What Does Christmas Mean to You?

In this episode of 'Out of the Darkness', Ruth Hovsepian and Tess Scott share their unique Christmas traditions, emphasizing the importance of family, relationships, and creating meaningful memories during the holiday season. They discuss the dynamics of family gatherings, the challenges of changing traditions, and the joy of togetherness, all while sharing humorous anecdotes and reflections on parenting. The conversation highlights the significance of food traditions, crafting gifts, and the chaos that often accompanies family life, ultimately celebrating the love and connection that defines the holiday season.

Takeaways

• Christmas is about relationships and togetherness.
• Creating memories is more important than gifts.
• Family dynamics change as children grow up.
• It's essential to let go of rigid traditions.
• The joy of family gatherings outweighs the chaos.
• Food traditions can evoke fond memories.
• Crafting gifts fosters creativity and connection.
• Navigating family changes requires understanding and flexibility.
• Celebrating Christmas is about the love shared.
• Humor and resilience are key to enjoying family life.

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Transcript

Ruth Hovsepian (00:01.604)
Welcome to Out of the Darkness with Ruth Hovsepian This December, we are celebrating Christmas with a special series featuring guests who bring their own unique stories and traditions to the season. And today we are joined by Tess Scott, author, speaker, and Christian mentor, who's known for sharing her journey of faith, resilience, and humor.

And Tess's story is full of twists and turns, and she's here to share her joyful take on Christmas and what makes it meaningful. Welcome back, Tess.

Tess (00:39.433)
Aw, thanks Ruth, I'm so excited to be back.

Ruth Hovsepian (00:41.992)
Well, I'm glad to have you here and no one better than you to put joy into this conversation. And let's start this off with a fun little tidbit of what's a Christmas memory that still makes you laugh when you think about it.

Tess (01:02.392)
Well, I don't actually remember it, but I'm gonna call it a memory because it's on, you know, movie camera tape, you know, the old kind of super eight and I've seen it many times. That's right. So there's evidence. And so I think I was probably four and my little brother, Jack was two and we're around the Christmas tree and I got a doll and he wants the doll. He didn't play with dolls. He only wanted it because it was mine. And so we get into this tug of war and he pulls it and he pulled the head right off of.

Ruth Hovsepian (01:05.552)
You

Ruth Hovsepian (01:11.109)
Oooh, evidence.

Ruth Hovsepian (01:26.526)
That's right.

Tess (01:31.842)
my doll on Christmas morning. So it's funnier now than it probably was then. And I'm pretty sure that there was a lot of crying that happened. I bring it up all the time to him because I want him to owe me or something. know. I'm the oldest. He was next. Yeah. Yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (01:44.286)
Is he your little brother or older? that makes it even more tough. Come on. I know. That's a tough one. That's a tough one. I don't have any, you know, like my childhood, we celebrate a Christmas very differently than the way, you know, I was born in Canada. I'm a first generation Canadian, but we kept a lot of the, you know,

Tess (01:51.478)
I know. I know. know. Yeah. Yeah. I know.

Ruth Hovsepian (02:14.45)
back home tradition. So we didn't have traditional Canadian traditional or North American traditions per se like Turkey. What was that? You know, we never had, we never had, you know, the, whole layout of that, but we had special foods. And I'm trying to think about like something funny that happened when I was a kid. Not so much.

Tess (02:25.56)
Tess (02:40.052)
No.

Ruth Hovsepian (02:41.854)
We enjoyed it. I mean, I loved being with the extended family because my mom is one of five. So, you know, we would get a chance to be all together and celebrate. I think that's my memory is listening to my, all my aunts and my mom. So there are five sisters you can imagine. And we're Armenian. And it sounds like we're arguing when we're really not arguing. We're just having fun.

And I just remember listening to the laughter in, you know, my aunt's laughing and my mom. And those are memories that have stuck with me, you know, over the years. It's a good, I think a good memory.

Tess (03:29.076)
I think it's all about the relationships, know, I mean life and Christmas and the holidays and getting together and just spending. That's the things that I loved even as a little girl, you know, and especially now as an adult. I just want to see my kids and my grandkids like we have this huge freak show family of counting Rick and I 26 people now like so things changed. We can't have everyone in our house. We don't have a big enough house now.

