How do people remember blow by blow details of things that happened to them when they were a kid? I am more of a vignette girl I guess. I remember incidents but not what people said or the color of their clothes, for the most part. Anyway, Christmas at our house.
We had lots of kids and not a lot of money. Nine kids. Dad worked, Mom did not. We lived in a crappy house. So not much cash. But somehow Mom always produced tons of presents. I think I would have become a less conflicted person if she had just sat us down and told us look, we can’t afford to buy 120 things, don’t be such a selfish brat. But she didn’t, and the stress of it made her very ill on many a Christmas. I did the same thing for my kids as far as number of gifts goes, although it was easier for me to afford it. I wish I hadn’t. I still feel guilty at Christmastime if I don’t buy them a lot of things and I really hate that feeling. I wish I had done it differently. I hope they do it differently.
From what I remember my Dad bought the tree and one of my sisters went with him to make sure it wasn’t too awful. That may not be accurate but it seems like it is. The tree was always bad anyway but no one really cared. We always put it in a big bucket filled with wet sand (from the creek) and then my older sisters would fill in the bare spots with extra branches cut from the bottom (maybe that just happened one time). We had this string of huge lights, colored, the ones you can still buy to light the outside of your house with but are too hot for a tree. Luckily we never had a fire. I think my sister still has that string of lights. And oh my God, the tinsel. Tinsel is one thing I never put on my tree now. I think the tinsel served to give everyone a chance to decorate. I guess we thought it looked good, or maybe that didn’t matter. There was always a lot of arguing as to where the ornaments would go. There was tacky garland, and then there was the tinsel that got rearranged by anyone who walked up to the tree. I remember we had a cardboard star covered with foil. It was beautiful.
Mom always baked Christmas bread and distributed it to the neighbors. I forget what it was called. It was shaped like a wreath and had cherries on the top. I didn’t really like it but we had it for Christmas breakfast every year. There was also homemade candy, red and green and lots of Christmas cookies. My sisters have kept these traditions; I have not. Traditions and celebrations don’t mean a whole lot to me, which is unfortunate, because my kids don’t really have any. Maybe they will create their own.
Favorite Christmas gifts? This is why kids don’t need tons of gifts at Christmastime. I don’t remember many. My favorite was roller skates. Dad wouldn’t let girls have bikes. He said we would get hurt riding in the street. So we got roller skates and we rode them in the street. We rode them everywhere. Shoe skates with four metal wheels that vibrated when you rode them at full speed down the street. I remember having roller skates from the time I was 5 until maybe ten or twelve, so it must have been a regular thing. I do not remember my brothers having roller skates though, now that I think of it. They had bikes. Most of our gifts were destroyed way before the next Christmas came along; we were not gentle children. Baby dolls got haircuts or operations or met other fates. Other toys just didn’t hold up. There were always craft type gifts that were made and then cast aside. Mom would make clothes and we would have a new outfit to wear to church. I used to pray for a new dress from the Sears catalog but that never happened.
By far the best thing about Christmas was staying up all night, waiting for morning to come. We would have our traditional snacks, for some reason, to pig out on Christmas Eve. Chips and onion dip is all I can remember. Probably candy. My Dad and my older brothers stayed up late drinking, very loud and obnoxious. Before they went to bed the gifts came out, and they assembled and then ran down the batteries of anything that needed to be put together. You had to wait until they finally went to bed in the wee hours of the morning before you could sneak out and see the loot. Then you had to wait until at least 6 AM before you could expect to be able to get Mom and Dad and the rest up again to open presents. In the meantime we would sit and ‘watch’ the presents, play in the big stone fireplace, sneak peaks at presents and wrap them up again, trade secrets (if you tell me one of yours I’ll tell you one of mine).
I can’t really think of what might have been the best Christmas ever. I guess it was just the sameness of it from year to year that made it special. In contrast, my kids always liked to sleep in on Christmas morning, we never went to church on Christmas Eve, and last year I spent Christmas absolutely alone. So it goes.
