in May or June. Christmas came earlier this year.

Mer and I went to New Baltimore first to go to church, and it happened to be the first Sunday on which the church expansion was officially open (it had passed inspection). Since we had broken ground on the building almost five years ago, this was not a trivial thing. After the service, we all went to the new building to celebrate by chatting and visiting and eating tasty desserts (cookies, cakes, cinnamon rolls, and so on). Church and food was a good start to the day and put us in a festive mood.

We met Aunt Mary at her house, ad then she took us out to Macaroni Grill, where we feasted on their wonderful fresh, warm bread and ate good Italian food. Mer was the more temperate this time, and brought some food home. After our second repast of the day, we headed back to Aunt Mary’s home for the gift exchange. It was a cold day, so Aunt Mary added to the festive nature by lighting a fire. Mer quickly ensconced herself on the hearth for the rest of the visit.

We chatted and exchanged gifts. Aunt Mary has a touch of Riordan in her – she gave me a Red Hat Society cookbook, and put on a red hat (not related to the group) while doing so. She is well aware that I find the Red Hat Society vaguely creepy, and she smiled the whole time while I opened that gift. Mer and I got some chocolate and a beautiful picture book on the Cuyahoga Valley and a framed picture of a photo taken in the valley and some other things. Aunt Mary seemed genuinely pleased at her amber earrings that Mer had picked up while we were in the DR last summer. We also gave her a CD of old-time gospel music and a DVD of Casablanca which somehow Aunt Mary had never seen.

One of the wonderful things about delaying a holiday is that it gives us a great excuse to get together. Christmas in March was a fine afternoon.