Ruth Hovsepian (03:31.635)
Yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (03:51.484)
Wow.

Ruth Hovsepian (03:56.637)
Yeah.

Tess (03:57.472)
Right? But we want to get them all together. That's the most important thing to me. All together for one day. And it's never on Christmas Day or Boxing Day because those days are taken and everyone has wives and other families and you know, it's huge. So we pick one day between Christmas and New Year's this year the 28th that are, are

Ruth Hovsepian (04:06.054)
Mmmmm

Tess (04:19.458)
Kids that are shift workers don't have to work. There's some nurses and process operators and all these things. They don't work and they don't have other family and arrangements yet. And so on the 28th this year, we will all get together. And my oldest son bought my parents' farm. So those grandchildren are raised in like my bedroom, which is weird because I was never a kid, they don't think. So they're on that farm that I grew up on. And my son built this big...

Ruth Hovsepian (04:21.745)
Right.

Mm.

Ruth Hovsepian (04:41.068)
Wow.

Tess (04:47.874)
drive shed that has a furnace. so he takes the tractors out of it and cleans it all up. And we put tables and a tree and everything, and we all have Christmas in that. So it's still lovely. It's still on the farm where we grew up. And everyone gets together for that day. So that's what's important is just getting everybody together and seeing everyone on that day.

Ruth Hovsepian (04:58.078)
Ruth Hovsepian (05:11.614)
I think that's beautiful. I think that's wonderful actually. you know, I'm at that stage too with my kids. You know, they're all married, partnered off. And I don't know about you, but I'm just thinking of the dynamics of a family and how we kind of...

find our place within the realm of our family. But when they were young, it was easy enough, right? You schedule them, everybody's here, whatever. As they found, you as they got boyfriends and girlfriends and they started to start their own traditions, compromises were made. And I, I don't know about you, Tess, but I wanted any holiday.

whether it's Mother's Day or it's a bank call, it doesn't matter. Whatever holiday it is, I don't want to make it mandatory for them to be here. And they're here because they feel obligated. That's what I'm trying to say. I want them to come over because they want to come over. That was always my intention. So from day one,

Tess (06:29.804)
Yes.

Ruth Hovsepian (06:39.354)
I've always said, so I have two children in love who are Italian. So traditionally with them, Christmas Eve is a big thing. And as Canadians, Christmas day is the big thing. So it worked out well. And I have one son in love that is of Dutch background and bless him. This man is a saint. He puts up with my daughter and me.

Tess (06:56.748)
Yes.

Ruth Hovsepian (07:07.164)
And they live eight hours away, closer to you, closer to you than to me. They live in Penetang And they're here for Christmas. But as you know, they've been married longer and the talk of grandchildren has started, it's become, well, you know, it's, and I see it. They don't have to tell me the 25th is becoming more and more difficult. And I've said to them.

Tess (07:11.165)
Okay, in Ontario.

Tess (07:15.928)
Okay.

Ruth Hovsepian (07:38.344)
But it's not the 25th that makes it special. It's the fact that this crazy family of ours, this, you call yours a freak show, I call it the nut show, we're all together because we are nuts, all from the same tree. But you know, in a way it's funny, my kids are a little bit more traditionalist than I am and it's like,

Yeah, but it's really great to be together. I said, okay, but you can't have it both ways, you know? And when you have children, you will want to start your own traditions, you know, Christmas morning. So we're at that point where I have three kids and they have extended family where I'm saying to them, and as a mom giving them permission, and for those of you listening, air tag permission.

to start their own traditions and, you know, why don't we do something different? And my son-in-law and I have said, why don't we do it in the middle of summer when everybody has time? But my daughter, his wife, bless my oldest daughter, says, but mom, it's not the cozy feels in July. I know, so.

Tess (09:00.47)
Right, I'm with her.

