http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4715392Dennis Donovan (1000+ posts) Thu Dec-25-08 06:19 AM
Original message
Christmas morning - post your childhood rituals...
For us, we woke up at 6am and waited at the top of the stairs for the signal from Mom that it was okay to come down (she was usually wrapping/placing things that couldn't be put under the tree before due to their obvious shapes, like bikes, etc).
As we poised ourselves like crouching runners waiting for the starting pistol, Mom would yell "C'mon down now" and we'd tumble down the stairs (in my case, I sailed over the bannister and beat everyone else by two or three lengths) to the front room where the sea of gifts were placed around the tree.
My oldest brother (who, already in his 20's, always helped Mom with the morning present placement) would pass the gifts out, wearing the same dirty Santa hat my father wore on Christmas morning before he died. To him, it was important to perpetuate the tradition started by Dad for the younger ones.
The morning would be spent playing with the toys, ignoring the sweaters and pants and coats, until Mom could finally coax us to the breakfast table. That meal would quickly disappear so we could get back to our toys.
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Happy Holidays, DU!
Merry Christmas, Dennis the Menace primitive!
cali (1000+ posts) Thu Dec-25-08 06:32 AM
Response to Original message
1. sounds much like my childhood Christmas mornings except the first thing we'd go for is our lumpy, bumpy stockings, by far my favorite part of the day. I always took my time extracting each little thing. I remember always getting those flowering clams, a charm for my charm bracelet, a small steiff stuffed animal, brain teaser puzzles of one kind or another and other neat little things.
We always had waffles are real maple syrup for breakfast.
lamp_shade (1000+ posts) Thu Dec-25-08 06:34 AM
Response to Original message
2. Merry Christmas Morning to you too. I was one of seven and Christmas morning was almost exactly like yours. One of the biggest kicks for each of us was becoming old enough (what? 9? 10?) to be told the "truth" about Santa and staying up late the night before to help set up and put together the gifts for my younger siblings.
Merry Christmas, shady light primitive!
thecrow (1000+ posts) Thu Dec-25-08 06:35 AM
Response to Original message
3. I'm just sitting here reading in the calm before the storm
My Christmas ritual is playing Handel's Messiah.
My Christmas Eve ritual is to light candles and leave one burning in the bat tub overnight.
Since my son and his fiancee are visiting this year, I also left one in the powder room sink.
Soon enough everyone will be up and the Great Cooking will ensue, but here in this quiet moment it's just me reading and reflecting.
Merry Christmas, everybody!
Merry Christmas, crow-dining primitive!
barbtries (1000+ posts) Thu Dec-25-08 06:45 AM
Response to Original message
4. for us it was very much the same
all four of us slept in one room on christmas eve. we had to wait until we heard my mother running up and down the hall, ringing a bell and yelling, santa came! then we would dash down the hall to the tree and our stockings: huge, hand-made personalized stockings, which were the only things we were allowed to open without supervision. we might have found one big toy unwrapped left by santa under the tree.
i loved dolls. when i was very little if there was a doll under the tree i didn't care about the rest of it. one of us would be the designated santa, and we would open the gifts one by one until there was nothing but crap and ripped up wrapping covering the floor. then we ate steak and eggs. we always had steak and eggs for christmas breakfast, and fruit and candy for the rest of the day.
with my own children, i was single for most of the time. i would be up until 5, 6 am wrapping gifts (i wrapped everything down to a pack of gum for their stockings). they were allowed to get up when i passed out but only to get into their stockings. one year, the first year of my divorce, my 11-year-old and 7-year-old were too greedy and excited to wait. even though i was sleeping in the same room, they opened all but one present while i snored through the whole thing. nearly wrecked my christmas.
if it wasn't for the four-year-old who never got that excited until it happened...anyway some time later he woke up, and his joy at what santa had brought him redeemed the whole day for me.
after which a photograph advertising primitive materialism
merry christmas DU - my son and i are on our way across the country to see our family after more than a year. we got bumped yesterday because of the weather in cleveland, so i'll miss my grandchildren waking up to see what santa got them, but better late than never. i hope we will all have a great holiday, and not worry too much until the 26th at least!
Merry Christmas, tree barbering primitive!
grannie4peace (1000+ posts) Thu Dec-25-08 08:29 AM
Response to Reply #4
10. i remember one christmas , i must have been 10 or 11
each of us 4 girls are 2 yrs apart. we had sneaked a peek at the presents (every single one of them!) under the tree( for some reason as soon as they were wrapped they were put under the tree). the temptation was too great. we tried to re wrap the presents. my little sister didn't have those skills yet & we were found out. our mom was so upset she spent three days in bed & wouldn't talk to us kids. we'd go in & try to apologize, mom would say "if you were sorry, you never would have done it". this year i found out one of my sisters never told her children about that ever happening. that time and one christmas a few years earlier when i was younger.
i remember waiting upstairs on christmas eve, looking out the window watching a fresh new snow envelop the earth because we were told santa was going to be early at our house so he could get on with his rounds. we were supposed to watch for the reindeer through that snow. those are the two memories of christmas' that i carry with me peace to all & thank you God , for our fine new president!!!
Merry Christmas, four-pieced grandmother primitive!
