4 of my Favorite Christmas Pasts
Merry Christmas Eve!
I'm hoping y'all are enjoying time with your families, but since you're looking at this, you must be looking for somewhat of a reprieve. So instead of sitting around your family reflecting upon your own memories, here are four of my favorite Christmas Pasts:
- My brother LOVES Christmas. It's really quite cute actually. He's less adorable about it these days (probably because he's a legitimate adult), but he's a great person to spend Christmas with still. He'd geek out about just about everything. So this one Christmas, he's Tasmanian deviling through all of his presents. The paper is flying everywhere and in no time, everything is unwrapped. He then shrieks, "A pink camera!?!?!" He was so damn excited that he had accidentally opened a Christmas present that was supposed to go to my sister.
- My dad is a police officer, and if you work on holidays, you get paid a lot more than normal. When we were little, he would try not to work on Christmas, but then once we were "old enough," (or maybe he had to this year, I don't remember), he had a day-shift on Christmas. We had two options: wake up at 6am to open presents, or wait until 3:30pm to open them. Clearly we picked waking up at the ungodly hour of 5:45am to start Christmas. Once all presents are open by 6:30am and you have a whole day ahead of yourself, it's difficult to know where to go from there.
- I used to dream about working for NASA, pressing the button to make the space ship go up, to be specific. My mother bought me a telescope (oh holler, any space nerd's dream come true). I also hated the snow, but girl's gotta see the stars! So my poor mother would bundle up with me and carry it outside on many nights thereafter. We'd have little star readers out too, trying to figure out which stars we were looking at. It was the most educational and wonderful gift I've ever gotten.
- I was a very inquisitive child growing up, and the whole Santa story seemed difficult to understand. Unfortunately for my parents, I also was in some accelerated program, where we brainstormed how we could "catch" Santa. That seemed abrasive, so I went the route of a rigorous questionnaire instead. Just your typical questions like, "How many elves do you have," "What happens if it snows too much," "Why do your reindeer eat birdseed," etc. My poor father had to then sit there and write out a ton of answers to quantify this made-up story. And I got caught up on the fact that no good employer wouldn't know how many elves he had working for him (my teacher knew how many students she had, Santa should know too, especially since he also knows where everyone lives, if they're naught or nice AND what present to bring them!). It was at that point that I then basically cornered my sister, feeling betrayed by the lies, and said, "You wouldn't lie to me! Now tell me if Santa is real." She lied to me. No wonder kids these days grow up with trust issues.
What are some of your favorite Christmas memories? Share them in the comments :)