Need cheering, plz...

[charliesmum]

It's been gloomy weather all week, I'm still stressed about everything I've been stressed about, and it is starting to get to me again.

I need stories.

Tell me one of your favorite seasonal memories - doesn't have to be Christmas, could be New Year's eve, or anything. Give me something sappy and sentimental, or funny, or bittersweet, even.

As for me, for some reason I woke up this morning thinking of a boy I knew called Andy Winston, who was killed in a car accident the summer before my junior year.

His parents were friends with my parents, and his little sister was friends with my little sister. Andy was a year older than me, and when we were young, we would play together. I was the only non-related female he wanted at his Bar-Mitzvah, and he was the first boy I thought I'd have a crush on. We grew apart as we got older, and our paths literally never crossed in high school, but he's someone who was a part of the pattern of my childhood, and I missed him terribly when he was gone.

Every Christmas his family would come to our house to help decorate our tree. They'd have dinner with us, and then we'd decorate the tree. After the tree was finished, we would run through the house turning off every single light so the only illummination was the tree, and then we'd lay down on the floor and watch the the colored lights reflecting patterns on the ceiling.

Whenever I think of him, it's always the Christmas memory of us lying under the tree, looking at the patterns of the lights through the branches, and it always makes me smile.

Comments

[silverhill.livejournal.com]

I don't know how much someone outside my family will appreciate this, but here goes:

The most beloved Christmas tradition in my family is bad gifts. Not just any bad gifts. Specific bad gifts that are regifted every year. It's hard to say how this tradition got started, but I think it began with the rock.

The rock in question was found in the pocket of a new pair of jeans (back when jeans were "stone washed"). I think I had given it to my sister as a joke when I found it while we were trying on jeans in the dressing room. On my birthday, I received a small jewelry box. I thought my sister had gotten me earrings or a necklace, but it was just the rock in a jewelry box. Pretty funny.

I think I might have given the rock back to her at Christmas. Who knows? But eventually, the rock was given only at Christmas time. And one of us gave it to our mom, so the tradition spread out of just the pair of us. Now anyone in our family could receive the rock for Christmas.

The rules of the "game" are simple: Whoever receives the bad gift is entitled to give it to a new recipient the next year. It has now also become a challenge to disguise the bad gifts in such a way (often concealed within other presents/boxes) that the recipient is tricked into opening it and thus receiving the bad gift.

We all pretend we don't want the bad gifts, but of course, we do. Because then we get the delight of giving them next year! The downside, though, is when you think you're receiving an actual present and it turns out to be one of the gag gifts.

The gifts are:
1) The rock.
2) A "bayberry" votive candle that was originally a gift to my youngest sister from her piano teacher. It is grayish green and ugly.
3) A quilted Santa made of red, yellow and green calico with button eyes. Yes it is as bizarre as it sounds. It was a Christmas decoration once upon a time. Now it's a gag gift.
4) An ugly necklace and earrings set that was originally a gift to my sister from one of my aunts. (Even my dad and brother are fair game to receive these.)
5) A coupon for Ore-Ida Crinkle Cut French Fries. This gift is exclusive to my brother and my youngest sister. They pass it only between themselves. No one knows why.

Those are the official gifts (unless I'm forgetting one). No new gifts can be added. My brother and I tried one year to mixed results, but they never became part of the official gift rotation.

[crossbow1.livejournal.com]

Funny one:

My roommate had never been to a Catholic mass so I took her to Xmas mass at my parents' church, where I grew up. First this lady in a red suit got up and said Merry Christmas," and the whole congregation said "Merry Christmas, sister," so I knew she was a nun. Nuns don't have a dress code anymore, but they usually don't wear red business suits. Then she gave a short speech welcoming everyone. I said "Who's that?" My mom says, "The pastor." Um... okay.

I grew up in this parish and I knew they were pretty liberal because it was us who got the Vatican to allow girls to be alter servers. (Turned out all you had to do was ask. The pope was like, "sure whatever.") But I didn't think even they would let a woman actually run the parish.

Anyway, then the priest got up to say his homily. First he told a short-yet-meandering baseball story. Then he told that joke where Jesus beats Satan at word processing because "Jesus saves." Then, while everyone was waiting for the real homily, he sat down.

