Christmas Past

I was asked today about traditions we have through the holidays and thought I'd share.

I love Christmas - not the getting stuff, but buying presents, wrapping them, giving them, thinking about Christmases past...it all makes me think of family and friends.  Of being close and sharing meals.  Of love and togetherness.

I loved our Christmases as a child.  We would wake up SUPER early, and run to see if Santa had come.  Every Christmas but one, he had come in the middle of the night.  One Christmas eve, Santa must have nipped into the bottle a wee bit, because as the sun started to appear, he still hadn't come.  I ran back to bed, shut my eyes tight and went back to sleep.  When I awoke later, I was terrified to get out of bed only to find that he just didn't come.  I crept slowly to the living room, sure that we wouldn't get a Christmas after all.  My mind raced through all of the possible reasons...I shouldn't have hit my sister all those times, I shouldn't have stolen a cookie yesterday, I shouldn't have flung cat poop at my sister...boy I had a lot to think about.

Luckily, I was delighted to find that Santa had, in fact, silently arrived in the wee hours of morning to make sure we got our Christmas.  Oh Santa.  Right then and there I vowed to be a better person, so that Santa didn't scare me like that ever again.  And to hide the rum.

Once we awoke, we were allowed to go and get our stockings and bring them back to our beds.  i am sure that some years it must have been 4:30am.  We'd quickly unwrap each item, finding a variety of chocolate and candy treats, socks and hair clips, fun little games and comic books.  There was always a Lifesavers Christmas book which got opened immediately.

My sister and I would compare what we got - usually it was either the same items or similar items.  Santa sure knew how to make things fair.  Later we'd open presents with our parents, and then get ready to go to one of our Grandparents' houses for the afternoon and dinner.  I think when we were really young we would go to one Grandparent's for lunch and one for dinner.  I remember it being an exhausting day, but so much fun!