Tell me a Christmas story

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

On Christmas eve, when I was about 10, my dad got a call from his mother who lived about 200 miles away. They talked for a while and while she never asked anything of him it was obvious that she was feeling down because none of the extended family was going to be with her for Christmas for the first time in about forever.

He got off the phone and thought about it for a while and then went and talked to my mother. They then called everybody together and asked how we felt about piling in the car and going to Grandmas house for Christmas.

It was already getting dark, but we packed up all the presents under the tree and all the food that we had stocked up for Christmas dinner and shoved it all in our old 1970s 9 passenger station wagon (remember those?) and headed out.

I remember it was snowing and we were only on the road for a little while before it was totally dark. We were on the road for about an hour when dad realized we were low on gas so he started looking for a station. Now this was the 70s when people actually quit work and went home on Christmas eve. Long story short, we couldn’t find a station that took dad’s gas card (Standard) that was open. He also only had a few bucks in his pocket, since he hadn’t planned on going anywhere for several days (the folks were both in education so the whole family was off for two weeks).

So we are about a third of the way to where we are going, low on gas and dad has no cash. So we start tearing the car apart looking for loose change. A couple of us kids had some pocket money on us that got chipped in. Fortunately this was the 70s and gas was considerably less than a dollar a gallon. So we found a little station that was still open and paid with mostly loose change for enough gas to get us where we were going.

We finally rolled in to the great’s well after our usual bedtimes. We then had to get beds set up for everybody which took another space of time. It must have been pushing twelve when we finally got to bed.

We got up in the morning and had a great Christmas morning. Dad’s folks were very please they didn’t have to spend Christmas alone. And we had a great Christmas meal from what we brought together with what they had on hand.

Your turn.

Tell me a Christmas (Hanuka, Yule, Kwanzaa, bleak midwinter, Festivus) story!

2

We had “blizzard years” here in Indiana in the mid-70s. We lived just outside our very small town, and the more rural areas (where almost everyone lived) were pretty much inaccessible. I was about 10 and my 18 year old brother still lived at home.
One by one, his “country” friends began to get stranded in town, and somehow they all landed at our house. We had 3-5 extra teens sleeping all over our floors for the better part of 6 weeks.
God love my mom, she’s awesome. She just made a huge pot of soup every single day, kept everyone fed and showered, and somehow kept finding extra blankets. It’s a good thing we had a big freezer, I guess.
I thought it was awesome, of course. All the cute boys stranded at my house, letting me play cards with them and watching sitcoms at night. I still love having a house full of kids.

3

When I was seven, we were just leaving Grandma’s for home (30 miles) when it started to snow. “Oooo, white Xmas.” Uh-huh. Three blocks from home, the car would not make it up the last hill–maybe 5 degree incline–to the house. Dad had to put on the chains in the middle of the snow. If we’d left a half hour earlier, no problem. Half hour later, who knows?

4

My mom had three brothers and wanted to play a joke on one of them for Christmas. She asked the youngest one, Bobby, to help her prepare this joke gift for Butch.

Bobby really got into it. They got a very large box and then several small boxes. All the small boxes were wrapped and placed in the large box. They added all sorts of stuff. Rocks, balled up newspaper, just a bunch of junk that Bobby mostly provided.

But on Christmas, when the gift was handed out, it was for Bobby, not Butch. So he had to dig through all the junk and open all the boxes before he got to the real present, which was a watch for him. He jokingly bitched and moaned quite a bit, but of course we all thought it was hilarious.

5

This one year, my cousin had to climb up on the roof and shake the snow off grandpa’s satellite dish. May not sound like much, but it was memorable to us.

6

Back in '05, I brought home my first baby on Christmas Eve. A beautiful baby boy, who yes, even at 4 days of age, had plenty of packages under the tree. He was still swaddled like a little burrito. At dinner, it was a running joke, “pass the gravy!” “pass the pie!” “pass me that baby!” as the baby made his way around the table, soaking in the love. He was the first baby born into our family since the 1980s, so he was quite the popular little fellow.

Of course, I also had the PPD pretty bad and was recovering from a botched C-section, and I’d been too sick to do any Christmas shopping, but it was all good. :slight_smile:

7

Does it have to be a personal story? Because we’re coming up on the 100th anniversary of a genuine Christmas miracle.

Or if you do want a personal story:

Before Gramma died, it was our tradition that all of the family (well, all that could make it, which is still a lot-- Think 20+ people) would gather at her house for the big dinner and gift exchange. Well, in 1988, there was a power outage (I think a transformer blew out), and Gramma’s kitchen was all-electric. So she got a flashlight, went looking in the basement, and cooked the entire Christmas dinner over a camp stove and propane tank. Someone from the electric company also actually came out on Christmas Eve to fix the power, a sacrifice of which we were all appreciative.

Same house, but a long generation earlier: When my mom was a kid, Gramma’s Christmas trees all came from her yard (they always had a few growing at once, so there’d be one ready for each year). After Christmas, my family would take all their ornaments off, take the tree outside… and carry it up the hill for their neighbors, who were Eastern Orthodox. So the same pine got to be two different Christmas trees.

