Memories of Christmas Past
 

Please share your memories of past Christmases. Any favorite memories of gifts you wanted? Gifts you made for others etc/ funny things that happened/ special moments in your life at Christmas time.

One of my favorite memories is of my son when he was about 12. I am an avid reader of Harlequin romance books. We had a second hand book store up town at that time. I worked in a Christian bookstore around the corner from the second hand store. My son and his friend made a deal with the store owner to trade some of my son's baseball cards for Harlequin books. Of course I didn't know this. The boys went to the TV store and got a HUGE empty box the size of a console tv. They filled it with books. Then they used their skateboards to put under it and Nathan(my son) pulled and Jamie his friend layed on it to steady it as they pulled it down the street and around the corner to my store. LOL They asked if they could put it in the store til I closed and we would take it home. All I knew at that time was it was a HUGE box with slap dash wrapping paper on it. LOL I didn't know what was inside.

So I helped them get it in my van and we took it home. I had to wait til Christmas morning to open it. LOL When I opened it I was so shocked to see all of those books!! We counted them and those boys managed to stuff over 300 books in that box!!! It was a heartfelt moment when I saw the pride in my son's eyes when I opened that box.

I'll never forget that moment.

at that same time - I have to explain Nathan and I had this one upmanship thing going on at the time. He would try to trick or surprise me with something and I would play a trick on him. We went back and forth with this for awhile.
so the books were also in the nature of a Gotcha!

So in the store we wrapped gifts for people. My kids would help out in the store sometimes. So I had Nathan wrap a bunch of gifts for me in the back of the store. what I didn't tell him was he had wrapped his own gifts and didn't know it cause they were all in boxes. LOL That was my gotcha!

We received a naval orange, a big red apple, 1 or 2 walnuts and a few pecans in our shoes that we had put outside our bedroom door. Our tree did not get put up until Dec 20or 22nd but it stayed up until Jan 7th. On Jan 6th, Feast of the Epiphany, we received a gift from the Wise Men. Remember that the 3 Wise Men followed the star in the East to bring gifts to the Christ Child. Life 75 years ago was much simpler.

I had gone back to college when I was 35, working on a degree in photography. I had a 40 mile drive to school for classes and to use the darkrooms there. For Christmas, my husband built me a darkroom in a storage room in our basement. It had all the basics. After Christmas, we went to the camera shop and I was able to buy all the extras to fully equip the darkroom. All our friends and family knew about it, but no one said a word. What a surprise.:)

It's a funny, bittersweet memory. It was the last Christmas we were all together. The Nutcracker Suite was playing and my Dad came thru the front room dancing on his toes, hands above his head like a ballerina. My Dad was a tall man, over 6 ft, so it had all of us laughing.

Tartan, I too remember getting an orange at Christmas, and how special it was. In our little rural community in SW Arkansas we had a little church where people for several miles around would gather for special events as well as worship services. On Christmas Eve there was a decorated tree, and a program that involved the children. I remember my sister and I sang "Away in a manger". Each child got a little paper sack that contained an orange, and other goodies. Happy memories of those days in the late 1930's.

I too grew up in the rural area of Oklahoma, the Christmas church gathering was so special, alot of us would not have gotten these treats had it not been for thee church. It was also the school for years 1st though 8th grade. We rode in the horse pulled wagon with loads of quilts to keep us warm, this wagon ride was not a treat it was our only mode of transportation. I'm 79year young

I grew up in California but my parents did not and I got an orange, an apple, nuts in the shell and Christmas ribbon candy (not wrapped) in my stocking. Both my parents are gone I would like to ask them where, or why the tradition started. I'll have to ask my older siblings if they remember the fruit and nuts before we moved to california.

I remember one year I was maybe 9- or 10 mom had a very old very traditional fruit cake recipe, we knew it was going to make a large amount by the sheer number of ingredients and amounts but we had no idea that we had nothing big enough to mix it in......had to go to the store twice to buy baby bathtubs to have something big enough. I swear it took us 3 days to bake all of those cakes.