Many of my favorite Christmas memories come from childhood. It was such a magical time of year and my parents always worked to make it special. The season always started with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. We’d excitedly watch the bands, floats and huge balloons, waiting for Santa to appear at its conclusion. It was still a great parade back then, not the commercial spectacle it is today.
Although my parents have an artificial tree now, when I was a kid we always had the real deal. Our job was to decorate it after Dad put the lights on. The problem was that the strings of lights were always a tangled mess and he’d get angry trying to separate them. Every. Single. Year.
Our ornaments were never plain Christmas balls, they were all shapes and sizes, many of them handmade. I’ve kept that tradition; bringing out the ornaments every year ushers in a flood of wonderful memories.
My mom would decorate the entire house until it looked like a Christmas wonderland, and people would often stop by just to admire her handiwork.
We always spent a day at my grandma’s house making Christmas cookies; my sister’s and my favorite part was decorating the cut-out sugar cookies with candies and sprinkles. My mom and grandma also baked a lot of Scandinavian treats like sandbakkels, krumkake and rosettes.
The huge Sears and JCPenney Wish catalogs would arrive and we’d spend hours pouring over the pages, marking the items we were most hoping to receive. I collected Brier Horses and there were always new ones featured for me to covet.
Although my kids can’t fathom it, cartoons were only on Saturday mornings, so it was a thrill when the Christmas specials came on in the evenings. I was terrified of the Bumble on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and always cried when the Little Drummer Boy’s lamb was injured, but I wouldn’t have missed them for the world.
The Christmas program at church was always a highlight of the holiday. The Sunday School would sing carols and reenact the Christmas story. My favorite years were the ones I was chosen to be Mary, it felt like such an honor.
My mom had a very large doll from her childhood that always starred as Baby Jesus in the program. Although it’s been close to 40 years since he lay in the manager, that doll is still known in our family as Baby Jesus.
After the program, all the Sunday School students would get a present from their teacher, usually a book or ornament, and a brown paper bag filled with candy.
Something all the kids in town looked forward to was Santa Day. Everyone would gather for a movie and afterward Santa would stop by. Along with meeting the big guy, each child received a paper bag with peanuts, hard candy and haystacks, a chocolate candy with a vanilla cream center.
I was a shy child and Santa terrified me. I never wanted to sit on his lap but I always braved it so I could tell him what I wanted for Christmas.
It seemed like the wait for Christmas Day was endless as a child, the anticipation nearly unbearable. It was hard to fall asleep Christmas Eve, I was so worried Santa wasn’t going to bring me anything. I can still feel the sense of relief coming down the stairs Christmas morning to see the cookies and milk we left out replaced with presents, and our stockings full of goodies.
The best gift I ever received came when I was four or five years old. My mom used to sew, and she had made homemade doll clothes to give my female cousins for Christmas. I was so jealous, I begged her to make me some too, after all, she’d used my dolls as models!
She told me she didn’t have time and I would have to wait until after Christmas. Imagine my surprise on Christmas Day when, after watching my cousins excitedly open their presents, I opened one to find it full of my mom’s homemade doll clothes. I was overjoyed. Although I don’t have many of my dolls any longer, I still have most of those clothes.
Experiencing the wonder of Christmas through the eyes of a child brings all the magic back. I hope I’ve been able to bring at least a little of that Christmas joy to my own children.
