All these are great stories.
I seem to have something in my eye.
Christmas of 1959, I was not quite five years old, my birthday being on New Year’s Eve.
About 6:30 PM or so we leave the house to go to the children’s Christmas program at church. Mom forgot something, so we wait in the car while she hurries back into the house. It’s dark already, and Mom didn’t know there’s a six inch or so crack in the kitchen curtains. Through that gap I see her put away the Oreo’s and milk we’d left for Santa. See, we knew he came while we were at church, because we opened presents on Christmas Eve.
So I was not quite five when I learned there was no Santa, and likely no Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy either. However, I didn’t tell my folks what I’d seen, because I didn’t want to chance getting nothing next year! LOL
My sister-in-law had one of my nephews on Christmas Day. My brother is a pastor, and while he was there for the birth early in the morning, he had to leave the hospital to lead the Christmas service at church (I think that Christmas was on a Sunday that year).
My sister-in-law remembered how lonely she was on Christmas Day, so for many years after that, she would get some flowers and balloons and go to the hospital on Christmas Day and just be a friendly face for other moms who might be feeling as lonely as she had felt.
My husband always wanted a chain-saw bear. I don’t know if you have them in other places, but here, you can get any kind of animal you want carved from a cedar log with a chain-saw. The year we moved into this house I decided to get one for him.
A friend of mine agreed to keep it at his house until Christmas. The friend worked at a local hospital. (This fact is important later in the story.) He worked Christmas eve, so he said he’d drop it off Christmas morning. He left it in the front seat of his car while he was working. He “dressed” it in a scarf and hat so it would look like a person in the car and no one would steal it.
It rained Christmas eve, and he was afraid it would get ruined. (I still don’t know why, it was a cedar log.) So, he put it in something water proof.
I had laid out a scavenger hunt for hubby’s presents. So, the next clue was in the garage. (That’s where I thought my friend had left the bear.)
We troop out to the garage, Hubby in the lead, then me, then his parents.
As we passed between the cars in the driveway, Hubby stepped over a Body Bag, then I stepped over it. Mom and Dad just stood there waiting for one of use to explain why there seemed to be a dead body in the driveway.
After he found the little present in the garage, I told him the contents of the body bag was for him too. Mom and Dad backed up, he unzipped the bag and gasped. The hat and scarf were still on the bear and for a brief second, he and his parents thought I’d given him a dead guy.
But, all turned out well. The bear came inside the house, and stayed there for a week or so. It left a mark on my hardwood floor.
That was 16 years ago and the bear, I’m sorry to say, died last year. His face fell off. He did not, however, go out in a body bag!
When we were first dating, my husband got me three Christmas cards, because each one said something he wanted me to know.
When I was little, Christmas was a huge deal in my family. Christmas Eve was celebrated at our house with a large dinner, some presents, candlelight service. Christmas Day was Santa presents, followed by dinner and more presents at the grandparents house. My dad always went big for the holiday - lights on the house, a lit up Santa on the roof, lighted candy canes all down the walkway, and we had these super neat lighted bells in the windows. We always had a real tree, festooned with ornaments they had since mom and dad married, tinsel, lights - the whole shebang.
Skip forward to December 23rd, 1993. I had moved out of my parents house a month earlier. I had left a full time job and school to give birth to TheKid. I had PPD. I was adjusting to being a mother, a full time partner to her dad, to keeping my own house… I was a mental mess. And I wanted a “normal” Christmas. Instead, I had a fake mini-tree sitting on an end table.
My dad and TheKid’s dad never got along, but that day they went and bought a 5’ tall real tree, set it up in our living room, and decorated it with some ornaments from when I was growing up and some new ornaments to start off our new family life. That was the only Christmas he, TheKid and I would spend together as a family, and it was wonderful.
In Christmas 1983, a pair of newlyweds were spending a four-month “honeymoon” in a bungalow on the Hawaii Department of Agriculture’s Animal Quarantine Station in Aiea, with the bride’s guide dog, Misty Dawn. The groom was stationed aboard a submarine in Pearl Harbor, and had to stand duty aboard the sub on Christmas Eve. The bride, having little-to-no appetite to spend the night alone, accepted the invitation of her aunt to spend the night and Christmas Day in the home she rented in the hills overlooking Kahala. The plan was for the groom, when he was relieved on Christmas morning, to check on the dog, see she had food for the day, and then join his wife and her aunt, basking in the splendor of how rich people live, if only for a day.
