A New Christmas Tradition

OK, so I know that February 25th is a little late to be announcing a new Christmas Tradition, but something happened recently that reminded me that I hadn't blogged about this. My dear bestie from the westie, Kristin, was sharing on her blog about a neat Christmas tradition that she and her Moon Dog (dad) share each year. They choose a Christmas greeting for the season, and this year it was "Streams of street lights", so when one of them rings the other on the phone, they pick up the phone and cheerily greet the other with "Streams of street lights!" She said in years past they've used phrases such as Christmas Crunchies, God Rest Ye, and Chestnuts Roasting. I thought this was a really fun tradition that they've enjoyed for going on two decades now, and so I mentioned it to my extended Adams family while visiting during the Christmas holidays. We never came up with a Christmas greeting, but something else did surface. We've decided to have an annual "Christmas Curse Word". Now before you go getting your panties in a wad or reaching for your smelling salts, don't fret. We're talking G rated curse words--the more contrived and original, the better. Now this year's word may not sound G rated, but it is. I assure you. The Adams Family Christmas Curse Word for 2007 was "Nutballs!" This came about, because back sometime before Christmas, I got into a discussion with Mom and Dad about how I remember as a middle school language arts teacher I once said, "Oh you little nutballs!" to the kids, and I quickly realized that had not been the best choice of words in a room full of children who think that potty talk is hysterical, but I had said it quite innocently. In fact, I said to Mom and Dad, I thought I had learned it from them. Dad said, "You didn't learn that from us; you learned craze-balls from us." I do remember Mom and Dad calling us "Craze-balls", so I thought to myself, "Maybe I did contrive "nutballs" in my head some how." However, I caught my older sister, Carrie Beth, using the term nutballs when I was talking with her on the phone sometime before Christmas (she hadn't been in on the prior discussion with Mom and Dad), and I said, "See!!! We did learn that from somebody in this family!" Anyway, there is still a question as to the origin of this mildly crass term, but it has been in our lexicon for some time now. We were having a rather comical discussion about this during our time together as a family over Christmas, and I believe it was my mother who pointed out that it could work as an explitive, and somehow the "Christmas Curse Word Tradition" was born. So all during our visit together, we enjoyed seeing how we could work it into conversations (i.e. "Oh, nutballs, Benjamin just had a blow-out!") All of this recently resurfaced when I was shopping in a new home decor store in our town when I saw something that cracked me up. They had these big bins full of interesting little circular items, and the sign poking out of the bin read, "Nutballs 10$ each". I couldn't resist snapping a picture of it with my camera phone and sending it to my family. If I can ever figure out how to get pictures from my phone to the computer, I'll load it to this post for you to see and enjoy a laugh with me!