Christmas was always my mom's favorite holiday. Personally, mine was Halloween and it still is. My mom would make all our favorite Christmas dishes. From roast pig to coquito (spanish egg nog) to meat pies. Making the meat pies was the most fun. Having such a big family we would create an assembly line. Each of us in charge of a specific part of putting the meat pie together. The youngest in the family got the last position since it was the easiest. All they had to do was count all of them and keep track of how many were made. It was usually between 200-300 meat pies. As far as gifts were concerned, most of the living room furniture was taken out because of the abundance of presents. Now, there wasn't much money for decorating. That is until my mother discovered the 99 cents store. She had lights and garland and elves and new ornaments. In fact, our tree had more ornaments than the tree at Rockefeller Center. They dated back to the fifties all the way through the current Christmas. Ornaments of all shapes and sizes and themes. Of course the main attraction was a porcelain baby Jesus that had been in our family since my parents got married back in 1948. Unfortunately, it was stolen during that Christmas. It stayed covered under the tree until Christmas Eve and would be uncovered only after my parents danced to the family Christmas song, “El Burrito de Belen”. That's when the festivities would start. None of us knew that the Christmas of 1997 would be the last one my mom would be celebrating with us. Or that it would be 5 years before we celebrated Christmas again. Our mom fell ill the following year and wound up in ICU on a respirator in August of 1998. We were close friends with our local Assembly Woman and she arranged for one of us to be with our mom 24/7. My mom was never alone. We knew she wouldn't be leaving the hospital. She passed 10 days before her birthday and 3 months before their 50th anniversary. With her gone my family was not in the mood to celebrate Christmas. We didn't feel right doing it without our mom. Although we exchanged presents there were no lights and decorations. All of us had agreed that we'll know when it was time to celebrate again. For 5 years this went on. Until I came across something that let me know that it was time. In the store window was a porcelain baby Jesus almost identical to the one that was stolen. I bought it and snuck it under the tree. I put a note on it for my older sister to find. It simply read “It's time we celebrate again”. Nobody objected. This time around we felt it was right to put up all the lights and the decorations. Before my mom passed she told my other sister “Don't worry. All of you will be ok.” All i can say is, like always, she was right. We were all going to be ok.