Ruth Hovsepian (09:03.9)
The compromise has to be made somehow, somewhere. But anyway, that's just one side of it, right? Yeah, you brought up something before we started recording about as family change and you and I have both gone through divorces and...

There's that element, right? How do you deal with that? Because I know how I dealt with it in the past, but I'd love to hear how you guys deal with it.

Tess (09:40.152)
Well, I think that, I mean, we've been, now we've been, Rick and I have been together for 24 years on and off, you know, not in a row. But so we have that blend and family thing.

Ruth Hovsepian (09:51.601)
Folks, that's a whole other episode. Go back and listen to Tess from our previous episode. Yes, sorry.

Tess (09:59.116)
We were we were married divorced and then married to each other again. So that's what that's about. But so we've been blended for a long time. But and I think it's the same concept even as your kids grow up like you were saying when they get married, they have their own wife. I want their wife to be more important to them than me. But down deep, I still want to be important to them. But I get it. I get it. Like you want to be home Christmas morning with your own kids. And I want that. So Christmas morning, we drive to our kids houses and see

Ruth Hovsepian (10:01.576)
Yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (10:10.35)
Mm.

Ruth Hovsepian (10:17.936)
Right? I agree. Yeah.

Tess (10:28.938)
our kids and maybe grab breakfast with them or not and just, know, what'd you get for Christmas? You know, we don't stay for a meal. We come back home. That's sort of our little thing we do now. And we have a different date that we get together. I only expect all my kids to be together with us two days a year, two days a year. The day that we do Christmas, which this year's on the 28th, and one day in the summer, it's the Minute to Win It Championship.

Ruth Hovsepian (10:35.453)
Yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (10:51.208)
Right?

Tess (10:57.238)
Ruth, this is serious. This is very competitive family. We meet in our backyard because it's, you know, it's big open space. We can have 26 of us. We have the minute to win it games. have two teams. This is our fourth year. There is a big trophy. There's a lot of smack talk and it's a lot of fun. So that's two days a year. I want everybody to be together and there's no getting out of it. mean, does someone not, you know, is it possible that someone can't come? Yes, but they're going to really hear from me in a fun way. I'm not really going to yell at them, but

Ruth Hovsepian (11:03.698)
Right?

Ruth Hovsepian (11:19.868)
Yeah.

Mm.

Tess (11:26.476)
But being together is really important and I want the cousins to know each other. We have 10 grandkids now and the oldest is 15. I know that sounds really like it's not possible because I don't look that old, but I am that old. I know, I know. But I remember a time when the boys were younger and it was really important to me that we decorated the tree together. So we had this tradition in my family before I married Rick.

Ruth Hovsepian (11:36.998)
No, I'm always shocked when you tell me that, yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (11:48.446)
Mmm.

Tess (11:52.45)
that we decorated the tree together around the 10th or something, the first part of December. We had croquettes because that's a Dutch food and we had homemade chocolates and we had cider and it was this big thing and it needed to look like this. But one year...

Ruth Hovsepian (12:06.878)
you

Tess (12:08.106)
It didn't look like that because none of my boys wanted to do it. Rick had to go pick up one of the kids somewhere and I was so upset. Like I had a meltdown because I wanted it to look this certain way. Like it had looked every Christmas of my adult life. And I remember Rick saying to me, the kids don't care. The kids don't want to decorate the tree together. This one is playing video games. This one's going to his girlfriend's house. This one.

They don't care. And it was really hard for me that year. I had a hard time with it. But I had to just get over that because life goes on. Now I can put the decorations where they look the best. I'm past that time where I had to wait for them to go to bed and then rearrange the tree the way so I could do it. But we have to just let go of some of those things sometimes. Don't hold them so tightly. Hold them loosely. And we develop different things. Now we get together.

Ruth Hovsepian (12:51.28)
Yeah.

Tess (13:04.352)
I don't know, around that time in December sometime and we make croquettes and the boys who are adults, you know, in their thirties now come over and they want to roll croquettes together or make chocolates together or whatever. And it's they'll call me and say, hey, are we going to do croquettes this year? Of course. Can you know, can we come over and do that? So they still want to be together. They still want to have good relationships. That's what's important. It's it's not what

Ruth Hovsepian (13:06.142)
Mm-hmm.

