Favorite Christmas Memory

[jnd4rusty]

I thought it would be nice if we shared our favorite Christmas memory, something that still warms our hearts and makes us smile. It does not have to be just one memory, if you have many just share away! I will start...

I grew up extremely poor so Christmas was not very fun as we never really had any traditions and hardly any presents except the traditional "Christmas Box" from charity organizations. When I was 11 my dad managed to get a loan to buy a house and I was pretty excited to have a new home in a decent neighborhood. A couple of our neighbors would make all kinds of Christmas goodies and share with us every year. We never had the money to buy goodies and my mom did not know how to make any (she can't read), so we always appreciated the kindness. I have made it a point in my life to do the same thing and so every year I make all kinds of goodies and share with my coworkers and several of my neighbors.

[AnaKhouri]

Hey...Neighbor. I like goodies!

We also were pretty poor so I don't remember any big gifts we ever got. Mostly I remember making cookies with Mom, every year (and we still do it, and I do it with Khan). We make the best sugar cut-out cookies with the most amazing icing EVER, and I am damn good at decorating them, if I do say so myself.

That's the sort of memory I want Khan to have someday, of how we made a construction paper star for the tree this year and how we make cookies and popcorn strings and the like.

[Lyse]

Ironically, as much as I detest my ex-stepfather(XSF), one of my favorite Xmas memories involves him. I was about 8 an my mom was in a state program to send her through nursing school in CA and XSF was a drunk with no job so needless to say, there was little to no money to spare.

I woke up Xmas morning to find an entire household worth of hand crafted doll furniture that fit my Barbie. From red velvet upholstered dining chairs, to a tiny mirrored china cabinet that matched my mom's full size one, and even a wardrobe built out of the case of an old wooden radio.

How the two of them managed to craft and stain the furniture and Mom managed to create all the itty bitty linens (did I mention the teeny hope chest? ), I'll never know.

[fireheart]

My favourite Christmas memory was the last CHristmas I had with my late cousin. My whole family gathered at our place and we had a decent lunch. That was the time we got our first boycat as well and he was mewing for food around the table, so he got his own "Christmas lunch"-mum cut off little pieces of all of the meats and he got a small plate with each of them on it.
One of the Christmas decorations we had at the time (and still have actually) was a wire cone that was meant to resemble a Christmas tree. Everyone kept putting it on like it was a hat . Yes we got pics.

[DeltaSierra]

I don't know if I can pick just one "favourite" memory - When i was a child, our house was always crammed full of relatives (HUGE extended family) so there were so many wonderful experiences, baking cookies with Mom and Grandma, watching Dad and my Uncle go out to get the Christmas tree, playing in the snow with my cousins, etc.

I think one that stands out isn't even my own, but my younger Brother's. He was about 8 or 9, and what he wanted most of all that Christmas was a GT Snowracer - like this:



He tore the pic of it out of the SEARS Christmas Wishbook, and slept with it under his pillow and carried it everywhere, so the look of shock and awe on his face when he saw one under the tree Christmas morning is something I cherish. He was the happiest boy I'd ever seen. He immediately got dressed and took it outside, didn't even want to open any of his other gifts!!!

Of course there HAS to be a "blip" in the story - the next day we all headed out to Suicide Hill to go sledding/inner tubing and my then-60 year old fearless Grandmother just HAD to go down the hill on the snowracer....you see where this is going, I'm sure.....at least she had good humor when we got back from the hospital and she had her leg in a cast! She told the Doctor at the Hospital ER - "Serves me right for trying to recapture my youth - I'll stick to just watching the children from the safety of the bottom of the hill." She just turned 90, and every Christmas she laughs and re-tells the story.

[Bright_Star]

The year I turned 10. 1975. It seemed like a Christmas season full of magic & wonder.

[fireheart]

This is more of a New Years tradition, but EVERY year without fail, I will do my best to watch this:

Dinner For One

It's safe for work btw. The story is basically of a woman who's celebrating her 90th birthday with her four friends. Her four DEAD friends. So her butler basically impersonates them for all of the toasts. And with each toast, he gets drunker and drunker.

[Imprl59]

About ten years ago I was working a job where I traveled to different hospitals working on a specialized system. I was in Reno Christmas week and the folks I was working with rounded me up to go caroling through the hospital. We sang up and down every hall in that hospital (and trust me you don't really want to hear me sing when you are well). We ended up in the NICU and sang silent night to all the parents there with premies and sick little ones. By leaps and bounds my favorite holiday moment ever.

[dendawg]

3 stand out in my mind.

Sometime in the 1970's: Got a Big Wheel, an Evel Knievel toothbrush, and an Evel Knievel toy motorcycle...the kind you cranked up and released.

