Massachusetts Family’s Christmas Chinese Takeout Is Greatest Gift of All

When I think about Christmas dinner, I always think about having a nice, plump, juicy turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes and a ton of different vegetables all smothered in my mom's homemade gravy.

I can also understand that there is a camp of Christmas ham people out there. It makes sense. We all just had the mama of turkey dinners a few weeks ago, so shaking things up with a nice ham or roast pork isn't the craziest idea.

In my house, for most of my life, Christmas meant another turkey, and I wasn't mad about that at all. I loved it.

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However, Christmas turkeys in the Rock house came to a screeching halt one Christmas Day about 10 to 12 years ago.

My kids were little, about 4 and 6 years old -- prime-time Christmas ages.

When we got to my parents' house, shortly after we arrived, somehow, someway one of the kids' presents got opened. Then another. And another. Before we knew it, the kids had opened up all of their gifts.

Here's the problem. While the presents were being opened, my mom was in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on the full-blown turkey dinner. It's embarrassing to admit, but no one had noticed that my mom was not in the room while the little ones were opening gifts. How awful. Even writing it all of these years later makes me feel terrible.

That was the last time we had turkey on Christmas.

Now, instead of turkey, we get an order of Chinese food together.

The closest I get on Christmas to turkey with gravy is chicken fingers with duck sauce.