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Author
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Topic: Favorite Christmas Memories?
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LEXX
Knowflake Posts: 9756
From: Still out looking for Schrodinger's cat.......& LEXIGRAMMING.♥.. is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 05, 2008 02:07 PM
  
Tell us your happiest, or strangest, or most memorable and so forth!
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Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain. IP: Logged |
sunshine_lion
unregistered
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posted December 05, 2008 02:15 PM
I will probobly be crucified for this, but I always thought the candle light service at my grandmothers church was so special at midnight christmas eve. I loved the candle lit church and singing carols and getting to hold a candle as a child, which was a no-no. It is one of my favorite memories.as I grew older ...now my favorite part of christmas and what really makes my holiday is picking a needy family and giving thier children an unexpected christmas. It makes EVERYTHING worth it. I used to donate and do toy drives for the shelters, but now I just pick a local family that maybe had a tough year and buy toys and warm things to wear and to be honest, it MAKES my christmas. It makes me happy and blessed. The family Ipicked this year doesn't have a clue and my love told me he would match my money for those kids! That makes me so happy, and know that I am truly blessed. (great thread LEXX) IP: Logged |
sunshine_lion
unregistered
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posted December 05, 2008 02:19 PM
you can't start a thread like this and not give yours lexx!what is your favorite memory or christmas tradition? IP: Logged |
LEXX
Knowflake Posts: 9756
From: Still out looking for Schrodinger's cat.......& LEXIGRAMMING.♥.. is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 05, 2008 03:08 PM
Oh I will share mine too! 
Just tired of one finger typing at the moment
and my eyes need a break.
I will definitely return!
I can relate to your lovely  memories having done much the same.
Will tell more later!
Love
Lexx------------------
Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain. IP: Logged |
Kick It
unregistered
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posted December 05, 2008 05:08 PM
Happiest: Had my first kiss on a Christmas day way in the past.
Strangest: All the others
Memorable: If doing buck all is memorable, all of them.IP: Logged |
bunnies
Knowflake Posts: 478
From: u.k
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 05, 2008 06:15 PM
I remember being seven. My mother cleaned the hall of the local church on Xmas Eve.
It was a freezing cold day and she sat me on the stage in the hall with my feet dangling over the edge because there was some sort of heating there.
And while she worked she sang "I'm Dreaming of a White Xmas" to me.
And the Sunday school kids had made Xmas candles and they were all along the window ledges.
I have never forgotten that.
I have never felt more Christmassy than I did that day.IP: Logged |
LEXX
Knowflake Posts: 9756
From: Still out looking for Schrodinger's cat.......& LEXIGRAMMING.♥.. is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 06, 2008 12:22 AM
When I was in my early teens I hated having to share a 10x12 bedroom with 5 other sisters, me making it 6, and 2 twin beds.
No privacy or peace for a teenager.
However winter and especially the Christmas season had some wonderful changes in my living arrangements.
The house was built in 1824 and was formerly an orphanage and then an insane asylum.
It had a small dark cellar with no electricity down there...just lanterns.
The floors were packed dirt and coal and cobblestone. The walls were constructed of 1/4 to 1/2 ton stone slabs. It had a very medieval dungeon look about it. To add to the ambiance was an enormous antique cast iron and bronze coal/wood furnace. I mean huge! Like 3 grown people could fit in it nearly standing! It was said they did in fact hide runaway slaves there on the underground railroad during the Civil War.
OK...back to my nice memory.....
This is what the big old furnace looked like:
It was such a joy to be the "fire keeper" on cold winter nights in our uninsulated old house. I would put burlap bags and old army blankets on the coal pile and get all comfy in front of the roaring fire and watch it.
It was easier just to sleep down there rather than crawl out of bed every hour to re-stoke the fire. And oh how I enjoyed the privacy! During the Christmas season my stepmother and 9 other younger siblings would bake cookies and dumplings and pies for days from fruit from our trees and vines.
And putting up the live tree singing whilst they all decorated it.
The happy sounds and lovely smells of baking goodies would return to me by way of cold air returns to the furnace. My father would bring down hot mulled cider or homemade eggnog to me. And cookies too! A special treat was cedar, balsam, and camphor to toss on the fire once the 3x1 foot logs burned hot and amber sunset like in the huge fireplace like grates and grill bars of the old furnace. It was like a giant iron jack-o-lantern when all the grate "windows" were lit each with a big log or cubit foot of coal.
