New Year's Day: Uncle Jerry's home brew

Tom Schopper

My Mom is still best friends with her closets friends from high school (50-some years and counting) -- it's really pretty amazing when you think about it. And I come from a small family - 3 uncles, one aunt and only 2 first cousins. So my Mother's friends from high school have always been like an extended family -- we called the parents "Aunt and Uncle" and their kids and my sister and I have always called each other and referred to each other as 'cousins'.

A long-running family tradition with this 'extended family' is a New Year's Day celebration that we have been doing for more than 25 years. It started as a "progressive dinner" when we all lived close to each other: we'd go to my parent's house for cocktails/appetizers, then pile in cars and drive Aunt Lauraine & Uncle's Fred's for dinner and then pile in the cars and drive to Aunt Ginny & Uncle Jerry's for dessert -- sort of 'progressing' from one home to the next. The night would cap off with a grab-bag gift exchange and an annual prdiction pool quizz that Aunt Grace always runs.

Well now we are more scattered and we also now number FOUR generations, not just two -- so it is a HUGE gathering -- and so we usually now concentrate everything just at one home instead of progressing from house to house. This year it was at my Aunt Ginny & Uncle Jerry's house -- they now live in the Poconos (they used to be nearby in Bogota, NJ) -- they have a great house right on the second fairway of the golf course at Woodloch Springs, which is right down the road from the timeshare my parent's have in the Poconos in October.

Often, this gathering is the only time I see these Aunts/Uncles/cousins/spouses/children, so it is always a fun day, even with and hour and a half drive in each direction. :-)