Favorite Holiday Memory

[Ocean Lover]

My favorite holiday memory...the year I was 8 and still believed in Santa. After packing off to bed on Christmas Eve, we three heard bells jingling all around our house outside. Then suddenly a big "Whump!" followed by a cacophony of bells against one another and finally, "Santa" exclaiming,
"Goddammit!" Well, our own family Santa had tripped over a hydrangea planted in a depression in the side yard. Jingle bells scattered all over the yard in the dark and Santa with a turned ankle and a bunch of toys to assemble before he could turn in. Next day, I went outside and collected all the bells from the yard, saved them and took the collection to 3rd grade Show and Tell a week later to prove that there was, indeed a Santa Claus. (Oh, ye of little faith.) Was laughed down in the classroom and never heard the end of it afterwards. Went home that night in tears to tell my mother the story of my humiliation, whereupon she decided it was the perfect time to come clean about there being no Santa. I have still not got over it, either!!! Merrrrrrrry Christmas!

Oh Donna, we've missed your stories!!! That was laugh out loud funny!!! Sorry you had to find out that way but oh, how sweet of dear old Santa to try so hard.

 

[Ocean Lover]

I don't know if I remember this more because there's a picture in the family album of this or if I really just remember it. I was probably about 3 and my brother was 5. We got tucked into bed Christmas Eve and wanted to make sure we got up early in the morning to see if Santa came. (I think we were worried he might skip our house) We fashioned an "alarm clock" out of an old doggy pull toy and laid it on the bed in between us. It's one of my favorite pics of when I was little.

 

[NoHall]

I've been GRINCHY all week, and now I'm awfully glad I read this thread! Funn times...But I'm finally starting to feel some of the joy of the season.

It would be easy to get depressed at Christmas with no spouse and children I guess, but every time I turn around I'm being handed some wonderful blessing.

I'm in the middle of one of my new favorite Christmas traditions right now--this is the third year of it. One of my two best gullfriends takes me and our other best gullfriend up to the mountains near Whittier, NC to decorate her parents' humongous "cabin." We leave the husbands and bring the toddlers. (One of the little 3-year-old boys kept asking if we were going up to the "cabinet" to play.)

It's a short trip--usually 24 hours--but all three of us look forward to getting out of town to just be with each other for a little while. And it's so beautiful and Christmas-y and cold up here every year; it's not unusual for us to see snow flurries.

My other new favorite tradition is in its fourth year. I go to the Jekyll Island Club to play for a Dickens Dinner Theater right before Christmas with some wonderful friends of mine. I have to wear a big, poofy Victorian costume, and I usually end up playing Christmas dinner music for more than an hour between the three acts. (When else would I get to just sit and play Christmas music for the heck of it?) All the dinner guests are dressed in their prettiest Christmas clothes, and the live oaks are dripping with lights. The hotel and "cottages" (which are even bigger than the "cabin" I'm in) are from a different time, and I love to lose myself in that era for a weekend. It's beautiful there in a completely different way than the mountains, and I always love it.