Christmases

[scheherazade_79]

I tend to remember mine for all the wrong reasons. The good ones are forgotten in a couple of months, whereas the bad ones are far more interesting

I'm not apologising about the earliness of this thread, because the Christmas stuff has been on sale in shops for weeks now - so blame them.

Plus I'm bored.

Feel free to share your stories of interesting Christmases, whether they're good or bad.

*******************************

A Typical Zade Christmas

I went out for a civilised drink on Christmas Eve with my best friend at a quiet old man's pub. I go there because they have a cute dog. The only downside to the place is that there's no cigarette machine, so when I ran out that night, I made a fateful decision to go to a rough cellar bar nearby and raid the machine there.

I'd just finished feeding the money into the machine when I felt something collide really hard into my shoulder. I turned around, ready to give whoever had done it a real piece of my mind. But when I saw what I was in the middle of, my jaw dropped.

While I'd been singing along to Wham and pushing coins into a slot, a disagreement had broken out between two groups of people - men and women. They were advancing on each other, faces contorted in rage and fists clenched. I had the misfortune of being trapped in the middle of them, with nowhere to escape to.

They seemed completely oblivious to me, so as the bodies started to collide I managed to squash myself between the cigarette machine and the juke box. It wasn't a second too soon, because suddenly, less than half a metre away, one of the men started biting another man's ear.

The blood squirted and suddenly part of the ear was on the floor

The bouncers hauled the ear-biter and his friend out, and slammed the pub door behind them. One of the women went into screaming hysterics. I completed my purchase, lit a cigarette and wondered what to do next.

The only way of getting back to my friend at the nice pub was by passing the fighting bouncers and ear-biters on a narrow staircase. I gave it a little while, then decided to try my luck. When I opened the front door, the fighting had stopped, but the bouncers and ear-biters were still screaming abuse at each other. And the language was totally shocking - even by my standards.

When they noticed me they suddenly became quiet, but nobody moved. So, in the midst of it all, I had to say - "Excuse me, do you mind if I squeeze past, please?"

They still didn't say anything, and just stared at me as I picked my way around them. I'm not surprised - I probably sounded like something out of an Enid Blyton novel in that context

I had to have a brandy when I got back to the nice pub...

 

[FluteMaster]

I tend to remember mine for all the wrong reasons. The good ones are forgotten in a couple of months, whereas the bad ones are far more interesting

I'm not apologising about the earliness of this thread, because the Christmas stuff has been on sale in shops for weeks now - so blame them.

Plus I'm bored.

Feel free to share your stories of interesting Christmases, whether they're good or bad.

*

Damn, I can't remember much of any of my previous christmases, but none of them have been memorable in the way that I would really like!!

THinks....what would I like for xmas?? My sub in a stockings and a neat bow round her neck.....sigh.....

 

[oggbashan]

Repeated...

I have posted this before but I think it still fits:

Uncle Harry at Christmas

Family Christmases were dominated by the Uncles and Aunts. Even now they seem larger than life, with an infectious joy for living.

Uncle Harry had been a soldier but he had none of the soldier about him. He was the grasshopper who sang while the busy ant gathered food for winter. Not that Harry was much good at singing. Tuberculosis had damaged his lungs. For the two years immediately after the war he had lived in hospital. Even there he came up smelling of roses. He married his nurse and they were blissfully happy together. Harry was a born survivor, living for the moment and apparently careless of whatever the future might bring. Whatever it would be, Harry would survive it, and would get as much enjoyment out of it as he could.

One explanation given for Harry’s devil may care attitude was that he had come so close to death from the TB so many times that he was determined to live every day as if it were his last. That can’t have been wholly true because his elder brothers had moaned about his attitude before the war. While they had been improving themselves at evening classes Harry had been at the Hammersmith Palais with a floozy in his arms. If Aunt Gladys was a sample, Harry had good taste in floozies.

Harry delighted in twisting his brothers’ sense of propriety. While they were steadily working their way through the ranks of the Civil Service, he had a barrow in Bethnal Green market. He could get things “off ration”, “off the back of a lorry”, “no questions asked”. He kept his Cockney accent that his brothers suppressed. He could speak the Queen’s English but whenever his brothers were near his Cockney became broader. Harry’s proper job was as a Bank Messenger in Top Hat and Tails either guarding the door of the bank or taking messages from branch to branch in the City. That brought him the flat above the Bank in Bethnal Green. Whether his barrow goods were legitimate or not, no policeman could search his flat without warning because access was through the Bank.

At Christmas, Harry came into his own. He organised the adults into silly games, into sing-songs that the children could join, far from his brothers’ stolid renditions of Victorian Ballads. Harry was “Down at the Old Bull and Bush”. His brothers were “The Larboard Watch” or serenading “Ramona”. He might accompany them with his trombone but we children expected the fortissimo trombone raspberry. Harry never failed to give one whenever his brothers were in full flow.

Harry always produced mint fresh halfcrowns from a child’s ear or nose. His sleight of hand was almost professional. Cards would appear and vanish, scarves and plastic eggs would be taken from unlikely places. Harry was a favourite with the younger generation. His older brothers seemed to disapprove but I think they envied Harry’s sense of fun.

