This thread is for memories of the holidays that you find significant or that made an impact on you in some way. They can be humorous or sentimental or profound. There are holiday snark threads aplenty (and I’m in some of them). This one should be more Tiny Tim than Scrooge…
I can remember our first married Christmas when we put the tree up the day we bought it. This threw me since in my house, we always went and got the tree, then let it “rest” in the garage for four days. There were various reasons given for this phenomenom: it had to “warm up” (our garage was not heated); the trunk had to absorb extra water; the tree was too cold for the family room (subtle difference from the first “reason”); and my favorite–the needles and branches had to “relax”.
When we put our first tree up right away in our newly acquired house, that was when I realized that it was up to US to make the holidays what we wanted them to be.
Your stories, please.
I don’t know his reasoning behind it, but my dad gave my Grandma (his MIL) a Radio Flyer Wagon for Christmas one year that she stayed with us. He put it together but didn’t want her to know what is was, so he put all kinds of tall things in it and covered it with a sheet. Grandma had no clue what it was until she took the sheet off and then she laughed so hard she cried and then peed herself. That was a fun Christmas.
The Christmas my sister (in her early 50’s) got a box of 64 Crayola crayons and it made her cry. I smiled through my tears and told her, “Yeah, I bought a box for myself, and my kids aren’t allowed to use them”
I have our childhood crayon box-an old wooden army amunition box filled with broken bits of crayons that have other crayon bits on them so that you had to scratch the surface to see what color the crayon really was.
One holiday memory we talk about every Christmas is when my sister, brother and I were little (like 6,5 and 3) and someone, maybe my grandpa, gave us a gift of one of those hockey table games, you know, the ones that were like a foosball table?
We thought it was really cool and were fidgety excited to play with it. But we had to wait in line for my dad and uncles to get done setting it up. And of course after they set it up they had to “test it out”.
We have pictures of all of them sitting around the game, intently focused, while us kids have our hands on our hips like “I wanna play now! It’s my turn!”
As kids we thought it was funny that The Adults wanted to play with a kids game, but in retrospect my dad was like 27 at the time and my uncles were like 19 and 20, so they were still basically kids themselves.
I really had to think hard about this one. I don’t think that one particular Christmas stands out for me.
The best Christmases, for me anyway, were when my kids were little. I always enjoyed the utter joy they expressed at Christmas and the time leading up to it. I loved their laughter and excitement.
My first Christmas with my husband was memorable for the fact that we had the ugliest little fake Christmas tree. We were poor, but we made the best of it.
There was the year I went and bought a Christmas tree for my husband. The problem was that I was driving a 72 Fiat Spyder convertible. So, I took the top down, stuck the tree upright on the floor behind the front seats and drove home that way. I got lots of honks, waves, smiles, and Christmas greetings.
The Christmas after my middle sister got married, we had a large (11 x 16) portrait type picture made of up one of their wedding shots. It was very high quality work and we had it nicely framed and presented that to my sister and BIL for Christmas. My sister was so happy with the gift, that it brought tears to her eyes.
Other than that it’s just bits and pieces of various Christmases. A certain aroma or a certain smell that will make me recall a prior Christmas.
My son was 8 years old and wanted a bike, we told him that we couldn’t really afford one and he took this in good heart.
One weekend my wife and myself bought the bike and took it to my brothers, he hid it and on Christmas Eve brought it over, we put a huge ribbon on it and propped it up in the lounge.
The look on my sons face on Christmas morning was priceless, he just burst into tears and hugged me and the wife, I’ll never forget that morning
When we were living in Atlanta, a bunch of Korean families we knew would get together every Christmas, have a huge dinner, exchange presents, and then have a little talent show where the kids played songs, recited poems, and did other random stuff (one year a girl played Cat’s Cradle with her toes). The parents would get riproaringly drunk while the kids would go upstairs and play games till the wee hours. There was one particular Christmas when the parents, in their drunken state, spontaneously decided we were all going on a trip to Hilton Head the next morning. Before we knew what was happening we’d been bundled into cars and whisked to South Carolina. :eek: It was pretty awesome.
Lessee, she was born in 1910, so I guess she missed the Depression by a few years. Then again, she dropped out of school in 3rd grade when her mother died so she could take care of her brother and sister until her dad remarried. Not much of a childhood after that, I suppose. (This in very rural Northeastern Tennessee and her father was a miner.) She was married at 15 and had my mom (#9 of ten kids) when she was 35. Doing the math, she would have been about 66 when my dad gave her the wagon.
The “Worst Christmas Gift” thread(s) got me remembering:
My mother wrapped up everything as gifts; she would have wrapped the dinner if she could have. (Santa brought us around three gifts, one big, one medium, and one small but special one; those gifts were not wrapped.)
We always opened a couple of presents Christmas Eve; they were always new pajamas. The year the oldest started college we all got footies pajamas; we wore them for Christmas dinner with the relatives.
We always got lots of necessary stuff as presents; socks, toothbrushes, underwear. And new hat-scarf-mitten sets. And ‘good’ clothes to wear to mass. Mom always gave us the bathrobes and slippers first because it was very cold in the tree room. Our stocking were always bulging with oranges and nuts, with a few hard candies. Usually there’d be one apple, near the top, so it scented the room and didn’t get bruised.
I remember one toy, and I remember that one because it was from Santa and there was a label on it ‘Made in Japan’, and I realized the truth about Santa.
(all the money my parents spent on toys, and I remember the groceries shoved in my socks …)
Here are a few memories. When we were young Dad would put a train around the tree and then make smoke come out of the stack by putting his cigarette in it.
