I can’t really remember how it started.

At some point, my family began to enjoy a dinner of snacks on Christmas Eve.

If you knew my father, you would understand why this was unusual. He was strictly a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. At least he was before he and my mother turned vegetarian. [They did that on a matter of principle. They hated the cruelty of factory-farming.]

Daddy expected sit-down meals for the whole family, punctually at 8:00, 12:00, and 6:00.

So eating a dinner of snacks was in and of itself a special treat. And a little taboo.

Years ago, when the family lived in Wake Forest, we’d attend a special tea on Christmas Eve for seminary faculty and their families. We’d all dress in our Sunday best and walk the two short blocks to the campus. I can’t remember in which building our festive event was held, but the room was always decked out with garlands of greenery and red ribbons. The air was warm and smelled of cedar and cinnamon. The faculty wives would be clustered around different tables. They, of course, had made all the little edibles for the event.

Some wives specialized in those bite-sized, crustless sandwiches filled with chicken salad or egg salad or cucumbers.

Other wives brought deviled eggs.

I remember Mrs. Scoggins, Elmo’s wife, always arrived with a delicious flaky turnover stuffed with savory beef, onions, and pinenuts.

There’d be cookies, too. Sugar cookies shaped like Christmas trees or wreaths. Some would be iced, others were sprinkled with red or green sugar. I liked the ones that had red hots for ornaments.

Someone always brought butter mints, the kind that melt in your mouth.

A bevy of faculty wives served spiced tea, which we called “Russian tea” in elegant China teacups with matching saucers. There was punch as well—usually a bright fizzy red made from cranberry juice, pineapple juice, and ginger ale—served in a large glass bowl. A faculty wife always monitored the bowl and dipped the delicious concoction into pretty cut-glass cups for us when we stopped by her station.

When the tea was over, all the wives divvied up the leftover treats, and off we went to our separate houses.

One year, when we got home late in the afternoon, Daddy was ready for his dinner.

But Mother was tired. After all, she’d been baking, serving, and socializing all day.

So, she set out those leftovers and supplemented the fare with wavy potato chips and onion dip.

She had a bottle of Coca-Cola, which she’d been saving for Christmas Day, and a pitcher of home-made eggnog, too.

To be extra festive, she arranged the leftovers in the den on the little TV tables we sometimes used when we ate popcorn while watching the Red Skelton Show.

“What! No sit-down meal?” At first Daddy was nonplussed, but he soon caught on to the festive fun.

He lit the fire, and we munched on snacks while enjoying the blinking lights on the Christmas tree we had decorated earlier that week.

We’d never had a snack dinner before!

It was novel and fun.

When Christmas came the following year, we had moved to Raleigh and did not attend the Christmas tea at the seminary. Or maybe the tea was no longer held. (Boycotted by wives. perhaps?)

To our delight, Mother decided to reprise her snack dinner

And so, a tradition was born.

As the years went by, the snack dinner spawned new traditions.

We began to have a small worship service during our festive grazing.

Daddy would read a few passages announcing Jesus’ birth from the Book of Luke or sometimes Matthew.

We’d sing a Christmas carol. Or Daddy and Beth would sing, as their voices were beautiful. The rest of us—not so gifted—would mouth the words or hum along.

Before our service concluded, we would share communion.

Mother would pass a plate of bread she had baked and we would each break off a morsel while Daddy recited scripture. Then we would pass the cup.

And the cup contained wine!

If you haven’t been raised Southern Baptist, you can’t possibly understand how amazing this was!

Alcohol was forbidden.

At church we drank grape juice when we celebrated the Lord’s Supper.

But here, safe in our tiny brick split-level, we shared a cup of wine.

I can’t remember when Mother and Daddy loosened up on the question of drinking wine. Maybe it was when they visited our eldest sister Judy in Portland. Her in-laws surely served them wine with dinner. Our parents were not the kind to rudely decline what was provided them.

At any rate, they began to drink wine.

Not often.

But if they were served wine, they always accepted.

Of course, Mother knew nothing about wine. When she went to the Winn Dixie to buy the ingredients for our Christmas Eve snack meal, she undoubtedly based her wine selection on cost.

One year she brought home Boone’s Farm wine. I can’t remember the flavor except that it tasted like pure syrup.

Another year she set us up with a dark, sweet Mogen David. The Winn Dixie must have been running a special.

But the best of all was the year she came home with Pagan Pink Ripple.

My sister, Beth, and I got quite a chuckle over that. Drinking “pagan” wine for Christmas.

After the devotional, we each got our own glassful of wine. Daddy liked to slam his back like he was downing a shot.

Mother sipped hers delicately, and then midway through our feasting she would exclaim:

“Oh, my! I’m feeling a little tipsy.”

Mother was adorable when she was tipsy.

Since our sister Judy lived on the West Coast, she could not join us often for our Christmas Eve snack dinners. But, she sent home a big box of gifts, each selected thoughtfully and wrapped beautifully for her siblings and her parents.

Judy’s gifts were always surprising and wonderful: pretty earrings, sophisticated scarves, compact purses with hidden compartments.

At some point, we decided we would open Judy’s gifts on Christmas Eve, but only Judy’s gifts. For the others, we had to wait for Christmas morning.

It was a way of insuring that Judy was with us.

On those Christmases when we are together now, my siblings and I still enjoy our snack-dinner Christmas Eve. Three of us live close to one another in the Blue Ridge mountains, we arrange to spend the night at one house or the other.

“I’ll bring deviled eggs,” Beth announces.

“I’ll make some Chex Party Mix.”

Judy finds fancy treats at Trader Joes, like canned Dolmas or stuffed olives, and contributes them to the feast.

Luke invariably whips up some “boiled cookies.” It’s now his specialty.

We have chips, veggies, and dips. There are sandwiches too.

We snack and laugh and share memories.

Later in the evening, before we turn in (and we always spend the night wherever we are) we take turns stuffing each other’s stockings with little treats and trinkets. We don’t exchange gifts in the traditional way, but we surprise each other with small items like packets of gourmet coffee, scented soaps, and lip balms.

When morning comes, we take turns dipping into our stockings and pulling out the surprises our siblings left for us.

Luke takes over the role our father handled all those years ago of doling out the gifts—one by one—while we all wait and watch to see what the other has gotten.

Now Joy is the sister on the West Coast, so we call her—or these days it’s zoom—and share with her.

We are old now, no longer quite as giddy over the excitement of Christmas as we were when we were children—lined up on the steep staircase in our Wake Forest house waiting for our father to call us into the den—but we still look forward to the sharing of gifts and the warmth of family love.