Harry encouraged any budding artistic talent. His Christmas presents were plasticine, paintboxes and penny whistles or kazoos. When one of his older brothers had been particularly irritating Harry gave his small nephew a tin drum.

I knew that Harry’s magic was done with agile fingers. What puzzled me was the freshness of the halfcrowns unlike the worn and dulled ones I usually saw. It took me twenty years to connect the newly minted halfcrowns and Harry’s employment in a bank. I just could not imagine Harry as a bank clerk. He wasn’t. He stood outside the bank in uniform and greeted customers and staff by name. I wish banks now were like Uncle Harry’s bank but they are gone, as is Harry, his super floozie Gladys, and the ghosts of Christmases past.

 

[cloudy]

One year I was living in Laurel, Mississippi, and working at the JCPenney's down there (it's maybe an hour north of New Orleans).

It rarely freezes that far south, so they don't bury water pipes very far underground. Well, the weather fooled everyone that year, and the temperature plummeted on Christmas eve.

We normally closed at 6 pm Christmas Eve, and at about 5:30, one of the employees came and found me to tell me that there was water covering the salon floor (I was the manager on duty). I went back there to check, and sure enough, water was about an inch/inch and a half deep on the floor in the salon, and it had closed long since. Guess what? Pipes had burst.

We closed the store at 6, like we'd planned, but ended up staying in the store until around 10 pm or so, getting the water shut off, and then cleaned up.

I leave the store, dead tired since I've been there since early that morning, and my damned car wouldn't start.

Got my then father-in-law to bring his truck down there (they were visiting), and we spent a good half hour pushing my little bitty car around the parking lot with his truck, me popping the clutch, trying to start it.

30 minutes later, "Fuck it." I left it there, climbed in his truck, and went home.

Needless to say, working in retail makes you despise any of the holidays.

 

[scheherazade_79]

I love these stories

Keep 'em coming!

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I remember 1986. My mom was alive, it was a prosperous time and my family were all doing well, and we were together and enjoying each others company. I got a pile jacket that is all ratty now but which I still wear a lot. It was a good year. The end.

(I have other memories of other Christmases, some happy and some sad, but this simple one seems appropriate.)

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Damnit woman, if you don't start writing a book on your life, I will....I love Zade stories....they make me smile and feel normal.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

I don't think of Chrismas much because they remind me of my father. He was a strange person. He was alway quiet, a terrible workoholic. I remember not seeing him most of the time. He would be gone working.

Like a lot of Irish he was orphaned quite young and grew up in an orphanage which he escaped when he was 17. Then he joined the IRA. He missed Christmas most of his life. When he was 24 he married my mother. Then a long story gets shorter. I was born. My father continued fighting the British and one day we all boarded a ship in Liverpoole and ended up in the U.S.

But this is about Christmas. My father was wild about it. He would close his business for most of December. Then he always bought the biggest tree. There were always presents galore. The house was decorated inside and out.

I remember seeing him happy. He died when I was 12. But I remember him smiling and laughing at Christmas. And that was the only time I ever saw him happy.

 

[scheherazade_79]

I only have one really poignant Christmas story, and that was the last Christmas my grandmother spent with us before she became really sick and passed away a few years later.

My grandmother was one hell of a woman. She lived out in the sticks - even more so than me, and she was widely respected, not to mention a little feared, in her community.

She had no filter process between what she thought and what she said. She was the most honest person I've ever known, but it made a lot of people uncomfortable around her. She was also insanely strong-willed.

My mother is also a very strong woman, and as with most mother in law/daughter in law relationships, there were times when things got a little strained.

That Christmas, my grandmother kicked things off by telling my mum how she'd like to plant something in the garden. My mother bristled and replied that the garden was planted up, but as it was winter, nothing was growing.

The next offence caused was to my sister when she was on her way out to the pub. My grandmother stared at her, and then informed her that her arse looked like two ferrets having a fight in a sack.

The following day, she looked my mother with genuine concern over lunch and said: "Excuse me, Mother of Zade (my mum's name's too distinctive to put here). Don't mind my saying, but I don't like that old dress you've got on - I think it's horrible!"

My mum turned white and then very, very red.

By that point I thought it would be a good idea to take my grandmother on a walk to get her out of the house for a little while.

We'd only gone about ten steps up the road when we ran into one of the neighbours - a woman in her sixties with really terrible nerves. My grandmother had met her before, but only very briefly. They said hello, then suddenly my grandmother blurted out - "Good God! You've put on weight, haven't you?!"

The neighbour looked absolutely mortified, and walked away quickly, while I died from embarrassment and started lecturing about why it was wrong to say things like that.

About ten minutes later, a random couple passed on the pavement opposite. My grandmother stopped and stared at them, before shouting "Hey!" The couple stopped, and looked at her in amazement. She stared at them for a few seconds, before saying - "No, I don't know you. Walk on!"

I don't remember any of the presents I had for Christmas that year. I just remember it as the time my grandmother reached her peak of making my jaw drop.

