Let’s hear about your nostalgia Christmas…I can remember sneaking down the stairs in the middle of the night to see what Santa left me. After I saw my presents, I’d go back to bed and try to go back to sleep. But it never happened…I’d wake my parents up long before daylight.

My stocking had popcorn balls, oranges, peanuts in the shell, walnuts, chestnuts and Christmas nougats. Things I’ll love forever and never forget!!

The Christmas I remember best I was either 5 or 6. Old Yeller was my favorite movie and all I wanted for Christmas was a dog like Old Yeller. My mom told me we couldn't afford to buy me a dog. My mom and dad had recently divorced and money was tight. That didn't bother me. I told her Santa would bring him.

Coming home from church that night, we heard coyotes howling behind the house. Coyotes were still rare in our area then and their howling made a chill run down my spine. After getting into my pajamas, I put out cookies and milk for Santa, along with my note telling him all I wanted was a dog like Old Yeller. Then I went to bed. But, I imagine it was 1am before I fell asleep. I was up for hours listening for Santa on the roof. Several times my mom came into my room to find me still awake and warned me that if I was still up when Santa came, he would pass me on by. So, I eventually fell asleep.

When I next woke up it was still dark out. But I could see from my room that the Christmas tree lights were on so I thought I would take a peek. I guess I was still thinking about coyotes and clear forgot about asking for a dog, because when the tree lights reflected glowing green eyes coming towards me, I screamed, lol. My mom was there in a second and I was babbling about coyotes and she said "There's no coyotes" and then turned on the light. And there, probably now equally as scared as me, was my very own Old Yeller dog.

And the day just kept getting better. I went outside after opening other gifts and on the back sidewalk was a bag of dog food laying in a heap in the snow! It looked like it had just been dropped there and so I looked up. In the snow on the roof was a perfect drag mark from where the bag of food has slid down from the peak of the roof, where Santa had obviously accidentally dropped it. After seeing THAT I believed in Santa for a few years more than most kids my age did, lol.

Later that day my Dad gave me a Red Ryder BB Gun and the rest of the afternoon was spent roaming the fields with my dog (Named Elsa according to the note Santa had left) taking pop shots at rabbits we kicked out of the brush.

angela,,that story made my day. thankyou for sharing that. very special.

I posted this here a couple of years ago.

When I was a kid, we would put up the Christmas tree and decorations on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We used a live tree until I was around 12, when my parents switched to an artificial tree with fake snow on it.

On December 6th, St. Nicholas Day, we would get our stockings stuffed with candy and some coins. We also got a calendar for the next year and usually a pair of new pajamas to wear at Christmas. I always got a Tolkein calendar.

On Christmas Eve, we would go to evening mass. When we got home we had a gift exchange among our immediate family members and received one big, meaning expensive, present from our parents.

The next technical morning, my brother Kevin would wake me up around 2:00am to 3:00am and start pestering my parents to get up to check for presents. My dad would go downstairs to check for presents and tell us Santa had not been here yet and that we had to go back to bed. My brother Kevin would wake us all up many more times, until finally around 6:00am my dad would tell us where our presents are and let us go down. My brother Kevin would rush to his presents and open them in a frenzy. Kevin would not even look at most of them and sometimes even threw them away with the wrapping paper.

When my younger brother Nick and sister Jennifer were born and throughout their childhoods, Kevin woke them up repeatedly too and used then to try to get our parents up earlier. Later on our parents tried having us take turns opening presents, but usually quickly gave up.

We then drove an hour and 15 minutes to our paternal grandparents and bounced around from there to our paternal maternal great grandparents, our maternal grandparents, back to our paternal great grandparents, our paternal paternal great grandmothers, back to our maternal grandparents and then home with a vehicle packed solid with Christmas loot. We ate and opened and exchanged presents at every stop. They all lived just minutes driving from each other.

My paternal paternal great grandmothers often had well over 100 people present and well over 200 people over the course of the day. She had 12 children and 48 grandchildren. There are probably over 150 great grandchildren in my generation. She is still having great great grandchildren. Sometimes we would drive by without stopping because there was to many people and have to come back later. I am the second oldest in my generation and the oldest male. Everyone always knew who I was and I only knew maybe 30 some people when I was little. I made $106.00 dollars, back in the seventies, bringing drinks to the card tables. It's hard to describe the feeling off love I got being greeted by and appreciated by hordes of family friends and relatives.

The amount of food and drinks consumed at my paternal paternal great grandmothers was amazing. My paternal paternal great grandfather had a grocery store, a bar and a catering business. The bar and catering business were still going and full box trucks would pull up and be emptied into the huge larders by chains of relatives, to be emptied again.

Did any of the rest of you go to huge family get togethers on the holidays?

Keith

it is just the wife and I home now and we both enjoy decorating for the season, NEVER forgetting the reason.

Love those owls on the tree tmrschessie. And your right, Jesus is the reason for the season

Those owls are a Hoot