We had some ornaments with pinwheels in 'em. They were my favorite. The heat from the lights made them turn. We lost 'em in the flood of 96. Some dopers here helped me find new ones. Mom’s eyes got a little teary when I gave them to her. (The new lights don’t generate enough heat to make the turn, but it doesn’t matter.)
When I was young I used to say that when I grew up I’d be rich and I would send Mom and Dad to Hawaii. When I was rich (enough) to send them somewhere they wanted to go to Las Vegas but couldn’t afford it, so I got them tickets. Dad got chocked up reading the letter.
One year on a whim I got them a nintendo 128 game cartridge. I dunno what I was thinking and I agonized about it for months (I shop very early) and worried it was going to be a waste of money. They played with it every single day for over a year except one day when Dad had pneumonia. Mom said she would catch him getting up in the middle of the night to practice so that he could beat her the next day. They would play until way too late and then say: Just one more game then we HAVE to go to bed.
Love the “puffing” chimney stack! (and the older folks playing Nintendo–I loved Yoshi’s story).
I remember hiding under our couch the first year we lived up here (we moved from Florida to Chicago when I was 4). I wanted to stay up and see Santa. I remember my Dad pulling me out from under the couch (young me didn’t realize that since there was no skirt on the legs of the couch that my parents could see me plainly) and carrying me up to bed. Never did see Santa.
One year, I must have been younger than 7, because we moved to the house when I was 7, we lived in an apartment with a balcony on it.
On Christmas morning, I looked out onto the balcony and saw boot prints and hoof prints from Santa and the reindeer. I logically tried to figure it out, suspecting my Dad, but he owned no boots. I was suspicious, but I still believed.
My mom had an old electric train from when she was a kid, and that smell of hot electric wires still remind me of that train running under the tree. It smoked too, but some other way than a cigarette.
My mother also used to make a huge production out of wrapping presents just right. The fanciest papers, the handmade stylish bows, ribbon, decorations-creative and gorgeous.
One year I received Monopoly, the first night we played until like 2 AM, played that game for about 3 months straight.
My Grandmother and great aunts used to send me packages from far off foreign places (Like Pennsylvania) and they would always hide things in the package–similar to Russian nesting dolls. The gift might be a jewelry box, but every compartment would have something in it, and there’d be other stuff hidden in the wrapping paper, or taped to the underside of a compartment. I would have to scour through every bit of everything, even the bottom or the side of the box itself, for fear that I’d throw something out.
It’s funny, most of my Christmases were pretty shitty growing up, but there were still a lot of good parts, too.
The Sears “Wish Book” from the mid-60s holds a special place in my heart. That was where almost all of my Christmas presents came from. It was awesome.
And for months, we’d pore over it, like it was some kind of Rosetta stone, wishing for this toy and that new bike. It was a magical book and read to tatters in our house. Kids don’t have anything like that today. I have my kids go through the catalogs that do still come (Lego has a nice one). But it’s not the same.
My cousin Tina and I teaching our two-year-old cousin to swear. “Say fuck, Amanda. Say shit.” Aunt Katie, Amanda’s mother, was sitting nearby and found it amusing.
A total cliche, but going sledding at a nearby hill to my cousins’ house. I was about fifteen, not really a kid, but we had a lot of fun.
When I was 11, and I got this doll I had wanted for ages. (Remember the “Hot Looks” dolls?) I was soooo excited.
My cousins and I doing the “ornament exchange” every year. I think we only ended it recently. Each year, our tree is pretty much groaning from the weight.
And last year, when my cousin Marc and his highschool sweetheart, Michelle, announced their engagment.
One of my fondest Christmas memories happened when I was about five or six. I woke up very early Christmas morning, and saw a shadow in the hallway. I was absolutely convinced that it was Santa! Babbled to anyone who would listen the next day about how I had actually seen Santa’s shadow!
Course, years later I figured out that it was my dad’s shadow I had seen. Didn’t diminish the memory any.
I don’t have a single favorite holiday memory. Mine is more of just overall as a kid. All of us would gather at a relatives house and everyone who was out of town, or state would come home. There would be glorious amounts of food, spanish music booming out of the speakers, and my uncles (and dad) getting drunk on beer and coquito. When enough alcohol was consumed, my uncles (and dad) would break out the instruments and sing and dance all night long. It was quite entertaining!
This popped up in another thread, but it bears (perhaps blondebears!) repeating here.
Khadji, we had three of those pinwheel ornaments, which I am positive I got at a fund raising bazaar held at our Jewish neighbors’ temple. When the family Christmas ornaments were divvied up when Mom sold the house, my sister scarfed them all up, and I love seeing them on her tree every year.
One of my favorite memories was the year my sister and I got Blaze. Finding him sitting in the middle of the living room on Christmas morning was beyond our wildest dreams! We were a “socks and underwear for Christmas” family. My sister and I could not have been more stunned if it had been a real, live pony.
Which brings me to my second memory. This would have been one of the last Christmases celebrated in our childhood house, before Mom sold the house after Dad died. So maybe 1992-ish? Christmas morning, and I looked out the front door to the house across the street, and there it was, in the front yard. OMG!!! A PONEEEE! Srsly! A beautiful chestnut pony with a big, fancy red bow on its halter. (In a very suburban neighborhood.) I felt like all my childhood fantasies of getting a pony were fulfilled in that moment. My sisters and I all just floated around with smiles on our faces for the rest of the day.