This is a repeat of a post I did in 2007.
1. I remember exactly when I learned there was no Santa Claus. I was 12 and I had suspected for a few years and listened to the talk at school that the jolly old elf was just fictitious. When I confronted my mother she admitted to me that it was true. So I sat on the bottom stair and watched as my mother and dad put out the presents for my sleeping sisters. I still remember the disappointment I felt that my childhood illusion had been vanquished.
2. The first year that Don and I celebrated Christmas in our own house he decided to go and cut a tree for us. He brought back a long needled spruce and set it in the stand. This was not your typical Christmas tree. ..not the perfect conical shape that you see today. This tree had long spaces of trunk between the branches. I loved it! The ornaments that hung were clearly visible and the tinsel wrapped itself around the tree in long strands.
3. I still cherish the tin ornament and the crayoned ornament that my sons made for me. Each Christmas I put these two things out as part of my memories. Chris made the colored ornament once in art class in junior high. Ryan made the tin ornament with its punched out letters...BEST MOM.
4. Only my loving husband would climb up on the roof with an oar to make the tracings of Santa's sleigh in the snow and tap out reindeer footprints..
5. One Christmas eve it started snowing and never stopped until the next day. We awoke to knee deep snow that covered the roads, the sidewalks, and all the hills. Don had a plow on his jeep and spent the entire Christmas day going around to all his friends and family and plowing them out.
6. Don doesn't have a lot from his childhood. There are two toys that we put out every Christmas that belonged to him...an old leather football and a wooden flat car with wheels.
7. Don always tells the story of how he peeked at a present...it was a bb gun. When Christmas morning came he felt so guilty and had to pretend to be surprised. To this day he wouldn't look for a present even if it was out in plain sight.
8. My father and my husband had a special holiday gift tradition. They were both coin collectors and there was a special buffalo nickle that they gave back and forth to each other every Christmas. It was always a trick to see who could disguise the nickle so that the other didn't suspect. Once dad suspended it in a shirt box by attaching it in the middle of the box by strings. Once he put it in a long telescoping box.
9. We once made a Mission Impossible game for Ryan to find his present that year. He had clues and went all over the house reading the clues and chasing down the next clue. finally he was led outside and had to climb a tree to get down his present...a climbing rope for rappelling.
10. When Chris was young I took him to the local elementary school for a Christmas program. Joking with him on the way back I said, "Look I think I see Santa and his sleigh in the sky," to which he replied, " and I see Rudolph in the front!.
11. Ryan and Chris have always had a tradition of opening the presents from each other on Christmas eve.
12. Nothing is better than to have family around at Christmas.
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