or Childhood Christmas Memories
Kris suggested in the comments a couple of days ago that maybe I could write about some childhood Christmas memories when I said that I was finding it hard to post every day. Below I'm rerunning a post about just that. This was written after a trip to my mother's house. She had passed away only a few months earlier and we were in the process of going through things. As many of you know, it was a bittersweet process.
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I am thankful for childhood
Christmas memories.
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| Our Christmas socks hung on our steps since we didn't have a fireplace. |
As we have been going through some of the Christmas decorations from my mother's house, I've been thinking about Christmastime when I was a child. Christmas was a magical then. The anticipation of Christmas was very exciting and the whole idea of Santa was so grand it was almost more than I could handle.
The excitement of the Christmas season began after Thanksgiving when the stores started to decorate and the Sears Wish Book came in the mail. I would study the catalog thinking about what I would ask Santa for. Santa was very busy so he didn't always make it to my town, but I would write him letters. When I did get to talk to him, I really did believe that his reindeer were parked behind the store as I was told, although I never saw them.
Each year, I watched the evening news on Christmas Eve because they would report a strange object on their
radar that looked like a sled being pulled by flying reindeer. I did this every year even long after I knew the truth about Santa because that blip on the radar still held its enchantment.
After watching the news and knowing that Santa was on his way, my sisters and I would start preparing for bed. We would take the toaster and bread and butter with us upstairs so we could have breakfast in the morning without going down to the kitchen. We were not allowed downstairs, where the tree was, until my aunt and uncle arrived. As soon as we caught the first glance of their car, we would rush downstairs to see what Santa had brought. He always left one unwrapped present for each of us.
Even though Christmas celebrations have changed over the years and my excitement has mellowed, I can still remember how I felt when I was six years old. And for that, I am thankful.
Wow, your parents let you take food to your bedroom? That's pretty innovative.
ReplyDeleteMy siblings are quite a bit older than I am, so I didn't have anyone to share the anticipation with. I did love the appearance of lots of gifts on Christmas morning and for some reason, I also loved the little box of chocolates that we would be given from our Sunday School. We didn't have a lot of candy around when I was little and a box all of my own was so exciting to me.
It was fun to take the toaster, a loaf of bread, and some butter to bed with us. We opened the window and stored the butter on the window sill to keep it cold. I'm sure my oldest sister was given strict safety rules about the toaster, but I just remember eating toast and watching out the window for my aunt's car. My aunt and uncle didn't have any kids of their own so watching me and my sister's on Christmas morning was a treat for them.
DeleteI had a similar reaction as Kris, that your parents allowed you to take the toaster to your room. Very, very clever of your parents. These are lovely memories.
ReplyDeleteI have many memories of the Sears catalog's arrival each year. My sister and I would lay on the floor and look at every page, even the non-toy ones. No other store has even come close to issuing something like a Sear's catalog.
Thanks for sharing your memories, Live and Learn.
I studied all of the pages, also. Even though we can shop for anything and everything on the internet these days, it doesn't give me the same satisfaction as the Sears Catalog did.
DeleteChristmas wasn't such a big deal at my house when I was growing up, since we were Buddhist. My mother's side of the family were (are) all Catholic, however, so I was exposed to Christmas trees and Father Christmas. My mother used to take me to visit my grandmother and aunts on Christmas day and she'd take gifts of food to them, but, I can't remember any other exchanging of gifts. Apparently, I had wanted a Christmas tree of my own, one year, after helping one of my aunts decorate her tree and my father got one for me, much to the amusement of my older halfsiblings. I do remember hanging a pillowcase at the foot of my bed and there would be gifts from Father Christmas in it on Christmas morning.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy hearing about other holiday traditions and like the one of hanging a pillowcase at the bottom of your bed for Father Christmas. Also, it was very nice of your father to get you a Christmas tree even though he didn't celebrate Christmas. You were probably so cute he couldn't say no. :)
DeleteMy father was, apparently, a very indulgent parent and I was the baby of the family. I'm sure I was quite spoiled! He died when I was 7 and I still wonder how things might have been different had he lived longer.
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