8

I’ve told this here before, but what the heck. I was spending Christmas at my parents’ house, the house I had grown up in, in an older suburban neighborhood. I went to the front door to look out for some reason, and on the frozen lawn of the house across the street was a pony with a big red bow on its halter.

Holy crap! Some kid really WAS getting a pony for Christmas! It totally made the day.

9

I was living in Colorado and wanted to go to my mom’s in Oklahoma for Christmas. (Fuck Oklahoma, by the way.) A friend was doing a quick trip–he was a nurse and had off Christmas Eve, Christmas, and the day after Christmas. So he was going to drive to Okla. on the Eve, have Christmas, and then drive home the day after. I figured I could always get a ride back (I had a week off and a job I didn’t care much if I lost at the time if I wanted more time). If nothing else my mother would eventually get sick of me and put me on a plane. A week at the outside for this to happen.

So early on the day before Xmas off we set.

We hit a blizzard.

Now, it was no surprise. We knew bad weather was on the way. We just didn’t know how bad. We were in his Ford Maverick. It was bad. But nothing we couldn’t handle, until we started running into closed highways.

First I-70. We got off it and took smaller roads. Eventually, around midnight after 12 hours of driving, we were in Dodge City, Kansas, and we stopped. We had been switching off driving because conditions were terrible and driving was tense, and we couldn’t just keep driving, even if the roads had been open, which some of them weren’t. We found the ONE hotel room in Dodge that was not already occupied by a stranded traveler or a couple of them.

Merry Christmas in Dodge City, Kansas. We had breakfast at a diner along with various stranded people, truck drivers, and the like. Everybody told us we were right to stop, things only got worse.

Friend decided the best thing to do would be to turn around and go back to Denver.

So, after a fairly splendid hamburger as Xmas dinner in the same diner where we had breakfast we headed back to Denver.

When we hit I70 again it had just been reopened. I guess they closed it right behind us because we were the ONLY vehicle on the road from wherever the hell we were (maybe Burlington?) until we got to the outskirts of Aurora. At one point we needed a rest stop. The rest stop was snowed in and of course not open, but it didn’t matter. It was possible to just stop the car right there on I70 and nobody to see. Amazing experience. The right lane was icy but the left lane was absolutely clear of snow.

That same year a friend of mine was flying home to Michigan. She ended up spending Christmas and the day after Xmas in the Chicago airport before she, too, had to turn around and come home. Yay weather!

10

We got a heck of a white Christmas one year in East TN. Tons of snow fell, luckily after my older brother, SIL and the kids got to our parents house from the suburbs of Atlanta. We (including my younger brother and grandmother) lived on a farm next to the French Broad River and as the snow fell the yard, the barn and outbuildings, the fields and hills started looking like a postcard, all cold and snowy outside while we were warm and stuffing our faces inside.

It was getting colder and colder as the meal wound down. Various ones of us went to each room stoking the fireplaces and making sure there was enough wood out on the porch while the smaller kids pressed their faces against the window. The snow had turned to sleet and was crusting the steps. The late afternoon sun barely lit the blueing glints of snow. We were carrying the plates into the kitchen when the power went out. My older brother figured a line had gone down somewhere along the gravel road to our house. He and my stepfather bundled up and went out into the cold, my brother to find a wooden pole and walk the road and my stepfather to check on the animals.

When my brother found the downed line he lifted and snaked it over to the ditch line, telling us when he got back in that he’d sung “Wichita Lineman” out into the emptiness. My stepfather came in soon after and started building up the fire in the kitchen which had a brick arched fireplace you could almost walk into. He talked to my mother and then went back out to the barn. Then he started carrying in pigs.

One of the sows had just had a litter and he was afraid they might freeze, so he started laying piglets out in front of the fire. The kids (which basically meant all of us) oohed and ahhhed and somebody covered the half dozen or so squirming bodies with a quilt. The sun went down, we had fires and lamps, and voices drifting from the other room as two year olds and twelve year olds lay down next to the sleepy little pigs.

Best. Christmas. Ever.

11

Becky, that was awesome! Great story beautifully told, thanks!

12

My mom was president of the women’s sisterhood group in our synagogue. All the women served at the local hospital one Christmas eve and Christmas day to replace all the volunteer staff who celebrated Christmas so they could be home with their families. As kid, I thought that was a really awesome thing to do.

ETA: Becky, agreed, that was an awesome story.

13

It really was. Well done,** Becky**.

14

After graduating from undergrad I couldn’t find a job, this lead me to working at Target for three years. Needless to say, money was at a premium for me, but because I’m really stubborn I always hated when people gave me money because it made me feel worthless/like a charity case. I eventually went to grad school where the money wasn’t any better, and the anger remained.

