FAVORITE THINGS....

Judy,
I love this thread.  I am the oldest of seven kids.  We always had an artificial tree because my Mom was worried about real ones being fire hazards.  I can remember because I was older (12) I could stay up after the others had gone to bed.  It was magical being alone in the living room with no lights on and just the Christmas Tree with colored lights and looking at the ceiling with it's rainbow of colors reflected.  We always had the bubbler ornaments and I was mesmerized by them.  I still sit in the dark to admire the tree.  I also always used colored lights.  None of the stylish all white or solid lights for me.  
Mom had eight brothers and sisters and Dad had two brothers so there were lots of celebrations and cousins to play with.  After opening our presents we would arrange them under the tree and were thrilled when some cousins would come by so we could show them what we got.
On the outside of the house Dad draped colored lights around every doorway, window and bush.  I still have a mental picture of coming home to all those lights.  We were always in or helping with the Christmas Pagaent put on by the Sunday School at church.
These days we travel to the grandkids for Christmas.  We go to Christmas Eve service with them. We stay at a hotel so we aren't there for the wake up experience in the morning.  All the traditions are what our daughter-in-law had.  We enjoy spending Christmas day playing with them and watch their delight in their new things.  Just being with family at Christmas is enough for us.
Thanks,
Bev
 

omg bev we had a snowman with a bubble light for his light...my uncle earl gave it to us kids when we were little...mom still has it yet today!!!

yes it is magical looking at the lights bouncing off the ceiling and walls....i love sitting in the room with only the tree lights on...and mow that i am with rick it is really magical once more for me!!! (been years that i stopped putting the tree up and now i love doing it again!!)

couple years ago i came to ohio to be with rick and we stayed at this motel and he brought a small table top white fiber optic tree for us in our room....it was the most beautiful tree and it meant so much to me that he did this for me....no wonder i love him so much!!!

i traveled last year back to michigan for Christmas but not this year....my family can come here....i have the room and also motels are near by if they don't want to stay here. its only fair....so we shall see what happens.

never had any outdoor lights on our house when we were little...only the tree in the house. we also put our gifts under the tree so we could show everyone that came by what we got....oh the memories of years ago....

your Christmas memories sounded like they were very nice!!!! thanks for sharing them!! :-)

I have some memories.... nothing in the past 20 or so years though....

14 years in the Coast Guard yielded only 2 Christmas's at home... the rest were spent underway looking for drug smugglers... and finding (drum roll please....) None! ... for some reason the brass thought that drug smugglers would use the holidays to move their dope into the country... I always thought that they were smarter than that, and spent their holidays at home! ... it appears I was right based on our results...

I can't seem to remember anything specific about Christmas when I was a kid... except this one year when I was 8 years old I got one of those huge Schwinn bicycles.... monsterous thing... Loved it! .... this was the same year my older brother got this spring loaded civil war cannon... had these realistic sized cannon balls made from hard plastic... I remember his toy because he fired a cannon ball into my Dad's crotch from point blank range... memorable indeed!!

MARC!!!!! hi stranger!!!!

omg marc!!! LOL (sorry) but that had to be funny...i sort of remember seeing those cannons....and the schwinn bike!!!! that had to be a great gift you got!!!!

yeah seems the drug dealers do have a family life after all....

i remember getting one of those dolls that stood about 3 feet tall....mom put her out after i was sleeping...she (mom) got up to go potty and she about woke the house up with her scream!!!! she thought someone was in the house that shouldn't be!!!!!!!!! rofl

sorry you don't have many memories to share...(((marc))) but thanks for sharing what you did have!!!!!

When we were kids, we spent Christmas Eve at Grandma Delort's apartment in the city (and never could figure out how she raised 11 kids in a four-bedroom apartment ... and how she managed to get time away to produce 11 kids ... no wonder Grandpa had a heart attack in a confessional when my mom was 19 or 20!). Uncle Mat played Santa ...until his son, also named Mat (we called him Mattie back then ... he's now a Chicago circuit court judge) said, "Hi Daddy." Then my brother Gary and I took turns playing Santa (we were in our teens then). I brought my own padding. Christmas was spent at Grandma Briesch's ... not as happy, other than Grandpa Briesch was always very nice (but he died when I was in the seventh grade ... he was a lot like my dad, quiet and very nice).

