sid: (Yule Happy Holidays ornament)
sid ([personal profile] sid) wrote2012-12-20 10:13 pm

Give me some Holiday memories!

People stopping by via "latest" are most welcome!

Share your winter holiday memories, whether childhood. adult, anti-, or other.

Me? My childhood memories are of my older brother waking me at who-knows-what hour of the morning on Christmas Day. Things were likely different when we were a bit younger, but I remember the two of us ripping open our presents before our parents were even out of bed. This seems so alien compared to more recent experiences of semi-large groups of people opening gifts, one at time for the optimum photo opportunities, on Christmas Eve or morning.

Later, we would head over to our paternal grandparents home in the nearby village where my father grew up, to join our two aunts and uncles-by-marriage and our seven cousins for food and more gifts. Is it a Wisconsin thing? I remember the grown-ups all tilting their wrapped gifts to see if they'd 'gurgle'. *g*
archersangel: this is me. more or less (unique)

[personal profile] archersangel 2012-12-21 04:49 am (UTC)(link)
for some reason the first thing that came to mind was at my maternal grandparents' house they had a white tree with several red bows on it & i recall thinking that a white tree was wrong.
esteven: (Default)

[personal profile] esteven 2012-12-21 05:57 am (UTC)(link)
Several memories spring to mind, of traipsing through the snow towards Gran's house who did not know we were coming, of Mum and Dad ready to play with me because there was nobody else (*still hearts them for this*), but mainly the Christmas 2009 will stay in my memory. It was quiet and Mum had just come out of hospital the same morning, but we were glad to be together. Little did I know that roughly a month later I'd have to say good-bye to her.

But maybe these are not the kind of memories you wanted to hear about?
heather_mist: (Default)

[personal profile] heather_mist 2012-12-21 02:07 pm (UTC)(link)
*hugs you both*
esteven: (Default)

[personal profile] esteven 2012-12-21 05:27 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you dear!

*snugs into the hugs*
esteven: (Default)

[personal profile] esteven 2012-12-21 02:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you dear, and yes, loved ones will be in our thoughts for a long time. All is well. *returns hugs*
*adores your icon*

Having hardly ever had anybody but Mum and Dad around for Christmas Eve I am not accustomed to hordes of family and friends. I love them all dearly, but it is sufficient I see them on Christmas and Boxing Day and spend Christmas Eve (as you know the main day of celebration) on my own.

It has started snowing :)
esteven: (Default)

[personal profile] esteven 2012-12-22 05:57 am (UTC)(link)
Sort of. The main celebration is on Christmas Eve, but since Christmas Day and Boxing Day are public holidays, those are the days to visit friends and relatives.
jdjunkie: (sparkly lya)

[personal profile] jdjunkie 2012-12-21 12:40 pm (UTC)(link)
I vividly remember staying awake at my grandparents' house on Christmas Eve, straining to hear sleigh bells, then diving under the covers when footsteps came into the bedroom and left a rustling bag at the foot of my bed. It sounded like dad's footsteps, but I preferred to think it was Santa, so I never peeked. :-)
discodiva76: (J/D Xmas Cuddle)

[personal profile] discodiva76 2012-12-21 02:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Drinking Advocaat and/or Cherry Brandy to warm me up after a trip to the circus in London....playing with the wonderful OO gauge train set my Dad used to get out EVERY Boxing Day, watching the Pantomime/Circus on TV.....

I have a bottle of Advocaat with me for the first time in years for Xmas....first time I've felt able to drink it since my Dad died....


Edited 2012-12-21 14:05 (UTC)
discodiva76: (Timmy Cocktail Time)

[personal profile] discodiva76 2012-12-21 04:00 pm (UTC)(link)
*clinks glass back*...am trying a warm Pimms No.3 with apple juice drink later...will raise a glass for both our loved and missed Daddies...


Oh yeah, one more memory...if he was really in the mood, daddy would do magic tricks...a self-taught magician he belonged to the Magic Circle and I remember him doing a great trick with a "washing line" of rope and brightly coloured silk scarves....Magical!!!..
Edited 2012-12-21 16:29 (UTC)
heather_mist: (Nutmeg of Consolation)

[personal profile] heather_mist 2012-12-21 02:05 pm (UTC)(link)
My favourite Christmas memory is, bizarrely, the year our Christmas tree decorations were stolen, I was somewhere in my very early teens I think. In our family we tended not to put the tree up until a week or 10 days before Christmas and the weekend we were going to decorate it some bugger got in to our garage where they were stored and stole the baubles etc! (They stole other things as well, but that's not important..). Anyway, it was too late to buy any more and anyway there wasn't a lot of money kicking around for more baubles, so that year we made our own - and they were brilliant!