It was while in grad school that the Green Bay Packers opened up a stock sale for only the third time ever. I wanted stock and even though I couldn’t really afford it, I bought one anyway. I got my certificate in the mail in it’s little envelope and put it in the behind-the-seat pocket in my car. I was taking it home so I could say “look at what I bought! I did this because see! I have money! nyah!” It was also pretty major because I was actually able to HAVE a Christmas for the first time in a good 3 years AND my brother was up from Atlanta. The whole family was home.

As per normal. I pulled into my driveway and ran inside so I could see the dogs. While I’m doing this my dad will always come out and take out my bags/pillows and stuff when I’m visiting home. He brings out the stock certificate.

“What’s this?” he asks

“It’s my Packers stock!” I can see that my parent’s have a look about them. So I get all petulant expecting them to yell at me for spending money. “What? What’s wrong? are you mad at me now?”

“No it’s just…” Then they go away and come out and say “Well we were gonna wait until tomorrow but…” And they bring out a stock certificate that they got for me for Christmas, and since they got one for my brother too they say “Here is yours too”. Then my brother goes to his bag and pulls out a certificate and says “Well I got you guys one too”, and gave it to my parents.

It’s Christmas eve and I am angry at myself beyond belief because my bullish attitude ruined Christmas. I mean, this was our big gift to everyone…and now it’s done. Because of me. Stupid worthless me.

Christmas day comes and we get our gifts. It’s towards the end and my parents say “Well the stock too don’t forget that”. I get embarassed and look down. Then my parent’s say there is actually one more. They leave and bring out 2 ipads, one for me and one for my brother.

They tell me that this was there ACTUAL surprise gift to both of us, and the certificates were always a red herring. And by showing the one I got for myself I actually allowed them to surprise us even more.

It’s something that we now, 3 or 4 years later, talk and laugh about every Christmas. But like most of these stories, it was hell at the time! But in retrospect it was one of things that had to happen to have such a fun payoff the next day

15

I remember when I was little, and we were really poor (dad was laid off for years)…my dad took me over the barbed-wire fence between our house and the freeway and we cut down a pine tree (shhh, it belonged to the state) and put it up as a Christmas tree.

I can’t imagine how a single person could cut down a tree then get it over a fence by himself (I say “we” but I was, like, five years old) but that was back in the day when my dad was young and strong like Paul Bunyan.

16

How our family came to open presents on Christmas Eve, with only the stockings saved for Christmas morning:

**1:00 am **Christmas morning. Two children, five and seven, race to the pitch-black living room screaming “SANTA CAME! SANTA CAME!” The younger one, a boy, trips over a metal dollhouse and cuts his leg. The older one knocks over a bicycle, which hits the tree and breaks several prized glass ornaments passed down to the mother from her grandmother. The father says, “#@!%#, IT’S ONE !@## O'CLOCK IN THE !@##@ MORNING” (actually, I don’t think he said anything worse than damn, but it was still shocking to us).

Merry Holidays, all. :slight_smile:

17

When I was little, I didn’t know the word “logistics”, but I thought it was So Cool that people in Heaven knew we’d be in different locations for Christmas and for the Epiphany, and we’d get presents in both dates and both places - they never sent a present to a place on the date we weren’t there!

One year (I think I was 7), I went to bed real early on Christmas Eve, having had an early dinner and been sent to bed before the adults’ dinner got underway. At one point I needed to go to the bathroom, so I got up, left the room, heard a noise from the entrance hall, went there without even remembering it was Christmas and saw Grandma holding a large plastic box - “they’re here already! The Baby Jesus brought the presents already!”

I’d caught Grandma completely in fraganti, but the idea that she’d been putting that present down rather than having found them already didn’t even enter my mind.

18

Thanks elbows, IvoryTowerDenizen and Dung Beetle. It was one of those special times that come along now and then and one of the few stories I can retell without holding the hand of a therapist. :stuck_out_tongue:

19

Back when I was a student (about 30 years ago) I planned to spend christmas together with some friends in a skiing resort. We rented an apartment, and several other friends planned to drive out to have christmas dinner with us. In the end, there were supposed to be 12 people for dinner, and I planned accordingly. However, the weather forecast went from bad to worse, and while the turkey was already in the oven, one after another of those who were supposed to come for dinner called to cancel, until there were only four of us. Not wanting to waste the good food, we decided to find some replacement guests. We went out to the skiing slope and started to ask arbitrary strangers whether they would like to come to our place for dinner. So we got our table filled, and it got to be one of the best christmas parties I ever had.

20

My dad has a Howdy Doody doll that he has had since 1952, when he was seven years old. Old Howdy has a jaw that moves when you pull a string so you can make him talk. Dad showed this feature to my little sister, a toddler at the time, by making him bite her finger.

That Christmas, Little Sister discovered the wonderful pop-tinkle sound that the glass ornaments on the tree make when they are dropped on the floor. We were running out of ornaments and couldn’t keep her away from the tree. Dad got the bright idea to sit Howdy Doody in the branches. Little Sister was terrified and gave the tree a wide berth from then on. He made a repeat appearance the next year, just to be safe.

These days, I put a Howdy Doody in my tree every year. Little Sister (now 36) keeps her mitts off my ornaments, too.