Christmas Eve was always my family's time, until lately ... now it's usually the weekend before Christmas. Since I've moved so far from home, I've spent a lot of Christmases at work ... sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. Last year, I was in the hospital having knee surgery and recuperating.

One tradition I've had recently has been putting up my ceramic Christmas tree. The original tree is long gone ... but it has a special place in my heart. When I moved to Montana and got my first two cats, I saw they were going to be destructive and decided I wouldn't get a tree. My friend Margie didn't like that idea. So one day I came home from work and there was this 3-foot ceramic Christmas tree sitting on my kitchen table (some of the little plastic lights were out of it already because the cats were playing with them). Margie had my house keys because she took care of the cats while I was at the basketball tournament. Through my move to South Dakota, the tree cracked in several places, and I tried to repair it, but the ceramics person in Aberdeen suggested I just make a new one, so I did. My current tree isn't the same one Margie made for me, but it reminds me of a very special gift. Margie not only gave me the gift of her friendship, but brought me into her family that Christmas; she gave me my cats, she introduced me to the joys of ceramics and she became one of my closest and dearest friends.

I love decorating my house for Christmas. Most times, no one else but me sees the results, but so what? I enjoy all the lights. I love the music, the movies, baking the cookies, visiting my family (even my sister's crappy Christmas luncheon).

eileen you have many memories to share!!! wow!! thats a huge family!!!! had to be alot of fun getting together!!!

my 1st ex mother in law always went way overboard with gift giving....she did ceramics also and i had many of her wares...she never made me what i loved the most....horses....it was always some gaudy thing i didn't like and it never went with anything i owned....oh well she is long gone out of my life...but the tree you mentioned was a pretty one!!! i know how much you must have enjoyed it and now you have a newer one and it isn't the same but the memory is still with you!!!!

for the last several years i didn't do any decorating or putting a tree up...gary said it was only another day so why bother...well it got to me and i didn't bother...it hurt not having a tree atleast but oh well....why should i bother with all the work if even he didn't appreciate it?? oh well that life is long gone now. i love decorating the apartment and putting the tree up and rick even helps me!!!!!! life is so much better now for me and for rick!!!! new memories always in the making for us!!!

you have nice memories eileen and i thankyou for sharing them!!!!

I have so many memories of Christmas as a child. I especially remember that my little brother Jon (the brother that died as a young man) was with me for every memory. He always preferred my girl toys so we played so much on Christmas morning. I had a cardboard kitchen set (pink) one year and he donned an apron with me and we had a ball.Our poor cat took a few turns getting locked into the oven of that set. We always sang carols together and helped to decorate the tree. We even unwrapped and rewrapped all of our gifts one year. On the year I turned 7 I spent Christmas Eve getting an appendectomee. I cried and cried, not only from the pain of having the surgery but also with the fear of Santa not being able to find me. That morning I woke up crying because he had forgotten me. Turns out the gifts were all over the floor and the bed was so high and I was so tiny that they were all hidden from view. I still love Christmas though I usually feel some sadness and loss during that time of year. I miss my loved ones that have died, my brother, my Dad and my Grandma. But the beauty and spirit that surrounds Christmas is always there, even with the tears.

i am so glad to see you have so many happy memories to share!! had to be a blast doing the cooking with your brother!!! and your 7th christmas had to be one scarry one not knowing if santa would find you!!!! so glad he did!!! yeah so many of my family have passed that we always got together with and shared a special day with them....

Merry Christmas!!!

Reading all of these reminded me:

An orange in the toe of my stocking!  Yes, and the stocking was one of Dad's LONG hunting socks.

Each of the families exchanged names.  So if we got Mom's sister Ginny's family we bought gifts for Ginny and Jerry and the 2 kids.  If we got Dad's sister Edith's family we bought gifts for Edith and Joe and their 5 kids.  Since we all had 2 families each year, the money limit was pretty low.

Plus we always chose a family off the church tree.  We spent more on them, cause Mommy said they only had us to provide.

I always loved the holiday.

this is so cool reading what everyone remembers about their holiday!!! now i can't for the life of me remember if we had stockings or not...guess we didn't if i can't remember...will ask mom when i see her saturday... ;-)