Sister Saturday

I'm not exactly sure of what year this was taken, but based on Jeanette's missing front teeth and the length of my hair, I'm guessing it was when we were six and eight years old. We had moved to Glen Ridge, NJ, by then (last week's picture was taken when we lived in Englishtown, NJ, an hour south, in Central Jersey). We traditionally hung the stockings up the staircase like that, and I'm figuring that we must have had some grandparents visiting for Christmas, since there are more than four stockings there. (Funny how you forget things after a while).

Another tradition that we had in our family was Christmas nightgowns. Again, my memory is foggy about whether we started getting nightgowns before we started the other tradition of being allowed to open one gift on Christmas Eve, but the two traditions became one somewhere along the way. So the gift we were allowed to open was always Christmas nightgowns or pj's (and sometimes slippers and robes as well). That way we could wear them to bed and be decked out for Christmas morning.  This tradition was carried out for many years, and both my sister and I have tried to continue it with our own kids. I've even been known to go by myself some new Christmas pj's now that I'm all grown up.

Such sweet sister memories!