<p>I was attending a December business conference in Newport News, VA about 25 years ago. The conference planners offered an evening bus trip to Colonial Williamsburg for interested conference attendees, so I went.</p>
<p>We got off the bus at dusk, and the evening was rather chilly. I walked back 300 years through time into the little village. The houses were decorated for Christmas with candles in the windows. A fife and drum regiment marched past. Women in aprons served us hot cider in a little shop. I looked through the windows into the warm church and saw a choir practicing Christmas carols. The memory of that evening is one of the most magical memories I have, and at this time of year I enjoy reliving it in my memory.</p>
<p>My grandmother had blinking Christmas tree lights decades before everyone else did. I don’t know where she got them, but I loved them. When we went to visit her house on Christmas Day, I would go back into the living room while everyone else was finishing their dinner, just to sit there alone and watch the lights. They were better than the presents.</p>
<p>We would go before every Christmas to the Red Barn - which I think was a nursery or something during the rest of the year but we never went then, only at Christmas where they converted this straw floor barn into a wonderful store of Christmas ornaments. There were baskets of each type and there must have been hundreds. Every year, this was our family tradition to pick out new ornaments, one per kid. There was no question about price or size or design, just pick one. Even when my older siblings were teens, we still went as a family. Around when I was in HS, and all the siblings had moved out, and the Red Barn closed, when I asked my Mom when we were going to go, she said we didn’t have to, we had enough ornaments. I had such a fit!!! I remember breaking down and crying that we just had to, that it was our family tradition…I had put such a meaning to it, but to my Mom, it was just a task, every year you needed some new ones to replace the old ones…to me, it was a cherished family tradition. </p>
<p>We tried over the next few years to find a store as magical as the Red Barn was to me, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same to go to Macy’s or some other big retailer, and it certainly wasn’t replaceable by Home Depot or Walmart!! I still try to find something to compare and haven’t been able to. I wonder what “Christmas traditions” my kids think we have, that I am just thinking are tasks.</p>
<p>Listening to the Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde played on radio early Christmas Eve many years ago. Fire going, tree lights, chilly Northern California, pine smell create on this day a space in time well secured in memory.</p>
<p>I think that this is my youngest’s happiest…We are Jewish, but my husband was raised Episcopalian. So, to honor his background we drive to a Christmas tree farm and cut down a tree. When the kids were little it was amazing. (We were the only family with a Jewish day school parking sticker on their car bts.) The discovery of the tree(s), the perusing of size/shape and top. </p>
<p>I must confess I am tired of the trip, the mess…last year I proposed to my then 20 year old that we get an artificial tree. The answer of horror was NO!!!</p>
<p>So, there we were…my sophisticated family traipsing through lines of trees…one carrying the saw…one holding their arms around the tree measuring for size…and my “seeing” my children as young kids vying to find the best tree ever! </p>
<p>When my S was 3 or 4, going to the Audobon Society tree farm to find and cut down the perfect tree. While we were there, it started to snow. We headed home at dusk, tree tied to the roof of the car, and on the spur of the moment decided to stop at a wood-fired pizza place, where we sat with a view of the big open brick ovens with their wood fires while the snow fell. Then, still on the spur of the moment, we went to the local movie theater, which happened to be playing Aladdin. S had never been to a movie theater before, and this was the old-fashioned kind, not a multiplex. When the screen lit up, he sat up straight on the very edge of his seat with his mouth open, and said, “It’s a BIG movie!” He was enthralled.</p>
<p>Marian–
During this time of cold and darkness, I think lights feature prominently in many of our magic memories. The menorah, the christmas lights, we all long for the lights.</p>
<p>When I was small we lived near a big city. Every Christmas (in the 50s) the large department stores downtown would have animated displays in the windows. Santa’s workshop, elves, outdoor scenes. They would have beautiful creatures that moved, and lights, lights, lights. People bustling past with their packages, my mom buying secret presents, me staring at the window displays.</p>
<p>I love Christmas at my house, and even when I moved away, I always come back to help my mom decorate. All of our decorations and ornament have a special story behind them (nothing was just randomly bought because it “looked pretty” or whatever- they’re all gifts or have special stories attached to them). While I know the stories by heart (20 years of hearing stories will do that to ya), I love listening to my mom explain each decoration as it goes out and then my dad explaining each and every ornament. </p>
<p>My favorite story, by far, is the one of the stupid skinny Santa. My dad was not a Christmas person, but my mom (and I) LOVE Christmas. So, for their first Christmas together when they were dating, he bought her this skinny Santa statue. The thing is UGLY- I literally cannot explain how ugly this thing is. Every year, my mom puts it out somewhere prominent and my dad takes it and hides it. My mom finds it and puts it back, and inevitably an argument ensues about how my dad doesn’t want it out because it’s ugly and my mom keeps saying “It’s fine, it’s not ugly, we’re putting it here.” It goes back and forth throughout the whole Christmas season. I haven’t the faintest idea of why I enjoy that so much, but it’s been going on my whole life and it wouldn’t be Christmas without the stupid skinny Santa fights. </p>