In the 90's: One of my twin nephews was real little, around the time the Power Rangers movie had just come out, and he wanted, in his words, "Little Power Rangers!" Luckily, I worked at the big yellow M at the time, and they happened to have a few left over Power Rangers tie-in toys. I'll never forget when he opened them. He said, "Wow! Little Power Rangers!"

Finally the tear-jerker.

1987: Me and my parents had moved to Cincinnati the year before, and it was real rough going...bad enough that I'd lowered my expectations to nothing, and accepted it. We were visiting my mother's parents that Christmas, and come Christmas morning, I was presented with a watch. I was truly expecting nothing, and was so touched I damn near .

[Sarlon]

mine would have to be a more recent one....

it was the last christmas I got to spend with my only living grandmother (my mothers mother), before she died just after new years.

she was REALLY sick with the treatments and was staying at home...and her sister (my great aunt) was visiting. I sat for hours and hours in her bedroom listening to the 3 of them talking about growing up, and memories they shared.

[BookstoreEscapee]

My brother and I used to get up waaaay early on Christmas (we weren't allowed to open anything but our stockings until my parents got up, and we weren't allowed to wake them until 7, but we got up around 5 anyway) and one year when I was maybe 7 or so, I left a small stuffed leopard in his room, so he came in to wake me up by throwing it as hard has he could at my head.

Also one year my parents got up to find us both asleep at opposite ends of the couch, under the cushions because we were so excited we didn't want to leave the room to find blankets...but we were cold!

[Cookie]

My brain is blanking out on most of previous Christmases I've had, but last year, I remember my grandmother trying to give me more wine and rum balls because she thought it would be funny to see me drunk. Also, she crochets doilies, so she uses a lot of a fine thread by crochet standard. She was given a couple of giant balls of it last year. She held them up and declared "I HAVE TWO BIG BALLS!" :insert pause around the whole room. "YARN!!! BALLS OF YARN!!!"

[BeenThereDoneThat]

As some of you may remember my parents were (well, are, but it's changed significantly) in a church that did not believe in celebrating Christmas or many other "pagan" holidays, from the time I was 9 onward - the changes didn't come until well into the 90s after I'd left home. So most of the great Christmases I can remember were from my younger childhood. We'd have to go to bed early after leaving milk and cookies out for Santa - my parents always said at our house he had to come through the front door because we didn't have a fireplace or chimney The last year or so I realized my parents were doing all the work and I'd peek under my bedroom door and see them scurrying around, getting the stuff out from wherever their secret hiding places were. Christmas morning was always lots of fun as you might imagine...then after opening the presents, it was time to get cleaned up and make the 2 hour drive to my aunt's house in Westchester County, NY, for the family get-together. We'd stay into the night and then go back home.

Needless to say Christmas wasn't much fun for the second half of my childhood, but one year does stand out. I think it was either 1987 or 1988. My grandfather in upstate NY was ailing and my parents often went up there for a few days to help out, leaving me (college age) and my brother (high school) alone in the house. That one year, we put up some lights inside the house around the back door (so the neighbors really couldn't see and somehow mention it to my parents later), played some Christmas music, and exchanged gifts. My brother gave me one of those fiber optic music box things that was popular at the time. I still have it though it no longer works. I think I told my mom my best friend gave it to me...she might still believe that. Anyway, it was great fun.

Since I've been married, Christmases are usually spent with my husband's family and in many past years it has been really great. I'm not sure how it will go this year, quite frankly, due to some disagreements within the family and it's the second year that my late father-in-law won't be with us. My mother-in-law hates to leave her house anymore. But, we'll do what we can.

[MadMike]

My mom, my brother, and myself would decorate the tree, and when we were done, we'd stand back, look at it, and my mom would announce, "This is the best tree ever!"

What I really miss is Christmas Eve at my dad's parents' house. That was when us kids got the best presents. Of course, they'd make us wait for them. We'd scarf down our dinner, but we'd have to wait for the adults to finish. And then we'd have to wait for the adults to have coffee. It seemed like forever.

We lost my grandma to cancer in '94, and my grandpa to Alzheimers in '06. Ever since my grandma died, my dad started having Christmas Eve. It's nice, but I still miss having it at my grandma's. Their old house is just up the street from my dad's, and sometimes I look at it and imagine Christmas is going on in there just like it was all those years ago.

[Racket_Man]

several instinces come to mind.

back around 1971: the last time my "older" siblings came home for Chistmas. this was really the last time all 4 of us coming together under the same "roof" so to speak except in recent years when the funerals happened (Mom, Dad and our favorite Aunt)

second is when I moved in with my GF and I decided to deocorate the house with lights and stuff AND we got a NEW prelit Xmas tree and I decorated the heck outta that. when Ex and I were together we could not really decorate the apt cause we had cats (and we all know how cat LOVE to play)