Just so we’re clear, the groom was me, and the bride was the woman later to be known as kaylasmom to Dopers everywhere.
All went according to plan that morning, to an extent. It was raining buckets when I arrived at the bungalow, but I couldn’t NOT let Misty Dawn have any ability to relieve herself all day. So I left the back door open for her, giving her access to the 90-odd square feet of fenced-in Aiea red clay that comprised our back yard, filled her food and water dishes, and told her to be good. Surely she valued comfort and dryness enough to only go out when she really NEEDED to, and to keep her excursions as short as possible.
So I drove out to Kahala and spent the day with kaylasmom and Auntie Evelyn and her housemate/personal companion, Mister Ed Kenney, the creator of this slice of delightfulness. IIRC, I was not offered a meal while there, although I did have some coffee and a couple of cookies. Being probably kind of socially inept, I didn’t take that as the hint it probably was, and we stayed there well into the evening, departing for Aiea at about 7 p.m.
Misty Dawn was a Golden Retriever, with the most beautiful, luxuriant red coat you ever did see. And she LOVED water. And mud. And there had been plenty of both of those in the dog run all day. She also loved scampering throughout the house wagging her paintbrush-like tail wherever she went. The bungalow was sparsely furnished, to say the least, and we were surrounded by about twenty cardboard boxes full of wedding presents while we were there, living out of our suitcases. What we walked into was a complete disaster; the entire interior of the building had been bathed in bright red mud. I had been awake for most of the past forty or so hours, and doing anything about it that night was out of the question. We collapsed on the bed, saving the recovery efforts for the morning.
I spent December 26, from awakening until about ten p.m. cleaning that place up, wiping down all the cartons of wedding presents, mopping the floors, bathing the dog, stripping the bed, washing the walls, sorting the muddy clothes from the clean ones, THEN went in search of an open laundry room, which we finally found in the basement of a hotel on Waikiki. The dog was still not allowed to leave the quarantine station, but I left the door shut while we were gone.
While we waited for the laundry to dry (kaylasmom sleeping in the car, IIRC) I walked along the street, looking at the sights. I came upon a street vendor, selling oysters with a guaranteed pearl inside for five dollars. Coincidentally, exactly how much money I had left in my pocket. So I bought one, and the vendor opened it to reveal not one, but TWO blue pearls. I had them made into a pair of earrings for kaylasmom and presented them to her the following Christmas.
That was a great story, kaylasdad99. I love a happy ending.
Every Christmas was memorable when I was a kid. How they knew what we wanted was a mystery but somehow Dad and Mom always did. Maybe it was the Sears catalogue pages we lingered over but I swear I never told even Santa I wanted a G.I. Joe Search for the Stolen Idol adventure set but there it was like magic Christmas morning. Magic. Early morning glittering magic. I love Christmas. My parents were the best.
I tried to be as good when I became a parent. No longer was Sears the major purveyor of Christmas magic but I mostly succeeded. The pressure was great to be as wonderful as my parents. On Christmas eve Santa had a bit to imbibe as the pressure was at last eased and the time to obtain the perfect gifts passed. My folks lived just over the hill from us and I often stored my Santa there. About midnight I made it over the hill and conived with my folks about the stuff left there in hiding.
One item was a ten speed which I boarded and rode over the hill to the path home. I thought all had been put together and in working order. NO. The brakes were not connnected. I made it to the bottom of the hill only to discover they did not work a bit. I contemplated that as I crossed my front yard in the moonlight headed for the far side where the shear dropoff to a sunken road awaited me. Last minute I laid it down and dug a trench to the very edge. There was a bit of cleanup and some tightening of brake levers but Santa came through, drunken sod that he was that season.
One Christmas my father was wearing the velvet smoking jacket Mom had made him in the 70s. It wasn’t garish but it was a print in shades of amber, brown, etc. – typical 70s fabric. My brother and I were teasing him about it and by extension Mom. He comes to us and says, you know your mother is in the kitchen crying over what you said.
Sobered up right up since we hadn’t meant any harm. My mom had a shitty childhood and Christmas made her sad anyway and we had made it worse.