I'd roast marshmallows...a treat only me as fire keeper got! It was not a luxury room that cellar...but it was private and the warmest place in the house! Jack frost painted gorgeous fern like patterns of ice on the only window...which was so very beautiful to see on a snowy full moon lit night! These may sound like weird happy memories but for me they were some of the best! One of my presents was a small crystal radio...something you younger folks may have to Google. And another Eskimo bootie shoes to keep my feet warm down there.
I cried when they sold "my friend" the old furnace. 
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Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain.
IP: Logged |
CrimsonChyld
unregistered
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posted December 06, 2008 12:57 AM
LEXX - What a great memory  Going with the Happy, Strangest & Memorable thing.. here goes.. Keeping in mind when I was little we were extremely poor so my parents couldn't buy us very much for xmas and such.. I only have one sibling, an older sister. Happiest - When I was about 5 we woke up, woke our parents up and ran to the tree.
I remember getting a couple of small, cheap toys and while I was grateful, I was a bit disapointed. Then mom opened the front door and walked in with a bike. I have a photographic memory and can remember it very clearly. It was pink with little silver flags on the handle bars and a white basket on the front. I was soooo excited! Strangest - It was xmas eve (can't remember when). I was too excited to sleep. I was laying in bed and heard something outside my door, so I crept to the door and opened it just a crack...enough to see my father walking down the hall carrying xmas gifts...naked. <shudders> Memorable - I was about 27 and it was my first xmas in my new home which was literally feet from a train track. There was a lot of snow on the ground and it was snowing heavily. I was alone, the kids were sleeping, the lights were out except for the lights on the tree dancing on the ceiling. I heard a train horn outside so I walked onto the back porch and watched it come. It was so eeiry looking. The big light on the front of the train beaming thru the heavy falling snow along with the snow that was kicking up on the tracks as it came closer. It was like a beautiful winter scene unfolding in front of me...just for me. And I felt so calm and just so peaceful. One of my favorite memories. ------------------
"Secrets and lies can sleep from the walls of Rome if we sit hard enough on them. They are undeniably destined to come out. Tomorrow, the next day or a hundred years from now!" IP: Logged |
bunnies
Knowflake Posts: 478
From: u.k
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 06, 2008 04:16 AM
I love that train memory Crimson.
There's something mystical about trains.
I lived once in a house that overlooked a train track and I used to look out the window at night and watch the lit up carriages full of people going about their lives.
Each person with their own little dramas and pleasures unbeknownst to me.That must have been like a scene out of Polar Express (the nice bit)
Before it turned into a horrid film where Father Christmas looked like some Stalinist guard presiding over a gulag. Sorry but my Father Xmas doesn't look anything like that!
IP: Logged |
koiflower
Knowflake Posts: 1984
From: Australia
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 07, 2008 05:47 AM
1978 - snowflakes fell from the sky. Snowflakes are not meant to fall in Summer in the Southern Hemisphere!IP: Logged |
BlueTopaz124
Knowflake Posts: 274
From: Portland, OR, USA
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 07, 2008 10:45 PM
Great thread LEXX!In the house I grew up in had a front entry hall with a white marble floor and huge glass windows facing the street. Our christmas tree would go in front of the window and I loved to sit with all the lights off in the living room and just sit there, enjoying the lights on the tree. The candles would be burning and fire in the fireplace. I don't know...for some reason it was so peaceful and magical to do every year. I miss those years. IP: Logged |
LEXX
Knowflake Posts: 9756
From: Still out looking for Schrodinger's cat.......& LEXIGRAMMING.♥.. is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 07, 2008 11:13 PM
 Thanks Everyone! 
Keep posting these great memories! Its not Christmas yet!  ------------------
Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain. IP: Logged |
CrimsonChyld
unregistered
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posted December 08, 2008 01:23 AM
Thanks for this cool thread LEXX!Yes bunnies, I love this memory. Whenever I tell people about it they ask why I didn't grab a camera. I thought about it but didn't want to miss one second. I didn't think anyone could appreciate it half as much as I did. And it was my memory.. like it was made just for me... too beautiful for words. I'm a sap like that lol.
