One Christmas Eve when I was little, my old man was late getting home and everyone was mad at him because that meant he was out getting looped on Christmas Eve. I knew better, because I had been out with him a couple days before and he had dragged me from store to store looking for a pair of gloves for my mom. It was about 10 o'clock before he finally got home with the gloves. He was looped, too, but you can't have everything and it remains a special memory for me.