One Christmas, while my brother and I were still in elementary school, we discovered a couple of our hidden Christmas presents. Needless to say, we were thrilled at the discovery. Unfortunately, my brother was a little too excited about the discovery. I was old enough to know that we needed to keep this discovery under wraps. I knew that if mom and dad found out we had been snooping, it could spell trouble. When my dad walked through the door, My brother was right there talking away, ignoring the fact that my eyeballs were burning holes through his head and that I was frantically making shut up motions with my arms. He walked right up to my dad and said, "Sissy and I know what we want for Christmas, and then proceeded to describe, in detail, the toys we had discovered. My dad, being a smart man, figured out halfway through my brothers speech, that we had found our gifts. Sigh.....
Then there was the Christmas when I was a teenager where it snowed so much it buried cars and shut down the whole city. Unfortunately my Dad and a friend of ours (who was staying at our house for Christmas ) had procrastinated on purchasing their wives Christmas gifts. Since the roads were not drivable, they set out to walk over to the local grocery store which was about four blocks away. The blizzard was still taking place, and when they returned, with presents in tow, they were so covered and caked with snow that they were unrecognizable.
Jeff and I's first Christmas as a married couple will always stand out. We were two college kids with no money. I was determined to have my fireplace mantel in our little apartment decorated. Unfortunately, I didn't have money to spare to purchase decorations. So, I made Jeff stand guard while I went out to the evergreens growing behind our apartment and trimmed off some branches to decorate the mantel with. Our presents to each other that year were a pair of big, warm socks. You see, our apartment was all electric heat. The whole backside of our little one bedroom was all windows. And, it was the coldest winter on record for Ft. Collins. Our first heating bill was more than our rent. So..... we turned the heat down and wore lots of layers. The socks were all we could afford, and they were also a necessity.
There was Keagan's first Christmas, where due to the fact that he was the first grandchild on both sides of the family, he had an embarrassing amount of gifts to open. In fact, he had to stop opening presents and take a nap, then resume his playing with the paper and boxes ;).
I remember the year that Keagan wanted to leave scrambled eggs out for Santa, so we did. I loved the years of creating Santa "snow prints" in the house using Jeff old workbooks and powdered sugar. The many years of putting out Reindeer food (chex mix). The Christmas mornings spent just trying to get all the twist ties and safety bindings off of toys so that he could play with them.
I remember the careful way my grandma Clark always unwrapped her presents. For her, just the fact that she had presents to unwrap remained magical. She always carefully folded the paper after removing it from the present. It always reminded me how amazing every gift was, no matter the cost.
I remember my dad doing Christmas Eve family communions at the church, where the congregation came individually as families to have communion together. We would always be the last family to go and partake, then we would gather at our house for a dinner of Ham Delights and games.
Ahhhhh... wonderful memories. And this Christmas will join those as a wonderful time of celebration and fellowship.
These memories always remind me of how good life is. How thankful I am for God's great gift of his son. Hope you enjoyed this small trip down memory lane. Merry Christmas!
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