Christmas Memories - please share!

[the_rayway]

Hi All,
This is kind of spurred by Jamesngalveston's "What you couldn't do without" thread. I would love to hear Christmas memories from others out there; we all grew up so differently and in such different times.

Here's mine:
My mother grew up in Manitoba in a two room house without running water. One room was the bedroom for the whole family, the other was the kitchen/living room/dining room.

Because there was no floor space with a family of 6 living there, when Christmas came, Grandpa would hang a tiny living spruce over the kitchen table. No matter how hard things were, he made sure that everyone had something to open on Christmas Eve.

When I was about 6 years old, the Christmas after my Grandpa died, my Dad decided to hang a Christmas tree in our stairwell beside our kitchen table as a surprise for her. Her eyes filled with tears and she laughed and cried and hugged him so hard. Then she shared her Christmas stories with us again.

Now with my own family, we also have a tree hanging in our upstairs stairwell. Any of use can look out of our bedroom doors at night and see the lights twinkling against the walls. All of the ornaments are homemade, so far, only mine and my husband's from our childhood. But with the kids getting older, they will start adding to it every year as well.

This is our little piece of Christmas family history.

 

[GreginND]

I remember how my mother had to have our tree decorated with perfect balance. She would stand back and direct us where to hand the ornaments. My tree is not so perfect. We have a tree of memories. I particularly enjoy the ceramic doves we inherited from a dear friend who passed away in the 1990. We place them on our tree in memory every year. I also have one of my mother's gaudy large plastic pink bulbs that I put on as well to remember her.

 

[vernsgal]

We made it a tradition with our kids that on Christmas morning I would set the alarm for 6:30 am .My husband would make the coffee and I would make up the turkey dressing.We smoked back then, never in the house though ,so we'd take our coffee out and have a smoke and relax for about 10 minutes. Then at 7 am the kids were allowed to come down.They'd come down usually youngest to oldest, say good morning , Merry Christmas and claim a sitting spot. When all were down stairs, we'd hand out their stockings and while they were opening them I would go stuff the bird. Then we would hand out the presents ,but only one at a time. Everyone would sit and watch whoever was opening so they could see what they got and who it was from.This made our mornings fun and instead of being over in 1/2 hour or so,it sometimes lasted hours. The mornings were even longer when my parents would stay over because there would be more gifts to go around.
When any of the kids are home for Christmas now, we still do the one present at a time.

 

[ShelleyDickison]

We had the traditional decorating of the tree. We all have specific decorations that we put on the tree. With the additional of Grandkids they also got to pick which decorations went on. Once in a while we have everyone in town at the same time so we can do it as a family. This year we will have Skype sessions with the ones that are gone and the will tell us where they want their ornaments placed. We will have 2 Skype sessions with my 2 son in laws in Afghanistan and one with my daughter and 2 grand daughters in Japan. I remember a couple of times the family tree seemed to have about a hundred decoration in the front at the bottom because that's as high as the kids or Grandkids could reach. The living room tree is always the family tree. My husband and I are the only ones that decorate the tree in the library and it has the traditional type decoration. Usually after we are finished we will just sit and have a glass of wine and just listen to music. The tree for upstairs is a craft tree with only homemade decorations that go on it. It's for the decoration the Grandkids and I make throughout the year. After the holidays those decorations get sent to my Mom who takes them to their church for the after holiday rummage/bazaar for charity drive.

 

[bakervinyard]

I'm one of six children in my family and we didn't have a lot of money, but we had great Christmas'. My mother always put on the lights on the tree just right and the tinsil was put on 1 strand at a time. My dad would buy steak's for our Christmas dinner. When I got out of high school we moved to a 10 room victorian house that my mother always dreamed of. The next year my dad passed away and my siblings and I took over the tradition of buying the tree and decorating it. We had 13ft. ceilings and we bought the biggest tree we could find. Now my kids are grown and we have our own traditions. Bakervinyard