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"Secrets and lies can sleep from the walls of Rome if we sit hard enough on them. They are undeniably destined to come out. Tomorrow, the next day or a hundred years from now!" IP: Logged |
LEXX
Knowflake Posts: 9756
From: Still out looking for Schrodinger's cat.......& LEXIGRAMMING.♥.. is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 08, 2008 01:34 AM
CrimsonChyld
Thank you!
I love trains and snow images.
I love the scene you described so beautifully!
I have a few of those wonderful memories too having lived near tracks most of my life to date. Not as close as out my window, but within a quick walking distance.
I shall post more of my memories soon.
Hugs!
Lexx------------------
Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain. IP: Logged |
LEXX
Knowflake Posts: 9756
From: Still out looking for Schrodinger's cat.......& LEXIGRAMMING.♥.. is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 08, 2008 01:38 AM
I still have comments to post about all your wonderful memories, but must be off to bed now.
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Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain. IP: Logged |
26taurus
unregistered
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posted December 08, 2008 02:24 AM
The vacation we got from school and the little things in my stocking. Never been into Christmas much.IP: Logged |
bunnies
Knowflake Posts: 478
From: u.k
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 08, 2008 03:05 AM
Blue Topaz! You appear to have been living in my house.
O.K, so it was the one I fantasised about as a child (big entrance hall,big glass windows, lit so that everyone outside wanted to come in and sit in your house for a wee while)
Kindly vacate it at once!I love to recreate that feeling now in my own houses. You know when you are going along and you get a glimpse of someones room, where the lights are on and it looks so cosy you feel like knocking and saying
"Hello, would you have any objection to me coming in for a few moments and just sitting in there?
You would?
oh ok......bunnies with her nose pressed up against the window pane.... Does anyone know the story of "The Little Match Girl" One Xmas they read it at school and my poor mother had to come and collect me because I wept so hard for that poor little girl lying in the snow with all the matches beside her........Oh no!.....I'm off again........  IP: Logged |
jehovah81
unregistered
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posted December 08, 2008 06:46 AM
Most memoriable Xmas would have 2b 95 when my fathers parents were still alive and my comedian uncle we watch the video often when we visit my aunty cos she has the recording. Miss em heaps.
IP: Logged |
bunnies
Knowflake Posts: 478
From: u.k
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 08, 2008 06:14 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUSzQBaWq0Q The Little Match Girl. Waaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!! IP: Logged |
vivid_child
Newflake Posts: 14
From:
Registered: May 2009
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posted December 08, 2008 06:29 PM
This year has potential to be the strangest Christmas. It will be the first without my grandmother who I was very close to and the first in which my parents are not together. Although these circumstances were the same last year I was in hospital (which was strange in itself!) so it didn't really affect me in the way it will being in my hometown.Really nice memories in this thread ------------------
"The pioneers of a warless world are the youth who refuse military service." -Albert Einstein IP: Logged |
LEXX
Knowflake Posts: 9756
From: Still out looking for Schrodinger's cat.......& LEXIGRAMMING.♥.. is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 08, 2008 07:17 PM
The Little Match Girl story always makes me weep. OK another of mine.
When my parents were getting divorced, my mother kidnapped us and took us to the Florida border. My father found us a week before Christmas (we were "missing" for several months.) This was before he remarried...so there was only myself and 2 sisters and 2 brothers all younger than me..myself being just 10 years old.
Well my dad had just lost his brother and grandfather too and was in a very deep depression. Christmas was not on his mind.
Well Christmas Eve came and no sign he was going to do anything Christmas wise. So I had the Amish lady I knew come watch my brothers and sisters and she baked cookies and made a big pot of holiday stew. She told me to take a horse and go into her woods and get a tree. So I bundled up, putting bread bags on my feet and duct taping my tennis shoes, and socks on for gloves, and saddled up the Clydesdale and went and dug up and balled a 4 foot pine tree and dragged it home.
Well my mother in a mania had thrown out the Christmas ornaments and lights...so I had to improvise.
I got into my dad's fishing tackle box and hung all the sparkling and glittering and colorful fishing lures on the tree. We hung our costume jewelry on it and small toys we each had on it too and little stuffed animals. Then we put hooks in apples and oranges and hung them too.
