Shayna HepnerFollow

Date Collected

Fall 11-12-2018

Place item was collected

Nibley

Informant

Cole Hepner

Point of Discovery/Informant Bio

Cole Hepner is a teenage boy and considered the “caboose” of the family because he is 7 years younger than his second to last sibling. He was born in Cache Valley and has always lived in the same house. His favorite thing to do is to play games with his sisters, help his dad outdoors, or play his Xbox. In the summer he likes to spend the day outside instead of being indoors.

Context

Cole spends Christmas with his mom’s siblings, their spouses, all of his cousins, and his niece and nephew. On Christmas Eve Cole and his family drive to his aunt’s house which is also in Nibley. Christmas day is spent at his grandma's house in Hyrum. Cole loves spending time with extended family, mostly the cousins his age, during Christmas parties.

Text

On Christmas Eve we go to my aunt’s house for dinner. We eat food, play games, and then Santa, and sometimes Mrs. Clause, comes at the end of the night and gives all the kids a present and then we go home. On Christmas day me and my three sister would wake up around seven o’clock but mom and dad had a rule that we couldn’t wake them up until eight o’clock. Sometimes we would watch t.v. but most of the time we would look at the presents and play a guessing game to see if we knew what was in them. Every year my mom says “it looks like Santa’s sleigh tipped over in here” because we have a small living room and we usually get ten presents each and when there are four kids and two parents then there isn’t a lot of room on the floor. One year my oldest sister had Christmas at our house with her two kids and her husband because their house wasn’t ready to be moved into yet and we couldn’t even see the floor because there were so many presents. My favorite present that I ever got was a a terra climber. It is a remote controlled car that kind of looks like an alligator with a long tail. Besides the presents, Santa also left a bowl of apples, oranges and candy cane; another bowl of the same candy we got in our stockings; and a third bowl of a bunch of different kinds of nuts on the kitchen table. He also left a note with them. One year the note said he had to take some carrots out of our fridge because Rudolph was hungry but he took the whole bag and left it empty on the front lawn. After we finish opening the presents we call grandma and tell her everything we got then we clean up and go to her house for this present exchange and lunch. When we get done at grandmas, we come home and open all our stuff and throw all the garbage away so the garbage truck can pick it up the next day. All of the plastic stuff goes in the recycle bin and the smallest person has to climb in and smash it down because there is so much stuff. All the paper and cardboard gets taken out to the fire-pit in the backyard and dad burns it so we have room in the garbage. I remember one year dad couldn’t get it to light after he dumped a little gas on it and when he finally got it started it made a great big ball of fire. When that happened the fire pit was about ten feet from the house so when it was spring dad moved the fire-pit farther from the house. My favorite thing about Christmas is trading presents with my extended family, decorating the tree with my mom and sisters, and making candy with my grandma.

Texture

Cole was happy to be included in talking about his Christmas traditions like his mom and sister had been able too. He was excited to share what he remembers and what his favorite parts of Christmas are. You can tell that Cole has a soft spot in his heart for his sisters and his extended family.

Course

ENGL 2210

Instructor

Lynne McNeill

Semester and year

Fall 2018

Theme

G1: Holidays

EAD Number

1.13.13.12

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