Ruth Hovsepian (13:30.206)
That's a blessing, yes, 100%.

Tess (13:33.634)
For me, I think, I don't care that it's not decorating the tree. It can be something else as long as they want to spend time together with me. I want to be included.

Ruth Hovsepian (13:43.304)
That's interesting because my kids too, you know, well, I got divorced when my kids were really young and my youngest was actually five months old when we separated and then, you know, got divorced a few years later, but the dynamic around Christmas change or, or all holidays, long weekends, whatever, because their dad didn't live here.

in Quebec, he lived in Ontario, so it was five hours away. So we had that in the mix. And I very early on had said to us that I never wanted to get between my children and their father. What happened between him and me were between us, nothing to do with our children. And so...

If they wanted to go there, they were welcome to go there, even though on paper it was every other holiday, maybe long weekends, like Christmas is once here, once there. Well, we did that for a few years. And then my kids got old enough to be, to voice their opinion. Remember, I had always said if my children want to go there, I would never stop them. And I remember one Christmas.

they were supposed to be with me. And they came, the three of them, they were so sweet and cute. They were so young. And they said, pardon? I think they must have, my youngest must have been maybe four years old. So my oldest, my youngest was four. My oldest was about nine. That's kind of young to be making these, but they came and they said,

Tess (15:20.408)
how old.

Tess (15:35.629)
Mm-hmm.

Ruth Hovsepian (15:38.406)
We really want to go to daddy's for Christmas.

Tess, you've been there, I'm sure. I bit my tongue and I went, And I wasn't angry. I was, it hurt my heart because we were a little unit, right? All year we were together and Christmas and, but I understood them because I couldn't give them the same Christmas. They have cousins over there, right?

And it was, it was, it was, it's always different when kids go to visit than it is in the home, right? The discipline, listen, I get it, I get it. So they went and I thought, okay, I have next Christmas. Of course we celebrate Christmas, but listen, it was hard the first time. Well, the second year rolls around Tess and they come back to me and say, we want to do Christmas with dad.

Tess (16:21.236)
Exactly.

Ruth Hovsepian (16:43.846)
Okay. And this happened about three or four years in a row. And I said, okay, Ruth, need to be, you're the adult, deal with it. It's not their fault. And I can't blame their father about it. It's just, it's just, it is what it is, but it was hard for me. So I know what it's like not to have your children around you.

Tess (17:06.455)
Yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (17:13.286)
at a young age, right, those years. And then finally a year came and they came to me and they said, we know that this is the year that we're supposed to go to daddy's for Christmas day or Christmas. We want to spend it here. They had gotten to the point of maturity at a young age, okay, so they were still quite young, but you know, they were.

you know, like I had a preteen and two teens that had come to understand that they wanted to be at home as well. So then they started the flip-flop, you know? But we're back now to that point where they're having to make decisions again. know, honestly, Tess, like you said, me, Christmas is not the day. It's the day we celebrate. And...

being together and I appreciate every moment and every time that the kids want to be together. Even when I want to kill them at two in the morning when they're around the dining room table screaming like hyenas, like children playing a game. And I'm like, okay, like the old grandma, I'm going to bed.

Tess (18:32.152)
playing a game, right? Yes.

Tess (18:41.576)
But that's the fun of it. That's why I love games. I love games because they bring people together and that's the memories. So what are the things we want our kids to remember? I couldn't care less if they remember about, you know, that they got this on a guitar for Christmas, like the gift part of it. But I want them to remember how they felt, that they felt loved, that they felt cherished, that they had fun, you know, that it was just, that's the things that I want them to remember.

Ruth Hovsepian (18:43.294)
totally. Totally. Am I? Yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (18:56.028)
Yep, yep, yep.

Tess (19:10.752)
about our time.

Ruth Hovsepian (19:10.984)
Have you ever asked your kids what their memories are? You should, you should, especially. I like that, I'm scared. I was too, but I have asked them and mind you, it started off with, know, do you remember when, you know, when it was something sad, you know, like when I had to feed you cereal with water?

