OK, let's see, one of my favorite childhood Christmas memories......hmmmm
All my Christmas's were wonderful as a child. I had a fabulous childhood with the bestest parents any kid could ever wish for and a huge family of crazy fun loving Irish relatives that were all holiday party people.
One Christmas in particular sticks out. It's the time that my dad really goofed up when buying our Christmas tree. We lived in a very large city, in a very large house on one of the main avenues in Connecticut and it was such a treat for us to get to ride to the country every year to pick out our Christmas tree.
Dad was very fussy about having to have the biggest tree to near the top of our 10' ceiling in the living room. That took some doing so we went from tree lot to tree lot until the perfect tree was discovered every year. But this one year, seemed that dad had a couple of beers and was feeling "festive" before our anual jont to the tree farm. Mom just got her driver's license and back then, most moms did not drive, but my mom did, so she drove us to the tree farm.
Must have been my big brother that year who located our perfect big tree and we all agreed it was very very tall. I don't think dad inspected it very well that year for us. Dad tied it to the top of the station wagon and when we got home, he proceeded to trim the bottom off to fit in the tree stand in the back yard. When dad stood the tree up, the whole tree was on a big slant. Seems that brother Dave had chosen a tree that had quite a crooked trunk and dad neglected to notice that part. Dad said not to worry and began trimming the bottom again to try to get it straight. Nope, it still had a completely crooked trunk. So dad continued to cut, chop, and hack this gorgeous huge tree down to a horrible little length. And it was still crooked of course and nothing he could do was going to make it stand up straight.
I was always the family cry-baby. I'd cry over anything on a daily basis at the drop of a hat, so this time, I felt I was in crisis so I blubbered my head off. I can remember crying like crazy that dad was wrecking our tree. He brought it into the living room and put it in the "official Christmas tree corner" and it couldn't have been more than 4 feet tall by the time dad got through with it and it was very unsteady and kept trying to tip over. So was dad! So dad got this great idea to stack the whole library of World Book Encycloepdias underneath the stand to make it taller, then tie a string to the middle of the trunk, and then, bang a nail in the living room wall and tie it to the wall to keep it from tilting. I was mortified. Mom was mad at dad. And my brother was laughing his head off. Dad said it was going to be fine once it had a chance to open up and we could decorate it the next day. But we were not happy by no means and I couldn't stop crying about it. Then we went to bed.
The next morning, I went into the living room to see our poor Charlie Brown tree and it seemed to have grown atleast 5 feet over night. It was beautiful, perfectly straight and gorgous and nearly touched the ceiling.
I found out later on that after we were all asleep, dad picked up his brother, my Uncle Ed, and they took the tree back to the tree farm in the night which of course was closed. He climbed over the fence and helped himself to a big beautiful tree. He returned our sad little tree with a note and money in an envelope for the new tree.
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Ever since my parents got divorced it seems as if I haven't enjoyed Christmas as much.
I think it's time that you do find your spirit again. You've already lost precious time and time is
something that we don't have to waste. You'll always have your memories and no one can take that away from you; and it's probably time for you to make new ones. I'm glad to see that you are making an effort and you are getting yourself back on track and loving your bubble lights. Show us more soon as you can!
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Here's another one of my favorite memories, but not of my childhood, but of Dan and Michaels'
The only thing worse than having a sick child at Christmastime is having two sick children at Christmastime.
They were just 3 & 4 years old and it was a week before Christmas. They were so very sick with the flu, it was terrible. They ran very high fevers for days and days and couldn't keep anything down. I had them into the doctor and he loaded us down with meds and tylenol and said I had to make sure they stayed in bed. That was easy. They were too sick to even want to get out of bed and all they did was sleep for hours and hours. They wanted to come to the living room to see the tree and all our decorations but they couldn't. They loved decorations so much; runs in the family of course. When they did wake up, they'd be crying. It was so sad and they were so pitiful laying there.
Then I came up with an idea. My mom came over to watch them while I made a run to the Dollar Store for a few "million emergency supplies". So while they were sleeping, I got them their own 5' Christmas tree and set it up in their room, fully decorated it, and ran lights all over every wall in their room. I always kept a cassette player in their room and had Christmas music ready in it and brought the VCR in there and let them watch their favorite Christmas movies from their bed. You can just imagine how happy they were when they woke up to see that Christmas had come to their bedrooms. Every year since then, until last year, they continued to set up their own little tree in their room. That was a good memory.