 

[Nirvanadragones]

1995 was my first Christmas with my ex -husband. He is Israeli and Jewish. He is also an only child, and I am one of 8 children. Christmas, as you can image, is a huge event for our family. And to see a grown man sit under a Christmas tree with presents all around him, all excited like a 5 year old, is something I will never forget

 

[TheEarl]

I can't pick out any one Christmas in particular, but it's without doubt my favourite time of the year. We gather together at home, myself and my siblings, and it's like it was when we were kids. The house is full and full of life. My mum has cooked fruit cakes and ginger cakes from a recipe that my gran gave her and we work our way through them one by one, fetching a new one from the freezer as the old ones disappear. We head off on excursions into town, to pick up random oddments and last minute presents and I get to bond with my siblings one on one again. We decorate the tree through an age-old sets of traditions and protocols, using decorations that are almost as old as I am and handmade trinkets that we made when we were five. There's a little cardboard booklet with roughly coloured pictures and wobbly gold pen writing, about the birth of Baby Jesus, that sits on the tree stand. I did that in primary school when I was only tiny. It still sits there, despite the fact that I'm the only one in the family who's remotely religious and I'm Wiccan. There's also a little sledge made out of an old shoebox and decorated with raggedy tinsel. The sherry and mince pie for Father Christmas go there on Christmas Eve.

Then comes the Eve itself. We eat dinner together at the table, starting with a prawn cocktail and followed by everyone eating their favourite meal that they chose earlier. Then we go to the living room and we 'kids' lay out our pillow cases on the settee for Father Christmas to fill with presents. My mum takes pictures which will never be looked at again and then we all retire to bed.

Then we have two days of utter togetherness, filled with presents, shiny new things, turkey, turkey stew, films, the Queen's speech, cakes, chocolate, giving presents (my favourite part) and generally relaxing around the house. It culminates with myself and my siblings going out on Boxing Day night for a night of drinking and dancing in the local town. Last year, we ended up dancing and skipping around a lamppost outside a club that we'd just come out of, much to the bemusement and amusement of the bouncers. I can think of no better group of people that I'd want to spend time with.


Dammit Scheh! Why'd you get me started. Now I really want it to come and it's not even Samhuin/Halloween yet! You're worse than Woolworths!

Why have you started a Christmas thread in early October anyway? I'm guessing it's not solely to torture me by getting me excited and then reminding me it's three months away.

The Earl

 

[TheEarl]

And with that, I notice your non-apology for the earliness and the boredom. Apologies.

The Earl

 

[yui]

I can't pick out any one Christmas in particular, but it's without doubt my favourite time of the year. We gather together at home, myself and my siblings, and it's like it was when we were kids. The house is full and full of life. My mum has cooked fruit cakes and ginger cakes from a recipe that my gran gave her and we work our way through them one by one, fetching a new one from the freezer as the old ones disappear. We head off on excursions into town, to pick up random oddments and last minute presents and I get to bond with my siblings one on one again. We decorate the tree through an age-old sets of traditions and protocols, using decorations that are almost as old as I am and handmade trinkets that we made when we were five. There's a little cardboard booklet with roughly coloured pictures and wobbly gold pen writing, about the birth of Baby Jesus, that sits on the tree stand. I did that in primary school when I was only tiny. It still sits there, despite the fact that I'm the only one in the family who's remotely religious and I'm Wiccan. There's also a little sledge made out of an old shoebox and decorated with raggedy tinsel. The sherry and mince pie for Father Christmas go there on Christmas Eve.

Then comes the Eve itself. We eat dinner together at the table, starting with a prawn cocktail and followed by everyone eating their favourite meal that they chose earlier. Then we go to the living room and we 'kids' lay out our pillow cases on the settee for Father Christmas to fill with presents. My mum takes pictures which will never be looked at again and then we all retire to bed.

Then we have two days of utter togetherness, filled with presents, shiny new things, turkey, turkey stew, films, the Queen's speech, cakes, chocolate, giving presents (my favourite part) and generally relaxing around the house. It culminates with myself and my siblings going out on Boxing Day night for a night of drinking and dancing in the local town. Last year, we ended up dancing and skipping around a lamppost outside a club that we'd just come out of, much to the bemusement and amusement of the bouncers. I can think of no better group of people that I'd want to spend time with.


Dammit Scheh! Why'd you get me started. Now I really want it to come and it's not even Samhuin/Halloween yet! You're worse than Woolworths!

Why have you started a Christmas thread in early October anyway? I'm guessing it's not solely to torture me by getting me excited and then reminding me it's three months away.

The Earl

K, gotta say, your Christmas sounds spiffier than mine.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Poignant Story, but true

My elder sisterAlyce, died of brain cancer on October 24th, 2004. When that Christmas came my younger sister and her husband asked me to come for dinner and exchange gifts as we had done for a number of years.

The gifts were exchanged and we chatted while my sister, Mary and I, got dinner ready. My nephew, Ian, set the table for dinner and we all sat down at the table. Ian had unthinkingly set five places not four. Mary, Grant, Ian, me and...