Tess (19:14.646)
No, maybe I should do that. I'm scared.

Tess (19:37.942)
Yeah, yeah, those things.

Ruth Hovsepian (19:39.846)
I've done that. I'm that mother that couldn't buy milk. So they had cereal and other, but, but I, I digress, but it went to Christmas and honestly, the memories that they have of Christmas. And I say this all the time, Tess, you're right. A hundred percent. It's not the gifts. It's not the gifts. It's the crazy bits. Some of what you want to forget, but.

Tess (20:00.192)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. But that's the fun and that's when they feel like they're part of something, right? They feel like they're part of that family, whether they're making chocolates or just sitting at the table playing a game or what whatever snowball fights. I don't know. This whatever that is the togetherness part of it. And that's the things that they want to do again and again.

Ruth Hovsepian (20:12.894)
Mmm.

Ruth Hovsepian (20:25.362)
What was one way that you made sure that the kids remembered what Christmas was really about when the world is inundating them with you need this toy, you need this activity. How did you keep perspective on Christmas?

Tess (20:44.056)
I don't know that I was always really great at that. But we always went to church on Christmas Eve. We had a Nativity scene and they put it up. They knew we read the Christmas story. I don't think, well, I don't think, I know that I wasn't always great at that. There were times in my life that I wasn't walking with the Lord. So I didn't do a great job of that always. But they knew.

Ruth Hovsepian (20:46.359)
Mm. Me too.

Yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (20:57.374)
Yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (21:08.008)
Yep. Yep.

Tess (21:14.102)
I'm thankful that we had a good church family.

Ruth Hovsepian (21:14.622)
Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you on that too. I look back and say, I could have done better in that area. And yes, they knew because you know, they were, they were going to church and they were hearing it. And obviously us too, you know, I would remind them, but me too, when I was in the, you know, that season of my life where I was a functioning, highly functioning addict.

Tess (21:21.186)
Mm-hmm.

Ruth Hovsepian (21:44.228)
where, yeah, I dropped the ball on it, but I say to us in spite of me, my kids have a great understanding of what Christmas is really about. And I think that is a whole lot to do with prayer and with intervention of the Holy Spirit.

Tess (21:59.01)
me.

Tess (22:13.41)
Well, it's just proof. Like my kids are all doing great. And I think that right there is proof that God is God and he's the God of mercy. And because it's nothing to do with tests. It's nothing to do with tests. It's that's the mercy of God and, and his love for us. just, yeah, I'm so, I'm so thankful.

Ruth Hovsepian (22:19.634)
Yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (22:25.006)
Mmm, yeah, yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (22:32.592)
Yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (22:36.498)
You mentioned actually some of the goodies that you guys have over the Christmas season. What other stuff, what other traditional maybe foods or activities do you do that, you know, the kids may look forward to grandkids look forward to all that.

Tess (22:55.104)
Yeah. Well, this is the really gross one. we call it grandma's green stuff because my grandma, Dorothy Healy used to make this and she was born in 1913. So, she lived to be 90. She's amazing woman of God. Anyways, it was called grandma's green stuff. I don't know why. So this is how you make it. I'm the only one who makes it. I don't know any of my kids love it, but my brothers love it. I can't eat it. It's gross. It has great. This is what it has in it. Listen to this.

Ruth Hovsepian (22:59.282)
Hit me with it, hit me with it.

Ruth Hovsepian (23:20.583)
Okay.

Tess (23:25.196)
green jello, cottage cheese, onions, mayonnaise, maybe something else, I can't remember. But how gross is that? And then yeah, you make the jello, look with the hot water and then add those other things. And green, just the green parts of onions, I don't like onions. Yeah, it's just awful. And you only have to make like about two cups, it just fits in the cottage cheese container because...

Ruth Hovsepian (23:46.82)
Yeah, yeah, listen,

Ruth Hovsepian (23:52.254)
Because no one else sees it.