<p>Also, when I was about 4, my dad got me a book that had my name in it (it was one of those specially made ones so my name, our pets’ names, and my sister’s name were all incorporated into the story and illustrations). He reads it to me every Christmas Eve night, even now. I remember loving it as a kid, fighting it as a teenager (which I regret), and look forward to it now as an adult. I even grab my old stuffed animal, cuddle up with my dog, and listen along to the book. This year, I was supposed to work Christmas Eve night, but I gave it up to work on Christmas day just to go home and listen to the book.</p>
<p>This is my husbands memory, but I love it so I will share it.</p>
<p>H grew up on a farm in the Midwest. Nearby lived his grandparents and many aunts and uncles as well as other farming neighbors. H’s much older brother was away at college, West Point. He hadn’t been home for along time but was able to come home for Christmas.</p>
<p>This particular year there was record snow fall and the country roads were impassible. It looked like there was no point for the brother to come home. Everyone was terribly disappointed. My husband remembers a lot of commotion outside a couple of days before Christmas and low and behold all of the neighbors, aunts, uncles, everyone had got their tractors and whatever they had out and cleared the road from town so that H’s brother could come home.</p>
<p>One of my Christmas memories is lying in the middle of the living room floor while listening to Christmas music and watching the color wheel illuminate the aluminum tree.</p>
<p>What a great thread, and it is a treasure reading these memories!</p>
<p>I think one of mine was when I was in my 20s (long time ago), living by myself, just broken up with my boyfriend. I was going to go home for Christmas and it started snowing a few hours before I was supposed to begin the 60 mile trek home. This was in Oregon, so snow was still something of a rarity on Christmas.</p>
<p>I had an old VW bug that had a barely working heater. I loaded up to make the drive, the snow was coming down furiously, and my defroster wasn’t working and the windshield wipers were moving at slow pace. I remember going up I-5 at about 20 miles an hour, hunched down to see out of the few inches of visibility I had on my windshield. The normally 1 hour drive took 3-4 hours and it was dark when I arrived at my parent’s house on Christmas Eve.</p>
<p>I just remember the sense of warmth and joy when I had made it to the safety and comfort of my parent’s house, where I could enjoy Christmas with them and not be alone for the holidays. It was just a little after I made it home that the freeways were pretty much closed down.</p>
<p>And as for a White Christmas: For years I didn’t know that there was a preamble. And then one day I heard…the palm trees swaying…here in Beverly Hills, USA. It made me proud and slightly befuddled. I had no idea we were famous.</p>
<p>@momma-three - They will. Even if they don’t show it, I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t have Christmas/holiday memories/traditions that they talk about. Even people who come from families who aren’t that into Christmas have stories.</p>
<p>One I remember was when the kids were little. We went to the Riverwalk in San Antonio at Christmastime, and the lights were up and reflecting off the water. It was just beautiful. That night we stayed in a hotel, and I shared a bed with ds2, then 3. I woke up just moments before he did. I saw him open his eyes, and the first words out of his mouth that morning was, “Remember the lights?” </p>
<p>On Christmas Eve my family and I drove from NY down to VA when my van’s steering system acted up at 6 PM. Our destination was Disney’s Wide World of Sports in Orlando so I got off I-95, but all the repair shops were closed. I tinkered with the van so it was driveable and we drove for another hour or two. When we finally pulled into a hotel they gave us their last room available. </p>
<p>The only restaurant still open at 10:00 PM was an Outback. The host greeted us and then locked the door behind us, and told us the kitchen was closed and they wanted to go home very soon. She checked with the kitchen staff and they rustled up a tremendous meal in minutes which we devoured after being in the car for hours. When we got back to the hotel we sat and watched ducks in a pond and enjoyed a beautiful warm Christmas Eve. It set the tone for a week’s vacation that I’ll always remember.</p>
<p>About 23 years ago, I was fed up with the shuttle around to all the relatives on Christmas. I was trying to reclaim the holiday for my own young ( my oldest was 6) family and I booked a room at a family style inn for Christmas in a rural part of the state.
It took us about 8 hours to get there- much longer than I realized and we barely made dinner. But after dinner there was a full moon & a meadow just outside the door with a practice loop for cross country skiing.
We skied around the loop enthralled by the moon and the stars and it made such an impression that our family celebrated Christmas there for the next 20 years.
:)</p>
<p>OK, this one won’t make anyone tear up - but for some crazy reason it’s one of my favorites… I was about five and Santa brought us an outdoor play item called a Whirly-gig. It had two seats at opposite ends of a long bar, kind of like a see-saw, but when you pumped the footrests and handlebars back and forth it twirled around instead of going up and down. Santa had even set it up in the family room so we could test it out. I was in heaven…round and round and faster and faster. And then you could let go of the handlebars and lean back and really feel like you were flying (until your sister made you help pump again). So yeah, one of my magical holiday memories involves vomiting shortly after breakfast.</p>
He was enthralled.</p>
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