Let’s talk about Christmases past…
I got a doll for Christmas every single year until I was probably in my mid-twenties. Often my mom made the doll, or at least she would make the doll clothes to go with it. I LOVED (LOVE) dolls.
One year…my parents got me twin baby dolls, a boy and a girl. My mom sewed matching clothes for them. AND my dad built me some little bunk beds for those dolls. That was one of my favorite Christmases!! (We still have those sweet little baby doll bunk beds that my dad made!!!)
Oh, and that was also the year I got that Doll Head thing. Remember what my brother did to that? (See this post…#8)
While that was my favorite Christmas memory…I also remember a Christmas that I was really sad.
I was a seventh grader. That year, we had a foster girl living with us who was an eighth grader. Mostly it was fine having her live with us, but for Christmas that year she was supposed to go for a home visit. I was ready for a break from her and to have my own family back to myself for a few days. On Christmas Eve we got word that her family wasn’t doing well and she couldn’t go home after all. I remember having a really, really hard time being happy that Christmas. Sounds a little selfish I suppose. That poor girl NEEDED a happy Christmas in our home. I bet she was sad that Christmas too. Anyway…
Sometimes we would travel for Christmas, but usually we had Christmas morning at home and then went to Grandma’s for Christmas dinner and an afternoon with our big family. I loved Christmas!!
What are your favorite (or not favorite) Christmas memories as a child?
baby doll bunk beds…how cute!
My favorite was the year I got a desk…like a teacher. There was an apple on top and the drawers were full of supplies!
I’ve been lurking arund your blog, and have it in my favorites!
One of my favorite Christmas “traditions” took place about two weeks before Christmas each year. My parents would decorate the tree and then early the next morning, my Dad would take me out of bed, asleep, and place me under the tree with the lights on. It was so wonderful waking up to the sight of our decorated Christmas tree.:)
Oh, just thinking about this sweet memory is making me cry.:)
Joyce
UMMM….
I think one of my best/worst all in one christmas’ was when my Hubby asked me to marry him….
BEST because of course I wanted him to ask me…. WORST… because I didn’t want him to ask me infront of his FAMILY! I had even told him this a month prior, as I knew he had a ring and would be popping the question sometime in the future…
BUT he did it anyways….
UGH, can’t win them all!!!!
I also remember my grandma making me cry every year….
We would eat breakfast at like 9 am on christmas morning… and then head to my grandparents where they SAID we would be eating at 2:30…. and then we NEVER really ate until around 4 pm…. I would cry and want to eat SOMETHING… ANYTHING…. and my grandma would yell at me to get out of the kitchen…. THIS went on for years….
SOOO now when I have christmas at my house…. We eat ON TIME!!!!! and when we go to my families for christmas, I give the kids a small lunch before we go… I never want them to feel the way I did!
My favorite Christmas is also my saddest. Sad because my eldest child was three days old and in the hospital (actually miserable is probably a better description of how I felt). It’s my favorite because it was the quietest and most thoughtful Christmas I’ve ever had. I’ve never had a Christmas since where I could just reflect on the meaning of Christ’s birth and feel His presence.
It also helped that “Santa” came by our room Christmas morning with presents for our baby. :) But the best present was leaving with our baby Christmas afternoon.
Christmas growing up always made me feel sad deep down inside, but I was never able to talk about it. My family did not have much money. However, my mother (who died recently), felt that the most important thing at Christmas was to give lavish gifts and make things very special for all of our relatives and their children. So every year, as our home filled up with Barbies and toys I longed for (which would go to my cousins), and I got the usual speech that I couldn’t get new glasses or a new coat (glasses to replace the ones my sister broke, held together by tape, or a coat to replace the hand-me-down I outgrew) or other gift I really needed, let alone wanted, since my father didn’t make enough money, and Santa Claus couldn’t bring them because she needed to send money to Santa for our gifts. It would have been OK if I hadn’t seen the gifts for the other kids.
One year, I found a treasure trove of presents wrapped in a basement closet, and very carefully, I opened each corner and was so excited by everything I saw. They were all gifts for my little sister, I reasoned, everything she could ever want — a Chatty Cathy doll, Barbie house, you name it — a big stack of gifts wrapped in paper I know Mom kept beside them. Of course, they weren’t from Santa, since they were in our home. And they had no tags on them. My sister was going to have the most wonderful Christmas ever!! So, I told my sister, who was about four or five at the time, about all the gifts I found and how wonderful it was going to be.
On Christmas morning, as I opened my gifts of underwear and socks and a poncho my mother chrocheted for me (knowing that it was nothing like anything the other kids were wearing and that everyone would look at it and think I was the wierd girl), my sister eagerly ripped into her packages, and not one thing I found downstairs was there. Nothing. My sister asked me what happened to all the gifts I told her about, and I felt so terrible!
We spent the morning helping mom clean up and get the house ready for the guests that were arriving. I worked as hard as I could to avoid getting whipped with a vaccuum cleaner cord or slammed into a wall, which were common around my house. When they came, out came the treasure trove of gifts–which my mother handed to my spoiled brat cousin (the daughter of my mother’s favorite sister), who was my sister’s age. That brat spent the rest of the day lording over us how she got so many gifts and that Santa also brought her the Barbie airplane and everything else she asked for.
Meanwhile, I opened my gift from that cousin’s mother. I found a Madame Alexander doll, a wonderful gift of course, except that the box was open and her golden hair was matted and tangled, and didn’t have any shoes or socks. This aunt worked part-time at Toys R Us, and as my mother told me later, she was able to get toys like this for free, and wasn’t she a wonderful aunt to save me such a beautiful doll?
Then there was the year (in second grade) when all I wanted was a coat like the ones worn by Terry and Patty, twins in my class. They were made of white fake fur with brown leather trim. I spoke of nothing else besides wanting a beautiful coat like that, from the first time I saw those coats in November. So, a few days before Christmas, that aunt agreed to take me shopping to buy me a coat. She only took em to one store, and of course, all the coats were gone by then (I had to wear a rain slicker with a heavy sweater underneath, which didn’t keep me very warm.) So my aunt asked if there was anything else I’d like to have, and I decided on a record album. My mother got so mad at me for not finding a coat, and never got me one till the following Christmas (and unfortunately, the kids at school decided that the cheap brown fake fur coat made me look like a bear.)
Christmas taught me that I wasn’t worth anything more than a broken doll, and I wasn’t even worth of a new coat. I would have been fine with it if she hadn’t gotten such nice things for everyone else, or if everyone else had bothered to get me something nice (other relatives often brought me money, which I never got to spend, or nothing at all, despite the lovely gifts she got for their kids.) I still don’t feel worthy, and that’s why Christmas makes me sad.
Sounds like you have wounds only Jesus can heal. Thank you for sharing. I will pray for you.