AsahinaKimi (164 posts) Thu Dec-25-08 06:54 AM
Response to Original message
5. Our family never celebrated Christmas...
Cause my Mom and Dad were Buddhists..but we did go out for Chinese food
every year.. I always looked forward to Peking or Roast Duck.
after which a photograph of some dead bird that isn't a turkey
Anyways..Happy Holidays
Merry Christmas, ashcan Kim primitive!
moriah (1000+ posts) Thu Dec-25-08 07:12 AM
Response to Original message
8. My mom's birthday is Christmas.
By the time I was 4 or 5 we started a tradition -- the gift to my mother was sleep.
So we got to open one present before we went to bed, and we got to stay up until the Midnight Mass was done on TV, then we at least had to go pretend to sleep. When we woke up, whatever time it was, we could go get stockings, etc, and if we got noisy my grandmother got up. When I was rally little, my grandfather was still alive, so he would get up a little later. We'd fix breakfast, ate, and we then took Mom breakfast in bed around 8 or 9.
Then we'd do the major unwrapping expeditions....
Merry Christmas, morning primitive!
watrwefitinfor (690 posts) Thu Dec-25-08 07:49 AM
Response to Original message
9. Christmas with my extended family in the country, so many years ago...
Waking up to a sprawly little pine tree my granddad had cut from the edge of the woods, and stood in the living room beside the piano. My mother and aunts had it decorated with a string of white lights (we had only got electricity five years before I was born) and home made bows. Boy, that pine smelled good, and the smell of fresh cut pine still smells like Christmas!
There was an old white tablecloth spread on the floor around the tree. My mom would sprinkle fruit (especially tangerines - really exotic) and nuts (always in the shell - Brazil nuts were and are my favorites) and a little hard candy all under the tree and around the gifts. Santa would leave a toy or two for my brother and me. Dad was overseas fighting WWII for my first few Christmases. I think they got a little more bountiful when he got back home.
One year I got a red, wooden wagon that my granddad had made for me. I remember pulling my brother around in it. Another year a tricycle - cast iron in black, purple and yellow. That thing was indestructible. I can remember riding it all through the house, including ducking my head and zipping under the kitchen table. (They gave it away after I grew up - I still grieve for that tricycle.) Once there was a soft grey stuffed elephant with pink ears. Funny, 60 years later I can remember snuggling that elephant and carrying him around with me everywhere.
Maybe the best present of all was a little wooden rocking chair that they put out on the front porch so I could sit and rock with all the grownups. There was a doll one year, and she was beautiful. White dress and bonnet, china head, standing in a tall box with a cover of cellophane. I didn't have much truck with dolls, but I loved her. She was so beautiful, I loved to just stand the box up and admire her. She never had a name, just "my doll".
When I was six I got my first bike - a bright red boys' bike with the bar, because God forbid when my little brother grew into it he should have to ride a girls' bike!
And there were books. Always books. "Fuzzy Wuzzy Wuz a Bear" had fuzzy bears you could rub. "Three little kittens have lost their mittens" also made an impression. My aunt taught me to read from those Christmas books.
After the gifts we would crowd around the table to feast on Grandmother's flapjacks with the cane syrup Granddaddy had grown and made. There would also be plenty of thick, home-cured bacon, fresh sliced from slabs that hung in the smokehouse. And a platter full of eggs, fried in the bacon grease. Coffee boiling on the wood cook stove in the white enamel coffee pot trimmed in red (I didn't drink the stuff, but boy did it smell good and I still have that coffee pot). Fresh milk and butter from the milk cow - the butter I had helped Grandmother make. And the biscuits. I've never tasted biscuits like that again since they tossed out the wood cook stove. And grandmother's homemade grape hull preserves to top it all off.
My God, life was perfect.
Wishing all of DU such wonderful Christmas memories.
Peace to all.
Afterthought...
The temptation is great to compare all that to the plastic and electronic Christmas my little great grandchildren are waking to right now, in the very same house I lived in then. But I think their Christmas memories will be just as special to them as mine to me. I just hope our world can be salvaged, and they, and all the other precious little children, have a world in which they can enjoy their memories.
Merry Christmas, wet water primitive!
trof (1000+ posts) Thu Dec-25-08 08:35 AM
Response to Original message
11. Stockings last. Always. And there had to be a dime in the toe.
For good luck.
And as long as I remained a true believer, there were always a few gifts from 'Santa'.
And about Santa...
Two little boys are walking home from school not long before Christmas.
"Do you believe in Santa Claus?"
"Naw, I don't think so. I think it's like the Devil.
I think it's your dad."
Merry Christmas all.
Merry Christmas, trof primitive!
I dunno. When I was a child, every Christmas was different from that Christmas that had preceded it, and that Christmas that followed it. The only things that were consistent were that:
(a) my maternal ancestress and all the children excepting my younger brother and I went to Midnight Mass at the Roma Catholic Church, while my paternal ancestor went to Midnight Mass at the Episcopalian Church. My younger brother and I would be taken to regular services at the Roman Catholic Church in the morning, usually by an adult not related to us.
(b) my younger brother, upon seeing the presents, would simply say "Okay." Myself, upon seeing the presents, would say, "Oh man, not this [excresence] again," and as I got older, complaining about the waste of valuable resources in wrapping them up.
Believe it or not, by the age of five years, I was already taking very careful care to unwrap presents so as to not tear the paper, so I could re-use it myself later.
Really.
(c) the candle in the window, kept lit all night; apparently an ancient tradition from the Carpathian Mountains.
But as mentioned earlier, no Christmas was the same, and many times Christmas was spread over several days because it was not always possible for all the older brothers and sisters to be home on the same day, and because the parents worked the hospital that day so that less fortunate employees could have the holiday off.
But all in all, they were great times.