Popcorn strings went on it and thin strips of tin foil and foil balls. We made paper chains from comic pages and stars from more tin foil and hung them across the doors and ceiling.
Well dad came home from work and took one look and broke down crying. I have never gotten hugged so hard by him ever before or since. He had the Amish friend stay so I could get some rest he said because he was going to need my help later. He got back in his car to drive some 110 miles round trip away to find a Giant Tiger...a variety store(that long ago went out of business) that stayed open late on Christmas Eve. In those days stores usually closed by 5PM and were closed on Christmas Eve. When he came home, the kids were fast asleep and he took the Amish Lady home and she gave him a big crock of home churned butter, fresh smokehouse bacon, and a basket of fresh just laid brown eggs for our Christmas day breakfast.
My dad and I went in his room and began wrapping all the presents he had gone out and bought. It was so wonderful being with him like that and hearing his childhood Christmas stories, some very very sad, (like being 5 years old and waking up to find dorm mates dead in the TB sanitorium he was at for 5 years  )....but other stories were funny and or lovely.
So we played Santa together and he added real lights to the Christmas tree and then went out with his boots and made tracks in the snow and used a broomstick with a hoof shaped block to make reindeer tracks too!
I went to bed happy!
I awoke to excited screams of joy and the smell of dad cooking breakfast of fresh eggs, bacon, churned real butter and pancakes!
He had put candy canes and goodies on the tree and hung stockings too whilst I was asleep and had eaten the plate of cookies and the glass of eggnog left for Santa Claus.
He never neglected Christmas after that no matter what!
I gave him and my brothers and sisters gloves and scarves I had knitted myself.
I got a new pair of shoes and cool boots with hinged metal clasps just like my dad's and my very own tackle box and art supplies!
It was one of my happiest Christmases! ------------------
Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain. IP: Logged |
BlueTopaz124
Knowflake Posts: 274
From: Portland, OR, USA
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 09, 2008 10:56 PM
Lol Bunnies...that was my house growing up...it was something about that magical feeling of enjoying it all on my own.The Little Match Girl always made me cry too...and that song about the Red Shoes too. IP: Logged |
LEXX
Knowflake Posts: 9756
From: Still out looking for Schrodinger's cat.......& LEXIGRAMMING.♥.. is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 17, 2009 04:59 PM
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Everyone is a teacher...
Everyone is a student...
Learning is eternal.
}><}}(*> IP: Logged |
starkiss1
Knowflake Posts: 1597
From:
Registered: Jul 2009
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posted December 22, 2009 08:34 AM
LEXX, BRAVO, loved it,sounds like Hans Cristian !!!IP: Logged |
LEXX
Knowflake Posts: 9756
From: Still out looking for Schrodinger's cat.......& LEXIGRAMMING.♥.. is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted December 22, 2009 09:28 AM
Thanks!
A Unexpected Christmas Season Joy! 1993
I think kids are funny!
One day My washing machine broke down and I didn't have my usual dark wardrobe to wear to the store etc. Well at home I wear red etc. At that time I was VERY fat. Steroids and an accident.....well I put on my RED sweats and a RED stocking cap that had on it in big WHITE letters, "I believe in elves!". Well the next thing I know is that I hear these utterly delighted screams! (it was December 22), and these two little kids were just all twitterpated..."ARE YOU MRS. SANTA CLAUS!!!!????? I said, "do you think I am?" Of course the parents came over to see what had happened. They apologized and I said no problem. The kids were still of the mind that was who they thought I was. So I went and bought two little Xmas bears each holding a Candy Cane, and waited outside. When they came out, I asked the parents if I could give the children the gifts. They looked stunned and without a word shook their heads..YES. So I got down on my knees and beckoned to the kids. I whispered in each of their ears that I'm just a fat lady who believes in the spirit of Xmas, and to be good kids,and have a Merry Christmas! As they both hugged me and walked away, I heard the older one say to her parents, that was a nice fat lady. Then the younger one said, I think she was an angel! That was soooo weird! And wonderful! I had been feeling like a giant red dressed monster! Hobbling about dressed like that with my big wooden cane. I was happy for the rest of the day! PS. I think my wire rimmed eyeglasses probably added to the effect.
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Everyone is a teacher...
Everyone is a student...
Learning is eternal.
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