Tess (23:55.146)
No one's gonna eat it, but my brothers love it and their wives won't make it. And I'll probably just keep making it every year. I only make it once a year until I die. And my grandkids helped me make it, some of them last year, and they were just like, You'd think that I was making them eat it. They were just so grossed out, but that's fun. They'll still remember that.

Ruth Hovsepian (24:02.13)
Yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (24:05.784)
funny.

Ruth Hovsepian (24:13.662)
I believe it or not Tess, I remember that green jello. I grew up in a very Anglo-Saxon church environment and you know there were these older women that brought the green jello to church. Yes.

Tess (24:28.514)
with the cottage cheese in it?

Ruth Hovsepian (24:32.894)
Now, dare I admit that I liked it when I was a kid because it was something we never had at home. Now, my mother-in-law, because my mother-in-law, again, was Anglo-Saxon. My father-in-law was from Scotland, actually. So there was haggis in the mix, too. And believe it or not, the foreign daughter-in-law

Tess (24:34.7)
Did not know.

Tess (24:42.838)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tess (24:53.864)
In the...

Ruth Hovsepian (25:01.36)
of a totally different background, loved haggis. I love haggis. It's really good. It's sausage, essentially it's sausage, except it has like porridge mixture in it. So it kind of makes it thicker. And listen, a little secret for those of you that have gone to overnight camp, what happens in those camp kitchens?

Tess (25:05.298)
Okay. Yeah, I've never had it, so I can't really judge.

Ruth Hovsepian (25:29.627)
may disgust a few people because when we had porridge in the morning, we kept the uneaten porridge leftovers. And when we made meatloaf, we dumped the porridge into the meat to make the meat go further.

Tess (25:49.794)
See, that's smart because I would put oatmeal in my meatloaf, like I've done that before, dry. So why not? That makes sense, but I've never thought of that.

Ruth Hovsepian (25:55.248)
Right, the dry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's what haggis is. So haggis is the innards. And okay, a little lesson, it's not about Christmas, but a little lesson about haggis is this. When they killed to eat, right, because they were hunters, they would keep certain meats, you know, for the cold or the, you know, like later on down the line to eat, but the innards would spoil very quick.

So they would, that's why they used, made haggis. It's, essentially sausage people. Stop turning your nose. I know, I know it is. It sounds really gross, but listen, I know people that will eat all kinds of other stuff. They eat cow's tongue, they eat kid like liver and they eat calf hearts. So listen, the gizzard.

Tess (26:33.121)
Right. It just sounds so gross.

Tess (26:52.642)
The gizzard. Gizzard is the best part of the turkey. Just gonna say it right now.

Ruth Hovsepian (26:57.075)
I, there's not much I'll say no to at least once.

Tess (27:02.498)
There you go.

Ruth Hovsepian (27:05.212)
Yeah, so my mother-in-law used to make that green jello, but I don't think there was cottage. I don't, maybe there was cottage cheese, but she hid it really well. Yeah, I don't know. I can't ask her anymore. Poor woman. She's, we're talking about her and she's not around. So anyway, what other traditions do you guys have that?

Tess (27:13.043)
I'll send you the rest.

Tess (27:28.824)
While we draw names, because you can't possibly buy something for that many people. So as far as gifts go, since I was 13, we started this, so like 20 years, we draw a name and then you have to make something for that person. Yes, so that's been really interesting over the years. There's been some really great things, like some people are really talented. I've made a quilt for somebody, you know.

Ruth Hovsepian (27:32.498)
Mmm.

Ruth Hovsepian (27:54.088)
Wow.

Tess (27:54.594)
will make woodworking things or sometimes they bake. Like it can be anything made. My dad is not here anymore, but I would tell him even if he was looking at reading or watching this, he made me slippers. So he just put a baggie and then he glued pom poms to them and put a dye around it. That was not one of the best gifts. He was very creative. So my son, because he is a

you call? Seinfeld. He's a big Seinfeld fan. So do you, don't know if you've watched Seinfeld, but there is one of the episodes has George on this chaise lounge in his boxer shorts. It's a very famous picture. And my son had his cousin's name. So he did that, replicated that picture of him. I took the picture of him on this chaise lounge and we took it. And then he had bought a

Ruth Hovsepian (28:24.104)
Okay.