We made angels from sugar paper (I think you might call it Kraft paper) and paper doilies, cut out stars from cardboard and covered them in tinfoil, made paper chains to drape the tree instead of tinsel and best of all painted old flash cubes with airfix model paint and made them into gift-wrapped-present baubles! It was entirely 'hand-knitted' looking, but it was really good fun to do, brought us all together in the face of a minor calamity, and we continued to re-use these improvised decorations for years until they fell apart. Happy days...
cheyinka: A white egg speckled with black spots. Text: "I was hatched! From an egg!" (hatched!)

[personal profile] cheyinka 2012-12-21 03:56 pm (UTC)(link)
This is what I miss about childhood Christmas celebrations: staying up really late on the night of December 23rd as my mom made pierogi from scratch (while we chatted and I helped a little bit), then waking up around noon the next day and having cheese pizza for breakfast, then eating an enormous amount of food at Christmas Eve dinner. I mean, sure, there were presents and midnight Mass and stuff, too, but "hey let's stay up until two am because we need pierogi for dinner" was awesome.
skieswideopen: A green-and-gold Christmas ornament (Christmas)

[personal profile] skieswideopen 2012-12-22 03:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, yes--early mornings on Christmas! Un my family, we weren't allowed to go downstairs to open our presents or even our stockings until my parents were up, and we weren't allowed to wake my parents until 7am. So what would usually happen is around 5am, my siblings and I would start creeping into each other's rooms to see if we were all awake, and 6:30 would find us huddled outside my parents' bedroom door whispering to each other to check whether it was 7 o'clock yet so we could knock.

We always did presents first thing, though. We'd open presents and then my father would put the turkey in if we were hosting that year, and then we'd get breakfast. And then in the afternoon, we'd either go to my aunt and uncle's, or family would show up at our house--usually about twenty-five people total. There would be another round of gifts, and endless games of Euchre, and trays and trays of Christmas cookies. It was awesome. (Christmases now are actually pretty similar, except the gatherings are smaller and we usually wait until 8 to get up. :D)
Edited 2012-12-22 15:13 (UTC)

(Anonymous) 2012-12-22 04:11 pm (UTC)(link)
LOL!

The funny part is that my parents were generally awake when we were outside their door (probably woken by us--there were five of us, so even whispering we made a lot of noise), and so they'd be lying in bed listening to us. But they'd still make us wait. :D
skieswideopen: A green-and-gold Christmas ornament (Christmas)

[personal profile] skieswideopen 2012-12-22 04:12 pm (UTC)(link)
And I totally didn't notice that I'd been logged out.
antares_dw: (winter)

[personal profile] antares_dw 2012-12-22 07:43 pm (UTC)(link)
I remember one Christmas when I was five or six years old and me and my (2 years) younger sister fell ill with measles. It happened while we were visiting my grandparents, and so we had to stay with them until we were healthy enough to go home to our parents. But all I remember from this time is being spoiled by my grandma with all the things we wanted to eat, more chocolate than we were allowed at home, and my grandpa who played with us for hours and created new tiny furniture for our brand new dollhouse. *bg* So I have very fond memories of being ill with measles. *lol*

[identity profile] delphia2000.livejournal.com 2012-12-21 05:13 am (UTC)(link)
We had the most kids in the family and it was harder to load us all up so the rellies all came to visit at our house instead. Xmas eve was for my Dad's side of the family (the ones my mom didn't like because they were all drinkers). We always had to get dressed up even tho we weren't going anywhere and there was a huge buffet and the Aunts brought us each a paper shopping bag full of gifts. Mom's parents came on Xmas day in the afternoon. No big meals other than the buffet and the buffet leftovers on Xmas day. The DH and I decided we like a munchie meal on Xmas eve and then turkey dinner on Xmas day.

We ripped all our gifts open the moment the 'rents said we could dive in! But no one was allowed up til 6am.

[identity profile] annieb1955.livejournal.com 2012-12-21 05:13 am (UTC)(link)
My main memory of Christmases past as a child was that it was always hot. We hardly ever had a proper "cooked" Xmas lunch. Most often Dad would barbecue chops and sausages and Mum would make salads and we'd all sit around a huge table that consisted of several tables pushed together (I came from a family of 10 kids). My favorite Xmas memory was of the china walkie talkie doll bought for my twin sister and I by one of my older sisters. Raylee was 15 years older than we were and doted on us.

My saddest memory was being woken up a few days before Xmas when I was 12 to be told our childhood best friends had been killed in a terrible road accident on Kangaroo Island. There were 4 of them aged from 15 down to 4. Three of them were my brother in law's younger sisters and brother. I still remember that day every year.

[identity profile] annieb1955.livejournal.com 2012-12-21 06:34 pm (UTC)(link)
I have always wanted to experience a cold white Xmas just once.

[identity profile] jokan.livejournal.com 2012-12-21 07:55 am (UTC)(link)
In my family, it was my Dad who woke us all up on Christmas because he was so excited to see everyone open their presents. My mother had to make him wait until 6:00 am to wake us up. By then he'd been up for hours drinking eggnog and watching the lit up Christmas tree.