Your favorite Christmas

[SeaCat]

What is your favorite Christmas?

Mine is back a couple of years.

Several days before Christmas we had been watching a storm brewing out in the ocean. Somehow I knew it was going to hit us and I started making preperations. In work, (We both worked in a candle factory at the time,) I started making small tapers. A whole bunch of small tapers. At home I hauled in a shit load of wood and stacked even more nect to the back door. I also made sure the chimeny was clean and clear. We also made sure we had plenty to eat and drink.

The day before Christmas Eve it started to snow and the winds started kicking up. It was looking like a good old fashioned Nor'Easter was heading our way. I dug through the boxes in the attic and pulled out the old fashioned ornaments that had been handed down to me.

By Christmas Eve we had lost power, the temperature was down to 18° and the roads were closed. My wife and I decorated the tree aas we usually do, but this time with the old fashioned set. My wife didn't recognise some of what I put on the tree, (artificial) but she didn't question it. She just liked the looks of it in the light of candles and firelight.

About 1300 we dressed warmly and walked the mile and a half to my parents place where we had dinner. A dinner cooked completely on a wood stove. Talk about a tasty meal and one that brought back History. After dinner we trudged home through the ever deepening snow. By the time we arrived at home we were chilled. We celebrated Christmas Eve at home with mulled Wine and music from a batterry operated radio. I banked the fire and we went to bed.

The next morning I was up early. I started the fire in the Fireplace and then finished decorating the tree. This consisted of my placing a small taper in each of the holders I had placed on the tree. I also hung a coffee pot over the fire and started brewing our morning drink of choice. When everything was ready I walked into the bedroom and roused my wife.

She came out into the living room to be greeted by the smell of coffee and the sight of a tree lit entirely with candles.

Yes we opened our gifts. She a small package that held a thin gold chain holding a Saphire Teardrop. Me? An even smaller package that held a pocket watch. Breakfast was cooked over an open fire.

It was another three days before we had power back but we honestly didn't mind.

That Christmas will always be with me.

Cat

 

[TE999]

I'll always remember the Xmas I received my first new bicycle...I was 10 yo...I never even opened the rest of my presents that day...I was gone...I had wheels.
The next time I was that happy was when a neighbor girl and I discovered the joy of sex in her bedroom when her parents were gone...we were both 14 and virgins...

Um...sorry...this is about Xmas isn't it?

And I thot that bike was fun to ride.

 

[slyc_willie]

Very nice, Cat.

I have two good memories.

The first one was when I was eight years old, and I got my first dirt bike (no, not a gas-powered one). It was red with a black banana seat and mag wheels. Very cool. I'd been asking for it since the Christmas before, but my mom was always worried that I'd hurt myself. I guess dad finally convinced her.

I rode that damn thing everywhere for years afterward. It was indestructible. It carried me through my hometown of Zweibrucken, to Pirmasens and Kaiserslautern, and came with me to the States. For a good eight years, it was my personal symbol of freedom.

The second one . . . .

Still working on it.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

We were very poor when I was little. The first Christmas I recall (1952) I got no toys, and it never occurred to me that Christmas was for every child. Instead, I remember being sucked in by all the decorations, lights, music, and the Sears Christmas catalogue. This was my happiest Christmas. I had no expectations or no sense of entitlement or loss, I simply enjoyed it.

The saddest Christmas was 1986. New with the state, I was part of the skelton crew staffing Emergency Intake at the county Health & Rehabilitation Services office. Our job was to handle any problems involving kiddies, cripples, geezers, teeny-boppers, and crazies....whoever the cops brought in. Anyway, in the middle of the night the cops called us to check on a woman with retarded kids.

We went to her one bedroom trailer. She was young. The trailer was filled with 7 cribs. And in each crib was a severely retarded kid. It was heart-breaking and inspiring. The kids were clean and well fed. The trailer was clean and warm. But the woman, maybe 22, was responsible for 7 little kids requiring 24/7 attention.

 

[cloudy]

I've told this story before, but it's the Christmas I remember the most.

When I was maybe 10 or so, I was heavy into showing my horse. For those who don't know, showing is ungodly expensive - entry fees, trailering, stalls overnight, not to mention the show tack and clothes that you need.

I had outgrown my show clothes, and my show tack at the time was in pretty sad shape. There were five of us kids, my oldest sister had moved back in with her kid, and we usually had a couple of stray kids staying with us, so money wasn't plentiful.

I woke up Christmas morning to find "Santa" had brought me a new show outfit, complete with boots and hat, show blanket and silver for my show saddle, and a brand new show bridle with a gorgeously engraved silver bit.

I still don't know where my folks got the money, and I've never asked.

 

[Stella_Omega]

The first year Mr. Omega and I shacked up, we were abysmally broke. He had two little girls, eleven and nine years old, that he had shared custody with his ex-wife. The girls were not real sure about *one more girlfriend* in their dad's house. I barely made the rent that month, and I had about twenty dollars for the whole season. Five dollars bought me a broken tree off a lot, and the dealer cut the top off of it so that I have a three-foot tall tree. Someone gave me an enormous bag of walnuts in the shell. As it happened, they were very easy to split open, giving me perfect halves. I glued a lot of them back together with a loop of string caught between them, and doused them in gold paint-- i still have some of them! And Mr. Omega painted quick little guache images of a Christmas rock band, with Santa at teh piano and little winged cherubs on drums, base, guitar and sax-- I think we've lost one of those over the past thirty years... I glued each one onto a walnut half.

The little girls were enchanted by this idea of make-it-yourself, and contributed some more cherubs for the tree. I hauled out my sewing machine. I had a bushel of heavy satin scraps from a bedspread manufacturer, and Bristol board was cheap enough (before the days of foam core!) and I made satin-covered workboxes for each of the girls. I helped them make their mother a patchwork vest out of more scraps.

Both girls still remember that christmas as one of the best!

Another great christmas happened one week after my daughter was born-- enough said

This one is shapng up pretty well-- we are just as broke as we were that other year. We have exchanged gifts; this current pair of kids have recieved some items that we've been saving until they were old enough, like a hand-tooled western belt, a gypsy gold earring... the son found me a box of licorice allsorts. I didn't know they could be had any more!