Share some of your favorite Christmas memories

[Desdichado]

My childhood Christmases all kind of run together. They were all fun, but they don't really stand out. Every year we'd get a bunch of LEGOs, and every year after we finished opening the presents, we'd go build the new LEGO sets. Then we'd take them apart, mix all the pieces in with the older LEGOs we already had, and play LEGOs all day.

I also remember when I was in sixth grade, and I got all the Lord of the Rings books from my sister.

I remember once as a teenager going on a big trip with our family and we blew a head gasket on Christmas day. Luckily, I was too young to have to worry too much about it.

Since being married, most of our Christmases have been a combination of fun and frustration. We lived in the same town as both my parents and my in-laws, so it was always this big pain-in-the-arse juggling act to keep everyone happy.

This year, nobody is coming to visit us, and we're not going anywhere (despite the fact that both my family and my in-laws are essentially having big family reunion style Christmases where we'll be the only ones not there.) We plan on going sledding with the kids two or three times (today's 4-5 inches of snow will come in handy, if it doesn't melt off before then), watch a big Extended Lord of the Rings marathon, and hang out with just the immediate family. Frankly, it sounds like the best Christmas I'll have had in years.

And let's not forget Christmas 2005--the year Izrador gets a fancy pen.

 

[devilbat]

The third Christmas for each of my children are memories I'll never forget. At three, they are at the age where their excitement is contageous, and the looks on their faces were priceless.

 

[Tinner]

Childhood memories are getting blurrier by the moment. (Today's my 35th B-Day! I think I'm getting old!)
I can remember many Christmas Eve's where my Father would tuck us in and tell us bed-time stories to put my brother and I to sleep. As I got older, I came to learn that a lot of my dad's "original" material was a mish-mash of jokes he cribbed from the Ernie Kovacs Show and my dad's own twisted sense of humor.

Christmas day we all still get together at my parents and open presents in a circle, one at a time, from the youngest child all the way up to my (now a grandpa) dad. With my three siblings, and the new six grandkids - this takes ALL day.

We're a very religious family, so each Christmas Day my father reads the Nativity story from the book of Luke. It's a nice chance to sit and reflect on our faith.

My first married Christmas in 2000 was great. My wife and I celebrated in our crappy little apartment in the morning, then visited both families in the afternoon and evening. It helps that our parents live very close to each other.

Pre-Christmas my father, brothers and I always engage in the annual "Putting Up the Tree Brawl." Remember, it's not a family holiday until there's a fight! Take three Type-A personalities, add in my passive agressive mockery, cover us in pine sap and stab us with pine needles, add in a rusty, half-broken tree-stand, and you'll get the idea.

Every Christmas Eve since we've been married my wife and I always spend the evening together watching movies (A Christmas Story is a favorite) and eating sushi. I've threatened to bring sushi to my dad's house for Christmas dinner this year. Dad says there's no way he's eating "bait."

1985 was a great christmas for me. My previously RPG-fearing mother finally decided that if she couldn't curb my interest int these "devil games" she'd at least try to take an active role in what ones I was playing. As such she got my Palladium's new "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness" RPG. Hey, I know now it's a crap game, but it meant the world to me back then. The fact that my parents cared enough to take an interest in my hobbies meant a lot to me! The best part was getting my dad to actually play the game with me. I realize now that he wanted to see for himself that RPG's were a safe activity, but back then all I knew was that my Dad played one tough ninja-duck!

 

[Queen_Dopplepopolis]

First, I wake up at my parents' house and we open presents and have breakfast. In recent years, I've been woken up my my sister at obscenely early hours of the morning (like 8am!) so that she can open her presents.

8am is NOTHING. We spend Christmas at The Universe's parents house and TU has a younger brother and a younger sister. Last year, they woke us up singing a HIGHLY annoying version of "Must be Christmas" at 5:30am. I hear that it happens every year. Yuck.

My childhood Christmas memories are blurred because I've sort of blocked out a lot of them. My childhood, put mildly, pretty much sucked...

But - I do have a memory of being about 4 or 5 years old, back before my parents hated each other and I knew about their drug problems, of sneaking down what I remember as being the enormous staircase of our house. I must have been 4 because I'm pretty sure it was the first time I really *understood* Christmas.

I was in my new PJs (when I was young, I got new fancy PJs every Christmas Eve)... they were purple and long and made me feel very grown up. The memory is so vivid that I can actually smell the scent of the tree and the orange potpourri that my mom loved so much...

I don't think I had ever gone down the big stairs by myself in the dark before because I remember being very scared because they stairs were twisty and you couldn't see the light from downstairs when you were up at the top.

Once I got down to the living room, the only light came from the tree, but I could see on the coffee table that the cookies had been eaten and Santa had left me a note, though I cared little for it because my eyes were locked on the one present I had wanted so badly: a baby-doll sized, hand-made feeding chair that was lined with pretty purple fabric. I had seen it at a local craft store one day and begged and begged my mom for it... but that wasn't all! Inside the feeding chair was (and young girls my age will understand how cool this was) a Cabbage Patch Preemie baby doll. The doll even had a night gown that matched my own! I ran over to the doll, picked it up, and held it for a long, long time... those dolls didn't have any hair and they smelled like baby powder.

I remember thinking, in the way young people think, that Christmas is really special... and then, I stood up, put the baby back, and went to go get back in bed. Couldn't be caught peeking at Santa's gifts before morning!

 

[Crothian]

96 the year I took back Christmas

For about 4 or 5 years previous to that for one reason or another Christmas didn't really happen around the old Crothian homestead. It got celebrated like early December or early January and it never felt like Christmas. I was always alone having my family go elsewhere for the holidays or living to far away. So, in 96 I turned to the true meaning of Christmas, the TV. That year on Christmas Even I got a few Christams movies and watched them. It was the first Christmas that felt like a Chreistmas for a long time. I opned the few presents I had when the movies were over around 4am Christmas Day. Since then I always watch Christmas movies and I've tried to add one more each year though at this point I only have 8. It has turned into my own little Christmas tradition.