Christmas Memories - The Decorations

We had plenty of decorations that went up all around the house, and we had fun putting them all up.

Since I grew up in a house full of kids – there were four of us – by nature, we were competitive. We had a beautiful Manger set and it had all of the classic pieces. Every year we would all want to be the one to find Baby Jesus.

All of the figurines were wrapped in tissue, and we had our own silly rules in “the search for Jesus”. You couldn’t just rifle through the box and try to grab the smallest one in hopes of finding it, you had to unwrap whichever one you pulled out and place in the crèche. There was no prize or special recognition for finding the Baby Jesus – just bragging rights that seldom lasted longer than the evening. But – YOU remembered! And every time you looked at the scene you knew that it was YOU who was responsible for Baby Jesus this year.

We had these extensive little village scenes. These weren’t fancy set-ups, but they still had a magical air about them. The snow was just sparkly, fluffy cotton, and the buildings we kind of small and didn’t light up or anything. The trees were a bit oversized and had steel wire trunks with pipe cleaner type material that were the branches. They did make a good cone shape with some big clumps of fake snow on them and little platforms so they stood up. The funniest thing was that mom picked up some plastic elk that were WAY oversized. This was always humorous to me, but we still put them up. My brother and I would secretly have little terror episodes of the attack of the mutant elks.

There were also lots of little individual decorations that we put up all over - all part of our own traditions. One other cool thing we did was that Mom always made her own door decoration. My brother and I always had to find downed branches for mom to use. They weren’t really fancy or anything, but they were always homemade and originals.

What memories do you have of your decorations?

Christmas Memories - The Tree

The simple joys of childhood at Christmas. This time of year typically causes us all to reflect on our family life growing up. I was very blessed, as I’ve mentioned before, to have been part of a great, caring and loving family. Sure, we had our problems and quirks just like any other family, but we had a foundation of love – mentioned or not – and that was one of the ties that bound us together.

Some of my memories at this time of year are special ones. I remember after having decorated the house for Christmas, I would often just cuddle up on the couch and gaze at the wonder of the decorations.

The tree was very special. We always had a real one, but never anything fancy. It wasn’t ever a Charlie Brown tree, but it was also never a Noble Fir. Usually just an average pine bought at the local department store lot.

Decorating the tree was always a family affair. There were too many cool things to miss out on if you didn’t help. We had tons of great ornaments. Mom would buy one set of new ornaments each Christmas and would diligently write the year on each box so we would all know when they were bought. Some were tacky, some were cool, some were kind of lame, but they all played a part in the memories of each Christmas as we put them up.

We would put the lights on first. These were smaller version of the outdoor lights that got hot and caused more than a few burn spots on our rug over the years. Mom usually had to put these up while we waited impatiently to start doing everything else.

There were the ornaments each of us kids had made at one time in a grade school class that were so important to have in plain sight. Mine was a little cutout of my singing head glued on a wooden sherbet spoon wrapped with a construction paper angel robe and stovepipe harms holding a hymnal… I was a little angel!

There was the collection of handmade Santa Clauses. There were some from all four of us kids: the ones with rotating arms and legs using paper fasteners; the ones just cutout, the ones with cotton glued on for the beard, coat sleeves and waist and the top of the boots. All of them meticulously colored (quality dependent on our age at the time of creation) and all with our names and the date written on the back. There were even a couple from when my mom was a kid… still carefully preserved and hung with pride every year.

There were the construction paper links garland that my brother and I made as a gift for the family one year; and the handmade needlecraft ornaments from my Nana; and the special top that we put on every year.

We all loved hanging tinsel – we called them icicles – and we had the old boxes of the ones that had *gasp* LEAD in them. They weren’t the cheap mylar ones you get today so they hung straight and were beautiful – oh, and none of us, or our cats who liked to eat them – ever had an illnesses due to lead poisoning.

The tree was the center of our decorations and a focal point of the house during the Christmas season. What memories do you have of your family Christmas tree?

A Christmas Story

What is Christmas, really?

I want to spend some time and write about my memories, and I will, but I have to share this first. A friend of mine posted this and I recommend that you read it – it’ll warm your heart.


This short story is the author’s memories of spending Christmas at his Aunt Ida’s house. It’s full of the things that Christmas should be about. It tells of what it was like when the living rooms at Christmas were filled with the sounds of families talking or kids laughing, not the football game on a 52" plasma; with families making memories and having appropriate conversations, not pieces of fractured families avoiding each other or talking about the latest celebrity gossip; of kids playing in a pile of coats, not holed up in a back bedroom playing the latest bloody combat video game and seeing images of life way beyond their years.

Kind of made me stop in my tracks and remember what it means to have a family Christmas - not a "happy holidays" party; to be able to appreciate a personal, thought-out, given-with-love gift instead of another "picked-it-up-while-I-was-in-line-at-the-grocery-store" $50 gift card; to revel and take in with all my being the beautiful sounds, sights and magical wonder of Christmas instead of complaining about having to fight the crowds and traffic to "get my shopping done".

Christmas at Aunt Ida's

Enjoy!