Christmas Day, 1980: The wind chill was–no foolin–minus 50 (F). Baltimore NEVER gets weather like that. My sibs and I hop in Sis’ car and head up the Beltway to Grandma’s (25 miles). Not another soul on the road. Because they’re all broken down in the shoulder. I counted 105 cars in the break-down lane before we took our exit.
My son was a toddler and my MIL, FIL, and grandmother in law (GIL, I guess) came to our house for Christmas. MIL was very excited, thinking that son was now old enough to really tear into his gifts Christmas morning. He was her first grandchild.
However, instead of going after the presents, my son climbed up on a chair next to his great-grandma, and babbled and grinned at her for a long time. She loved it.
We found out later that he’d thought she was Mrs. Claus. I must say, she did look the part: curly white hair, little wire-framed glasses, bright red sweater…
Oh that’s so sweet! * sniff*
In our family of six, we would call things to make sure we got them. For example, my brother Tim would say “I get a window” meaning he would get a window seat in the car on the way to church. Brother Terry usually claimed the other window. I pretended that I preferred the middle because it was warmer (yes, they fell for it after a few weeks so I got a window).
Christmas mornings included delivering newspapers, opening presents, trip to church and then home again for a shower and change of clothes to head off to the cousin’s house. Six people. One bathtub/shower. Not a lot of hot water.
One year, as we trooped out of church, brother Tim didn’t just claim a window, he claimed the driver’s side window. I quickly figured out that was so he could be in the bathroom first so I called the shower. Other brothers followed me calling the shower leaving Tim to last. Heh heh.
But, as we pulled up to the house and stopped the car, Tim bolted out of the car and into the house. By the time, I had got inside, the shower was running. Brother Terry exclaimed “No fair! Carnut called the shower!” My dad, bless his heart forever, said “That’s right, she did!” And he promptly went down to the basement and shut off the hot water.
Tim’s yell was legendary. He had just added shampoo and had to finish bathing in icy winter water.
I guess I was about ten years old when my sister (younger than me) got a kitten for Christmas.
Santa had left the little guy in the kitchen, along with some food and water, a litterbox, and a blanket. He had closed the kitchen doors, so Mom got a big surprise (;)) when she went to make coffee.
Anyway, Sis was delighted, and she took Kitty went into the living room, where the tree and presents were. Kitty had a great time, playing with discarded ribbons, and batting at scraps of wrapping paper. He was fun to play with, I have to admit, but I was distracted by my things, and Sis was distracted by hers, and Mom and Dad were distracted by theirs. Kitty was forgotten–but only for a moment.
“Has anybody seen the kitten in the last five minutes?” asked Mom. “Where did he get to?”
As if on cue, we heard a plaintive “Mewwww!”
We looked, following the sound. And there, at the top of the tree, right under the angel, was Kitty. He had climbed the tree, and was unable to get down. “Mewwww!” He looked terrified.
“Oh, I’ll get him,” said Dad, and he went to get Kitty. Problem was, that Kitty had to decide between the lesser of two evils: being stuck at the top of the tree, or trusting himself to these strange hands. Dad, expecting Kitty to be glad to be rescued, grabbed Kitty and pulled.
But Kitty had decided that sticking to the tree was best and had dug in his tiny claws. With Dad’s pull on Kitty, whose claws were firmly in the tree, the tree toppled. Ornaments broke, lights went out, remaining presents were crushed, and Kitty (using, probably, the first of his nine lives) jumped and ran for the safety that the area under the couch provided. Dad, not expecting Kitty to hold onto the tree, lost his balance and ended up on his butt, having fallen in such a way that the tree landed on top of him.
Dad laughed. He just laughed. Yes, some things were ruined, but we followed Dad’s lead, and laughed with him. Sis managed to coax Kitty out from under the couch with a bit of ribbon, and he was, from then forward, a member of the family.
Kitty lived to be 16 years old. He never climbed another Christmas tree.
I used to be a substitute teacher. One day in December, a little girl gave me a picture she’d drawn. It was captioned Rudolph the Red Nose Rainder (crossed off) Rayndeer (crossed off) Randeir (crossed off) DOG.
Underneath, she’d crossed off Rudolph’s antlers.
Hee hee! I love it!!
That is adorable! XD
Great story!
Now wait, I got something in my eye…oh well, forget about the Christmas when the septic tank blew, and on Christmas morning us kids had us a brand new skating rink.