I LOVE Christmas. I love just about everything about it. I get stressed, don’t get me wrong. But in the end, I love Christmas. Here are 10 ways that, while I was growing up, I knew that Christmas was on its way:
1. One can only state the obvious: Christmas Parties at School. Loved them. Secret Santas? You bet. Candy cane sugar highs, riding on the school bus and talking about our lists for Santa, even when we knew… Everything about school parties made the advent of Christmas that much more exciting.
2. The Advent Tree. We had a tree that hung on the wall (half tree – the back side was flat) over our toy box in the living room. Each night, the person who said grace (we took turns) got to put up an ornament on the tree. The ornaments were kept in a shoe box. I still remember that it was a black one with a striped lid. Anyhow, I don’t know if it was Mom’s way of getting some of the ornaments off of the big tree, or why we did it. I do know that it made it kind of magical. The more the tree was filled with ornaments, the faster the big day was coming our way. On Christmas Eve we put up the star on top of the little guy, and it stayed up through Christmas vacation. Just thinking about it makes me smile.
3. Cold Weather. I don’t know why, but Christmas Eve always seemed like it was the coldest night of the year. We always were bundled up in coats that made a HUGE mountain on my grandparent’s bed on Christmas Eve. We would all have our mittens and hats and everything on while we brought our stuff inside to celebrate.
4. The Toys R Us sign on the route to Nana’s house. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I SWEAR they got that sign to shine brighter on Christmas Eve than any other night of the year. Every year, I would look at the sign as we passed on the way to celebrate with family. I passed the thing a million times throughout the year, but somehow on Christmas Eve, it was the brightest sign around. I never noticed it otherwise. But that night I did. Every. Single. Year.
5. Carols. My sisters and I would stand in front of the Christmas tree and sing carols to it every night after dinner. This was of course when I was small, but I still fondly remember it. Mom had these old carol books. I would pretend to read the words, sing them, and teach my sisters the words as I knew them. I still think my version of Oh Christmas Tree rocked harder than the real one.
6. The Radio. Especially in high school, when I had a 30 minute commute one way to school, I remember all of the songs that played on the radio. I loved them all. Dominic the Donkey (which BTW they don’t play in Washington. What the heck?!), the 12 Days of Christmas (not so nice version. If you’re so smart? You hang up the lights! ::sigh::), Bing Crosby, all of them. I have XM now, and have the Christmas channels, but somehow I remember the songs being a bigger deal when I had my sister and my friends in the car…
7. Shopping. My sisters and I each got a gift for each of the other members in our family. We would go to the mall and split into two groups: Mom and 2 girls, Dad and 2 girls. We would shop for a given period of time and then switch parents. Then we’d meet up again and switch siblings. That way, no one knew what the other people got. We put SO much thought into those gifts. We never spent more than $10. If we put that restriction on now, I doubt we could be as creative.
8. Putting up the Christmas tree. As a family. I have already blogged about this one. Check it.
9. Cookies. Mom used to make TONS of cookies. I used to think I was a huge helper. In hindsight, I probably was a little more of a deterrent than a motivator. The memory was the important part.
10. Waiting at the gate. Growing up we had a gate at the top of the stairs because I someone in the house was a major sleepwalker, and my parents didn’t want me them falling down the stairs. Anyhow, all four girls would wake up early (6 ish) and meet in one of the bedrooms. We weren’t allowed to “wake the parents” until 8. It just occurred to me that they must have sat in bed and listened to us talk about how excited we were and how we couldn’t wait to go downstairs. How exciting must that have been for THEM! (I am starting to appreciate the other side of the Christmas thing here…) Anyhow, we would basically get one another to a jumping-out-of-our-skin-Christmas-morning-frenzy, and then we would wake up our parents to go down. Dad would go downstairs to “Check and see if Santa came”, and Mom would start the video camera/regular camera to catch our expressions forever on film. Then we got permission to go downstairs. As we descended the stairs, we’d look right and see “the haul”. There would be wrapped piles of gifts for each of us from our parents, and then Santa’s unwrapped gifts on the coffee table in the middle. We could see them, but we weren’t allowed to go to them. We had to turn left and go into the family room to open stockings. We all would tear into them at once. When we were done exploring in our stocking gifts, and eating at least 3 or 4 chocolates, we would head to the living room. We would distribute the aforementioned purchased gifts to one another’s piles (we’d brought them down with us from upstairs), and then we’d take turns opening one gift each until all of the gifts were gone. Then we would stash our “take” behind the chairs in the living room. We normally weren’t allowed in that room, but during Christmas vacation we were always able to play with our new toys in there. I still think I should be allowed to put my stuff behind the red arm chair every year :).
I can only hope that we can give our kids memories like the ones that I have from growing up. I smile and shed a tear just thinking about it. I’m one lucky girl. Now I’m in the spirit! Merry Christmas everyone!!
