For those of you of a certain age, please accept my apologies for infecting you with an ear worm at this hour on a Friday morning. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking, please google the title of this blog update. You can either read the lyrics or watch a YouTube performance. I’m pretty sure Rosemary Clooney sang this originally.

But the truth is, people are coming and I am baking a cake. Two of them in fact. And because the frosting on pecan praline cakes requires the cake itself to be hot out of the oven, I’ll be baking them one after another instead of simultaneously. Because people ARE coming. And why make two cakes you might ask? One is for my daughter’s birthday—it’s her favorite and the other is for Lil Jul Aften.

Long time blog readers have heard about this before. Lil Jul Aften, Little Christmas Eve, is an old Scandinavian custom which, in the early sixties, my mother hauled out and dusted off when the boyfriend who eventually became my first husband had to be home with his mother every Christmas, no exceptions.

We’ve been celebrating it every year since with a family gathering that happens the Sunday before Christmas, so everyone is free to do whatever they please or need to do for the remainder of the holiday season. And because Lil Jul Aften is a holiday but not for everyone else, it comes with the added benefit of having all the stores open in case some necessary item has been forgotten.

This year things are a lot different than they have been in the past. Some of the college-aged grandkids may or may not make it back to the party due to bowl game complications. Rather than our being out leading the charge to visit local Christmastime highlights, that torch has been passed. As I mentioned last week, Colt is a participant in this year’s Snowflake celebration, and our family will be represented in the audience by our eldest granddaughter’s family which happens to include our four great grandkids kids, all of them five and under. The idea of caring for that number of little ones is utterly daunting. Keeping track of all of them at Snowflake Lane? I might have been able to manage it years ago, but not now!

The house is decorated. It’s not as lush as it was in years past, but it passes muster. When the grandkids came to do it, the process happened chop-chop once in under three hours. It took me the better part of three days, but I made the grade.

As for shopping? We did not Did do that. The gift boxes under the tree are beautiful but entirely empty. The gifts will be in check form and will be found inside individual Christmas card envelopes. I have it on good authority pretty sure that whatever the recipients should choose to purchase, it will be not only the right size but also the right color.

In addition to pecan praline cake, there will be a store-bought chocolate chiffon pie for the chocolate lovers in the group. Other items on the menu include a Honey-baked ham, my son Tom’s mushroom Wellington, a mashed potato casserole, a green bean casserole, Boston baked beans, a fruit salad and a Pagliacci Caesar. No one is going to go away hungry.

And by Sunday evening? I’m sure I’ll be dog tired, but it will be one more star in Evie Busk’s crown. Celebrating Christmas as a family in a way that leaves people free to handle other holiday obligations is an automatic stress reducer in my book, and that in itself is a huge blessing.

Once Lil Jul Aften is over, Bill and I will take a deep breath. We’ll listen to the audio of Jim Dale reading A Christmas Carol and we’ll watch The Man Who Invented Christmas. From this writer’s point of view, that charming movie about the writing of A Christmas Carol can’t be beat!

Then, on December 21st, Bill and I will celebrate our 37th wedding anniversary. The year of the huge snowstorm here, we had Cheerios and champagne for our anniversary supper. This year it could end up being Lil Jul Aften leftovers.

Whatever it is, you can bet we’ll be having fun, and our hope is that you are, too.