Hi there, guys and dolls! Looking forward to your holiday break? Well, who isn’t? I, for one, am thrilled to be getting away from the neighbors. Don’t get me wrong, I love people (okay, to be honest I love to gossip about people, and there’s no point if you don’t know any people, then you have no one to gossip about, or to for that matter), but I have to admit at this time of year there’s a certain family that certainly gets into the Thanksgiving spirit.

They’re the Sampsons, Lil and Bill, along with their adorable (no, obnoxious is more like it) children, Miles and Priscilla (actually their real names are Trudy and Tony, I’ll explain further down). You see, Lil is convinced she and her brood were pilgrims in a past life. I think it all started when they moved to the neighborhood about three years ago and she was bonked on the head from a falling lamp outside the back of their moving van. Um, it was with the Mayflower company. I truly believe poor old Lil was never the same.

Now, I wasn’t there when it happened, but it is now a suburban legend and the tale gets told at all the Thanksgiving tables throughout the neighborhood of how following the minor head injury (according to Lil, no medical services were needed, no siree, she was just fine) she started speaking funny, in old English or something, calling the children the names of pilgrims, talking about their long journey over treacherous seas to their new home (rumor has it they had moved just across town, I think they had to cross a bridge). Then she just snaps out of it, with plenty of time to get ready for Christmas. It’s now a yearly occurrence (in a funny way we all kind of look forward to, like a holiday tradition all on its own).

Anyhoo, as Trudi and Tony (aka Miles and Priscilla) are getting older, they begin to dread the upcoming season. Lil dresses them up as the pilgrims she believes them to be and then threatens them there will be no Christmas if they don’t behave. Dutiful, they become. It’s quite the spectacle. Bill goes along with it, he’s terrified that if he doesn’t, she’ll throw him in the stockade. She’d do it, too.

So think of it this way, no matter how loony your family get together will be, it probably won’t be Lil’s historical, hysterical holiday.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more posts. And don’t forget to give my Poppy Cove Mysteries a try if you haven’t already. 

Toodles, Barbara Jean