Let’s be honest, holiday time can be stressful as an adult! But when you’re a kid, it can be filled with wonder and cheer! These folks have beautiful memories of their childhood Christmases. Content edited for clarity.
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‘You’re Kidding!’
“It was Christmas Eve and I was about nine, my brother seven and we had just gone to bed. My brother was almost asleep but I always had insomnia as a child, so I was awake. Dad called softly up the stairs as if he were just talking to Mom below, ‘Santa just landed on our lawn!’ She said.
‘You’re kidding!’ I, of course, looked out my window, nothing, So I sneaked into my brother’s room and looked out his window and then called my brother. Eight deer were eating hay in front of our house. I couldn’t see Rudolph and the sleigh but I was fully believing the miracle. I asked down the stairs where the sleigh was? Dad didn’t answer but a noise banged on the roof above our heads. Mom said, ‘you’d better get in your beds or Santa won’t come.’
My brother and I believed for a few more years that there was a sleigh and Santa and Rudolph on our roof.”
Christmas Scoundrels
“Probably my favorite Christmas memory must have happened after I was 15, since we were living in a house we moved to just before I turned that age.
Anyway, we had two dogs at this point. An evil genius and her much larger (and slightly more biddable) assistant. The evil genius was a beagle and would stop at nothing to eat too much. Her assistant was a retriever and didn’t mind a meal either.
Our house had a sort of open-plan kitchen/outdoor dining area, where we had all the table set (this is in Australia, so it was summer) and everyone was going to sit. Mum had put some nibbles on plates just inside the house, so we could all have snacks while we waited for the rest of the family to arrive. Behind us, in the kitchen, sat the Christmas puddings and other things on relatively high benches.
You can probably see where this is going.
As the meal began, we heard a massive BANG from inside the kitchen. Mum went running back inside, and found that the sound had come from a bar-stool which had fallen over next to the bench. The bar-stool, by the way, had been on the other side of the room when we’d set things up.
On top of the bench was one of the plates the puddings had been on. It was intact but doing that sort of wobbling that plates do if things have been taken off them rapidly. No pudding. No dogs.
Thankfully, there were more than enough other puddings to go around (we always over-cater, because it’s Christmas). The dogs eventually emerged about an hour later looking slightly unwell and unsteady on their legs.
Quite how they’d organized themselves to move a heavy bar-stool across the room, and then climb on it (it was too high for them to have simply hoisted themselves up), much less liberate the pudding without damaging the plate, remained a mystery.”
Back In The Day
“In the ’50s, my parents would load up my sister and me after dinner on Christmas Eve and visit each of my father’s three brother’s families. Every family had at least one cousin, and we all exchanged presents.
It was a fun, exciting evening, made more so by my father’s occasional pronouncements that he ‘wasn’t sure we were going to make it home in time for Santa to come.’ Or that he actually saw Santa go by and we had obviously missed him.
By the time we did get home, we were exhausted from having excitement at a fever pitch for hours, and fell asleep quickly, dreaming of the wonderful morning to come.”
Christmas With Grandma
“Taking the drive to Grandma’s! It took about an hour if not about two hours if snowy.
When she wasn’t Christmasing in FL with one of my uncles’ families, she was home and would host all her children’s families. My Mom had five brothers and then their kids in her house. It would get crowded and then some of us cousins would sneak upstairs and play in the apartment she had on the second floor and listen to the adults downstairs till it was time to eat.
After all of the eating that you could imagine, then we could open presents. The Uncles would fight over who would pass out presents. We would all kind of keep our family together in a group so as not to confuse a wasted uncle.
After that, someone would tell Grandma where the ‘tin star’ was! I think it could have actually been tintype, now that I think about it. It was a very old tree ornament and would be hidden on the tree. We have all been there for hours and some have found it, but won’t tell you or are bluffing!
Before we start taking candy canes and chocolate ball ornaments from the tree, the question is asked where the Tin Star is? And some still can’t find it. Kind of like the Elf On The Shelf, where is it? Then a couple of cousins who are older and taller find it. No prize, just something that was done.
Then after a while of unwrapping, my Grandma would sing a few Christmas songs. No piano, just a Cappella! As I got older, my Mom wanted me to sing with Grandma. Kept egging me on for a few years. I think she wanted her brothers to see that I had talent. I took it as irritating, as a teen. This time was something that was my Grandma’s thing and I did not want to disappoint. Typical Scorpio; all or nothing and I did the nothing.
She did get to hear me at my high school graduation though. She passed away a month after that.
Christmas there had fond memories from the late 60s- mid-70s.”