Ruth Hovsepian (28:28.53)
I have.

Ruth Hovsepian (28:34.494)
Yes, yes, yes.

Ruth Hovsepian (28:42.674)
That is so funny.

Tess (28:51.208)
a framed picture at some thrift store. And then we blew it up to fit in this frame. And so it was big. It was like three feet across a huge picture, like couch picture of him in his boxers on this chaise lounge. When we dropped that film or that picture off at Walmart and we went back to pick it up, the girl would not even look at him. I'm telling you, was like not even making eye contact with my kid.

That was probably the most fun. And now it's got passed around from person to person. When you're not looking, it'll be behind your couch or in your car. Yeah, so that was a memory. Yeah, and it's just fun. And I think you think about that person more and maybe you pray for them while you're knitting or sewing or whatever.

Ruth Hovsepian (29:21.086)
Goodness. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. that's funny.

Ruth Hovsepian (29:32.986)
Yeah, I love it. Yeah, we had to we had to kind of get to that point as well. I mean, we're not as big a family as you yet. But my kids are overly generous. So I kind of said, okay, enough, enough. There's like, and they also like to wrap every individual test when I say every piece. Tries me nuts.

Tess (30:00.258)
Yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (30:02.706)
But, but they love it. They're, they're six adults, more, more in the tw- in the thirties than not. And they wrap every little piece, like, you know, like little things like this are wrapped. So, there's a mountain and I said to them one year, what is going to happen when children start to arrive? the mountain will grow.

Tess (30:05.398)
Yeah. Yeah, that's fun.

Tess (30:14.04)
Yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (30:32.574)
And like, but it takes us hours because it is, I have to tell you, it's part of our family tradition. No one else enjoys it. Like if I have my mom and dad and my sister over, I see exhaustion hit them about an eighth of the way through. Because it's fun for...

Tess (30:36.546)
But ours were fun.

Tess (30:54.54)
Yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (31:00.334)
them right because they love it they love punking each other they love the gifts they love all of that and it doesn't have to be an expensive gift it could be a chocolate bar that is wrapped individually maybe a dozen times over but it's done and i mean listen if they want to sit there and rap that's fine i'm waiting to see what will happen when the grandkids come how much energy these women are gonna have to to do all the rapping so

Tess (31:12.983)
Right.

Tess (31:23.352)
That's.

Yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (31:29.01)
They do that, but one year I said to them, enough is enough. We can't gift each other this way. How about we draw names?

Finally, everyone agreed, but they still buy a gift for everyone. They cheated. So then the compromise became one big gift for the person's name that you draw, and then smaller gifts for everyone else, because they cannot not buy, they cannot not buy gifts or something like that.

Tess (31:45.57)
They cheated.

Tess (32:07.295)
Yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (32:08.488)
So yeah, so we've gone through that circle. But yeah, it's fun. It is fun, Tess, you know? And I think that as they grow older, really, it's about the time. And we started off the episode saying that. It really is time that we spend together. And I'm not doing this series to

Tess (32:16.886)
Yeah.

Ruth Hovsepian (32:37.938)
to tell people what is right or wrong, but to really to connect with people and say, I'm a nutty family. Tess has a freaky family, the freak show. So don't worry about your nutty freak show and enjoy your family, right? And do what works for you. Don't be comparing.

Tess (32:50.008)
Freak show.

Ruth Hovsepian (33:06.792)
Tess, I love talking to you. It's fun. I love your humor. love connecting with you and I love the fact that you're a Canadian. And I just want to thank you for bringing that humor and heart to today's episode. And to my listeners, thank you for joining us in this Christmas series on Out of the Darkness. If you enjoyed this episode and you want to hear more from Tess and...

See what she's doing and where she's speaking at. Check out the show notes in the description and be sure to subscribe and follow Out of the Darkness for more warm and inspiring holiday stories all through December. Merry Christmas and see you next time. Tess, love you. Thank you very much.

Tess (33:52.071)
We always have fun, eh?

Ruth Hovsepian (33:53.746)
We do.