So, you know the one thing that my roommate thought was weird? She was shocked when one of the deacons (that parish is big on permanent deacons took the silver-bound bible and carried over his head around the alter before setting it on the podium. Well, they always did that as far as I knew. My mom said it's an Eastern Orthodox thing that they do because that bible was a gift from some visiting Eastern Orthodox priest. With all the weirdness that goes on in that church, the one thing she picked up on as being weird was the one thing that I thought was perfectly normal.

[lapetiteabeille.livejournal.com]

Every Christmas Eve, my family (the four kids and parents) meet up with some old neighbors for dinner at Ruth's Chris. It's the one night each year where we're really spoiled, and one of my favorite restaurants, because we go to one right next to Reagan National Airport in DC, and you can watch planes take off, which is more fun than you'd imagine!

Two years ago, one of our ex-neighbors became very sick on Christmas Eve, and asked to cancel. Our family didn't want to change tradition and go without them, so we cancelled the reservation. At around 7 o'clock, we were all sitting around the house in our nice clothes, wondering what to do, when my brother (who was VERY drunk from a Redskins game he had attended earlier in the day) stood up and declared that he wanted tortillas.

So we went to Don Pablos, of course, all dressed up, at 8pm on Christmas Eve, and ate lots of delicious Mexican food and drank beer, and it was a fantastic, bizarre, Christmas Eve. I have a picture of my little sister wearing a sombrero with Christmas lights on it :).

[robinchristine.livejournal.com]

My favorite memory is of New Years, back when I was 12 or 13. We used to gather at my granddad's pond and shoot off fireworks with music blaring, aunts and uncles and cousins. :) It was crowded and noisy and bright and I LOVED IT.

But that year everyone was going in separate directions. Had to be here, or go there and we weren't getting together. I was SO disappointed. SO glum. I had a friend over, and she fell asleep before 10, so I was all alone watching the New Years special with Dick Clark, because my parents were asleep, too. LOL I was on the verge of tears.

Then, about 15 minutes till midnight, someone knocked on the door. My friend didn't wake up at all. I was so freaked I woke mom up and made her answer the door. It was my favorite uncle with a truck full of fireworks! He couldn't stand to see me so down, and he had bought fireworks for us to shoot off! Mom went back to bed, my friend was blissfully unaware on the couch, and we went into the front yard and shot off fireworks for an hour and a half! That was the best surprise ever. :)

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

A few years ago, we got flooded out. Seriously flooded out. The trailer we were living in at the time got knocked free of its tiedowns when a car floated downstream and hit us, and trailer and five people on the roof floated downstream some more and lodged in a treeline about 200 feet away. Me, my husband, our roommate, and the kids were almost-six and almost-two.

We lost just about every thing but our lives. We lived in a hotel until we managed to rent a house just before Thanksgiving. We just about got back on our feet in time for Christmas.

What do you get for two kids who lost all their toys?

Well, what we got was a bunch of Winnie the Pooh beanie babies. Some were in Halloween costumes as Tigger. And we got a couple of Lego sets, and a Mega Block set.

We sent the kids to bed, and then spent a couple of hours setting things up. No wrapping paper, no bows, no boxes. Pooh and Piglet and Tigger stormed a chair, climbed Mount Upholstery, made friends with a robot, looked into a castle.

The next morning, Christmas morning, we were woken by giggling. "Momma, Poohbear!" Carrie claimed one of the Tiggers and carried it around for years afterwards. It was the best Christmas we've had yet, despite no tree and few presents and no family to visit or have visit.

I will remember losing everything for the rest of my life. I will remember my son building a robot for Piglet to fly, and offering to take my daughter's Tigger for a ride, for longer.

[rayvyn2k.livejournal.com]

My favorite Christmas tradition (that I miss mightily) is the open house my sister has every year.

Now this came about because my parents used to host Christmas dinner for the entire family every year when we were growing up (up to 30 people). After my parents divorced and we kids left home, that did not happen any longer.

So, my sister started having us over on Christmas morning. She would make various sweet bread, cookies, fried bread dough and other goodies for breakfast. Everyone goes over there (family and friends) and the big gift exchange happens. It is chaotic and fun and I miss it so much.

Once I have my own house, I'm going to start that tradition here in Middle Tennessee.