Christmas Memories

I was thinking today about Christmas past. It’s a shame we cant remember each one of them. I tried my best to remember as much as I could, and I couldn’t remember many…but I wanted to share some memories and family traditions.

Now we all have THE Christmas that took the last of our childhood innocence and dashed our Santa dreams like Piggy’s head in The Lord of the Flies….ok, I don’t know where that metaphor came from…but anyway, I remember mine. I found a Care Bear’s book hidden in my house on Christmas Eve and Santa brought one just like it the next morning. I was pretty young (obviously, I haven’t been in to Care Bears in a while). And theres always crappy Christmas memories…people getting pissed, flipping folks off at Wal-mart or driving down the highway, but I want to talk about the good stuff.

One memory is going to my great-grandmothers house on the night of Christmas Eve to eat. That’s an oooold memory, I just remember it being good and I looked forward to it.

I remember it snowing ONCE on Christmas Day and I thought that was awesome. It never snows here.

On Christmas Eve night my grandfather would always get his rifle out and tell us he was going to shoot Santa. We'd watch Santas location on the local news to make sure he was nowhere near. Kinda a mean memory, but for some reason, its a good one.

One year my little brother and I got bikes and we had fun riding them down the gravel road by ourselves….except that he had training wheels and they didn’t work well on the gravel.

Christmas with Linda was always fun. I miss her a lot at Christmas. I miss her anyway, but I especially do at Christmas. We always had our Christmas on Christmas night after we were finished with all of the obligatory family stuff. She’d cook, it was peaceful and I remember being really sleepy and feeling very complete at the end of the day.

Linda and I used to adopt people every Christmas and it was fun to shop for people we didn’t know.

Every year I stay the night at my mom’s house on Christmas Eve. My step-dad reads the story of Jesus’ birth to us. My mom does the Santa Claus thing even though I am 26 years old, my brother is 21 and my step-brothers are 22 & 15. It’s really fun to wake up there, even now.

When he was small, my brother would puke every Christmas Eve night because he was so excited that it was Christmas time.

Every year after we do stuff at my mom’s, we go to my grandparent’s house. There are about 25 of us all together and we cram into my grandmother’s small living room and go nuts with presents.

I remember getting to put the angel on top of the tree when I was really little. Our tree seemed so tall. My mom or dad would pick me up and let me put it on top…that always excited me for some reason.

Although Christmas has become so crazy, it’s fun to make new memories of the holidays. I can’t remember a lot (and that may be a good thing). I wish I had more stories to tell my kids (or Marley) about….I don’t have much, so I guess I need to hang on to this year too.

So far, my Christmas memory this year is wanting to “prank” the FedEx truck with a tire iron (for an explanation see SNL Christopher Walken).

Merry Christmas
Happy Holidays
(whichever you prefer)