Christmas Nostalgia Thread
Stories, pictures, videos, all submissions welcome.
Me and my brother spent hours today scouring the internet for a picture of the Lego train set I had as a kid. Eventually we found it, after one wrongly identified one. It made me realise how fragile memories are, but for one detail that didn't seem right I would have looked at photos of a different Lego train and said it was the one I got off Santa aged 10. Anyway here's the actual train model I got.
My mother is one of those parents who can be absolutely sadistic in the best possible way. A few weeks before my seventh Christmas, she told my sister and I that we were going to be punished for not keeping our room clean. The majority of our toys were confiscated. Meanwhile, my step-father was a carpenter and often worked on various projects in the backyard. He had constructed some pieces for some sort of structure, but they weren't connected to one another and we didn't pay much attention to it.
On Christmas morning, we were lead out into the backyard where all of those pieces had, apparently magically, turned into a 10 x 6 playhouse for us. We each had our own door and own half to the building and inside were all of our confiscated toys as well as some new ones, set up in this adorably cozy little cottage.
I've spent half my life away from that little building now, but it still holds a warm place in my memories.
So now they are just dirt-covered English people in fur pelts with credit cards.
As kids, my sisters and I were generally discouraged from asking for particular toys, but one year I really really really wanted a Star Bird. I dropped a few not-so-subtle hints without actually asking for it, and lo and behold, I got it!:
http://dunningrb.wordpress.com/2009/...oys-star-bird/
But my best Christmas memories are:
* hearing Handel's Messiah performed a few weeks before Christmas every year.
* going to the midnight service at our little Ohio River church, singing "Silent Night" in the darkened nave, and going home through the quiet streets.
* my older sister jumping on my bed first thing in the morning saying gaily, "Wakey-up! Wakey-up!" so that we could go downstairs together to see our stuffed-to-bursting Christmas stockings.
* having coffee cake and orange juice in our bathrobes in front of the fire before opening our presents.
* my dad giving us each a little sip of his Christmas sherry, and every year being revolted by it.
* hearing Bach's Christmas Oratorio on the stereo during the day.
* a big roast beef dinner.
* if there was snow on the ground, caroling around the neighborhood.
* hot cocoa after a long day of sledding.
* catching snowflakes on my tongue.
* being lovingly surrounded by my family, just enjoying the season together.
Last edited by Elendil's Heir; 20 Dec 2011 at 06:57 PM.
When I was a kid, my mom's rule was that we could get up early and get our stockings on Christmas, but we had to wait for her and dad to get up before we could look at/unwrap presents. So, Christmas morning the four of us kids would all grab the stockings (Santa would leave them outside our bedroom doors), and congregate in my older brother's room to ransack the goodies in them. I always loved that, and I'm continuing that tradition with my own kids. Something about the four of us hanging out, getting little treats when it was still dark and quiet in the house, and having the last, quivering anticipation of what might be downstairs under the tree was just the most fun part of Christmas to me.
Aw. That's a great story, Sarah.One of my continual frustrations as an aunt is that my sister's children sleep in on the holidays, though she and I would get up at five in the morning when we were kids. (We'd often wake up earlier, but five was when we were actually allowed to come out.) I really hope my kids want to get to the tree as early as I did, because it's just not Christmas if there isn't some kid chomping at the bit to get to the presents.
So now they are just dirt-covered English people in fur pelts with credit cards.
One year my brother pranked me, I opened his Christmas present to me and it was a pair of dirty old underpants and a drawing of Dennis The Menace saying UP YOURS! I cried so much he got in a bit of trouble. Another year I was told Santa had left his presents for me in a refuse sack in my bedroom. I tore open the refuse sack I found and it was full of rubbish, I started screaming and crying. My brother pointed out the other refuse sack with a red bow on it, full to the brim with Christmas loot.
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