My Favorite Christmas Memory

All week, when I got a chance to even ruminate on Christmases past(usually it started with a wistful "I wish the holiday season could be more fun like it used to be, instead of this grueling insane mockery it has become for people who work in frame shops and other hectic retail places"), I thought back to certain memorable moments before and on Christmas.

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*The excitement of of having the tree just put up and then getting to drag out all the old familiar, yet magical seeming ornaments and then being allowed to help decorate the tree.

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*Laughing once again over the puzzling gift my aunt picked out for my parents, which looking back now, was kind of mean-spirited of them. Likely, she was doing the same thing every Christmas with my cousins and uncle when she opened her gift from us.

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*Singing "Silent Night" with real reverence on an Advent Sunday around four o'clock in the afternoon, it already dark in the December house, with just the candles lit.

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*Looking into "Santa's" eyes when he handed me my most asked for gift(a "Julia" Barbie doll...anyone remember the Diahan Carroll nurse character?)the year I was eight years old and realising, "so...it's been Daddy all along. I get it now--there isn't any Santa Claus."

My father always somehow managed to sneak out , dress up in a Santa suit and show up with our toys in a bag on Christmas Eve. I blogged about this last year in my "You Better Watch Out" entry.

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*There was one terrible Christmas Day, too, that I remember . The year my father made another one of his "scenes" with an argument over blaming my mother for something(I think it was all over a heated shaving cream dispenser he got as a gift that he couldn't get to work) and the entire day ruined because of his anger. In particular, I remember not even being able to swallow our dinner, with me trying to hold back from crying because it was so miserable. (my father had a habit of ruining holidays often, but this was the only time I remember him doing this at Christmas and it seemed the worst of all and to this day, I have never been able to let go of hating him for that, especially since he never ever told the family "sorry" afterwards)

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But the one most perfect Christmas moment that made us seem like a perfectly normal happy family was one Christmas Eve when I was a teenager--maybe the same age as my daughter is now?

We had been opening our gifts all night(usually we started around 9:00 )and were sitting looking over everything, the ripped paper and tissue strewn everywhere. We most likely had been busy at gift opening for a few hours(we stretched it out by doing it methodically, each family member taking a turn to pick a wrapped gift from under the tree and bringing it over to the person it was for, and waiting to choose another one until the gift was unwrapped). One of us kids must have looked out the window, or let a cat in or out, when we discovered a snow-covered landscape outside! The entire time we had been unwrapping presents inside behind the heavy window drapes, a lovely heavy wet snow had been falling .

I just remember all of us, including our parents, being so happy about this, and we all got into our coats and hats and went out into the snow. It might have been around midnight, and the neighborhood was so quiet(most of our neighbors were probably already in bed, ready for their own present unwrapping the next day) and it was just us out there, whooping and hollering.

The snow was perfect for making snowballs and that is what we did. But in the true Christmas spirit, our snowball "fight" was fun and light-hearted and I remember having the best time, and laughing under the moonlit Christmas Eve sky.

Even when it was happening, I can recall thinking to myself, how happy I was. I wonder if my sister and brother and parents remember this the same way. I am going to ask them (well, not my brother, because he won't be home for Christmas this year) this evening, when we are all over at my parent's house(and I hope my father doesn't get a heated shaving cream dispenser this year...).