Yesterday was Christmas Day. Today we’re celebrating the holiday with my wife’s side of the family. Yesterday afternoon originally had no plans, and while that may sound like bliss to some folks, it felt empty to me. Something, anything, has to happen on Christmas Day for me. So I made something happen.
I called it Big Sandwich Christmas.
The whole idea started with a post I’d seen on one of my social media feeds that said something like “Did you know you can just make up your own holidays? My dad made up Big Sandwich Day and my family celebrated it for years before I realized it wasn’t a thing anywhere else!” Big Sandwich Day stuck in my mind for months after that, so much so that I declared Big Sandwich Day for my family some time over the summer. It was fun!
With no official plans for Christmas Day, I saw my opportunity. I pitched Big Sandwich Christmas to my wife and her brother, whose family also had zero plans for the day, and we all agreed.
I then went a step further and declared that it would be the most anti-formal Christmas gathering we could manage. It’s not that any of us have anything against formal holiday gatherings with family, with everyone wearing nice clothes and eating a fancy dinner. Sometimes it’s just fun to play with expectation and go against tradition in a playful way. We didn’t sit around a long table with home-cooked entrees. We assembled subway sandwiches and sat around a coffee table on my living room floor sipping on seltzer.
It was just as special as any formal gathering, and didn’t make the holiday feel any lesser or cheapened by our purposely casual approach. What matters is the people you’re with and the warmth of their spirit.
Or, in this case, the size of their sandwiches.