Share Your Favorite Christmas Memories

If you wish to - share with ATS your favorite Christmas memories.

Mine -

Christmas Eve 1996.
Santa Cruz Bolivia.
Hogar San Lorenzo (Catholic orphanage).
The adoption of our daughter.

On Christmas eve 1996, my husband and I flew to Santa Cruz Bolivia and were presented with our new baby daughter (9 months old). The orphanage was a crowded, dirty (by our standards) open air place with volunteers who were doing their best but who really couldn't keep up. When we went in to get our daughter, I saw all the children who wouldn't be adopted and it was heartbreaking. I wanted to take them all home but of course we couldn't. The director of the orphanage handed our daughter to me and I cried happy tears. I was both crying for the children who wouldn't be adopted and crying for joy at finally having my baby in my arms.

We went back to our motel (again, dirty by our standards and infested with strange red ants) and started dealing with our daughters health issues. They had handed her to us with double pneumonia, hepatitis, 'blow out' diarrhea, and a skin infection. Two days later we put her in the hospital (again dirty by our standards with scorpions and the neighborhood cat roaming the 'halls') and she spent a week there (miraculously surviving an overdose of sleeping meds that the nurse pumped into her by mistake). We spent a month in country finishing paperwork and getting her healthy enough to get back to the USA for medical care. Finally, at the end of January 1997, we were able to bring her back to the USA.

This was our Christmas in 1996 and my favorite Christmas memory that I picked to share with you.

I had a picture that I was going to share, but for some reason it's not downloading here so I can't.

My cyber Christmas Card those who wish to listen to a beautiful Christmas song .... Listen Here (made me cry).

The year i realized it was all a lie. It opened my mind to so many things.

The worst thing that ever happened to me was on Christmas. Oh, God. It was so horrible. It was Christmas Eve. I was 9 years old. Me and Mom were decorating the tree, waiting for Dad to come home from work. A couple hours went by. Dad wasn't home. So Mom called the office. No answer. Christmas Day came and went, and still nothing. So the police began a search. Four or five days went by. Neither one of us could eat or sleep. Everything was falling apart. It was snowing outside. The house was freezing, so I went to try to light up the fire. That's when I noticed the smell. The firemen came and broke through the chimney top. And me and Mom were expecting them to pull out a dead cat or a bird. And instead they pulled out my father. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit. He'd been climbing down the chimney... his arms loaded with presents. He was gonna surprise us. He slipped and broke his neck. He died instantly. And that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus.

I just had to!

a reply to: FlyersFan

Sitting on the kitchen table with my family because we had a giant rat in our kitchen and all of us were scared of it.
As screwed up as that sounds...we bonded...it was funny in the end but not at the time.

As a child, remembering to wait up all night to see Santa and his reindeer by getting comfy on the couch and gazing up at the night sky. I fell asleep - but did see them in my mind's eye and it was a glorious sight to see.

a reply to: FlyersFan

Eating over my grandmothers house and playing with my cousins...and eating at the kids table..

I was 9. I woke up like it was Christmas morning, because it was. I ran out of my bedroom rounded the doorway to the hall way sprinted down the hall and banged a right towards the stairs.

I was full of Christmas morning vigor as well as being half asleep. It was a good year to be an only child at my house. Parents went overboard that year and lined the presents up and down the stairs.

Next thing I remember is coming to in to in the ER with my my mom and dad smiling at me. I had broke my arm and ankle.

They had envisioned several moments of joy as their son had unwrapped presents as he made his way towards his new bike waiting for him by the tree out of sight. Not their son going ass over tit down a flight of stairs and off the terrace.

We had a mild winter that year and was finally able to ride my new bike during Feb vaca.

I wish I could sum it all up in one event, but that just isn't possible. It's all bits and pieces of many holidays. Like the one year when I was 5 or 6, and I was so excited that I got up really early and opened all the gifts, even those that weren't mine! Mom was furious, but dad just hugged me as he produced one as yet unopened gift for me, telling mom I was only little. It was a tea set that he had bought last minute and hastily wrapped without mom's knowledge.
Or the memories of holidays with just me and mom after dad was gone. How we tried to keep with traditions and rituals of Christmases past, and how every year when out holiday shopping I will always see things that trigger those memories and it all comes flooding back in a cascade of tears and smiles.
Or any given Christmas with my kids, as there is always new memories to be made, and old ones joked about from previous years. Such as one year my eldest daughter needed a bit of a reminder that some of her behavior was unsatisfactory. So besides that fact that she got a new doll house, a life size barbie, and a myriad of other things, I put a small piece of coal in her stocking, with a little warning from Santa. OH was she upset! Never mind the other things she got, she cried and cried over that piece of coal. not one of my better parenting decisions in hindsight, but today as she is 22, we can laugh about it.
As this holiday approaches, I look forward to new memories, and the hopes that next Christmas, I will finally get to spend with my grandbabies. It will be my first!

It's just great standing on Lego every 5 mins ! Pretending I like the inlaws ! Pretending I like the neighbours !
Beggars ! Homeless people ( you would think they had somewhere better to go !
Immigrants ! #e weather ! Whining kids ! #ty presents ! Wrapping paper everywhere ! Drawing pins ! Baubles ! Flashing lights ! Crap food ! Waiting for taxis ! And I worked all year to pay for all that # !

Double face palm ! Grrrrrr

Sitting by the fire, with my young son and his mother - that was back in the 40s.

Moving into a house as a child which had some heating granted it was an old coal fire but I remember on xmas eve me mam dragged down a mattress so we could all sleep in front of a roaring fire...even If we did use old wellington boots as fuel .
Then waking up and Father Christmas had been and I got a He Man .