| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/8/2007 4:28:07 PM | Christmases past are almost like our own unique form of family history. We all can look back at "Do you remember the year when..." and recall most of the events that took place not only that Christmas Day but throughout the entire year. Our traditions are usually based on our memories & recollections of those special holiday happenings that took place as we grew up. I continued with some of those same family traditions, as well as developed a few of my own with my kids. One of those new traditions I started the year of my first-born's Christmas and have followed faithfully thru each child's Christmas past up to present....in the form of one of their gifts being a Christmas ornament for the tree the next year. They go on before everything else & the kids always seem to enjoy reminising around the tree every year. It's been something they have shown friends, family, signifigant others, guests....related the stories to each year & the events. "See this little mouse in the matchbox? Thats the year that..." They can almost relate their entire life story standing around that tree...and they always check to make sure all of their ornaments are present & accounted for on that tree! 
Another tradition we all started when the family kept extending and growing was come up with something fun & entertaining to solve the dilemma of buying all those presents for everyone. Outside of our immediate family, we made a rule that we would only buy presents for the children of the extended families...the grownups could still give presents but it had to be something USED or HOMEMADE. After a couple years this became a big hit to see who could be the most clever at that part, sometimes making the next year payback for the past one. A beautifully wrapped huge box of packaging Pnuts labeled "Snow Man Poop"  gifted to a cousin one year landed me a 2 month old half eaten sausage biscuit the next year   and so on. After awhile U see some pretty interesting used & handmade things!! But its smiles and laughter and memories that we create that make the best pasts.... 
Its a time to share and celebrate life, friends, family...create smiles, laughter & memories | |
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| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/8/2007 4:32:53 PM | | Christmas's were not that great for me(dont remember when I was younger and was a foster child for so long), but I do miss the excitement of my sons face when he was younger. | |
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Tramp
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Joined: 2/8/2007
Msg: 28 | |
| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/8/2007 7:35:35 PM | | Aluria, make your own wish list...And get those presents sometime, the best to you. | |
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| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/8/2007 10:15:31 PM | | It has been many years since I have had a family to spend Christmas with. The good news is I just bought myself a cool toy for Christmas. | |
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| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/8/2007 11:24:28 PM |
It has been many years since I have had a family to spend Christmas with. The good news is I just bought myself a cool toy for Christmas.
...Miss M, if you lived closer you would most welome to spend Christmas day with my family....on the other hand, that would certainly give you cause to appreciate the quieter celebrations that you have become accustomed to.....BTW whats the "cool toy" or would you rather not say in a public forum haha
...maeflowers | |
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| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/8/2007 11:32:55 PM | Re: message #6
Smilin Bob.......I think I'm in LOVE!!!! 
I love the way that you put into words what so many people feel, but try to stifle in order to 'keep up with the Joneses'.
Darn it that you're on the other side of the country  -- I'd love to be part of those Christmas memories. 
Tex | |
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| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/9/2007 10:31:51 AM | | I thought I'd been creative, til I read about snowman poop... Thank you all for a positive string of postings, you "made my heart feel warm." My smart mother arranged a hike down the Grand Canyon on Christmas Eve the year our family broke up. Next year was opening gifts on the beach... couldn't do something that special every year, but it set a new tone of adventure that did a good job of easing the ache, starting a new tradition. | |
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| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/9/2007 10:49:41 AM | "if you lived closer you would most welome to spend Christmas day with my family"
That is so sweet. It is something that I am blessed with to be offered by many friends to join them on Christmas Day. I hope all can understand that sometimes being with other people's family can be lonelier than being by myself on Christmas Day. I go to other people celebrations if they don't fall on Christmas Day. Christmas Day, I enjoy being alone with my happy memories of the past. It has been a long enough time, that I can now look back without saddness. Took me awhile to get to the point, but I am so glad that I am there.
I will be having very good friends over for dinner on Christmas Eve. Funny, I just thought about the fact that my two best friends prefer to stay home by themselves Christmas Daytoo, and they both have big families. They cook a special meal of turkey for the multiple animal friends, and offer seeds, and goodies to the rest of the creature on their property.
I already bought myself a speaking translator of 12 languages. It also teaches any of the 12 languages verbally. I can't wait to receive it. It is around the size of a cell phone. How cool is that. Hopefully next year, I will be able to say Merry Christmas in several more languages than I can now.
I also spoil all the critter domestic or ferrial that are on my property Christmas Day. Relaxing in peace and quiet on Christmas Day can be a real treat that I look forward too. | |
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| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/9/2007 4:53:33 PM |
Christmases are not quite the same, oh I still enjoy the time with my family, but now the family unit has changed, some are gone, some have moved away.....and some have grown up. But, the memories will always remain the same.
OP's right. Christmas is not the same. Perhaps, because of money-hungry commercialism. Or, having to be politically correct nowadays?
I prefer my memories of a more GENTLE time..........hmmm.
Merry Christmas | |
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| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/10/2007 9:59:06 PM | I do feel that Christmas is for family and kids. Much of my family is deceased. Christmas is a time for friends. But it's hard when they all have families and kids. So I'm a 5th wheel. My life growing up was Ralphie Parker in A Christmas Story. I did get a BB gun when I was 12 or 13. I miss the smell of the Christmas tree. And the sleepless Christmas Eve waiting to open my presents. Though we didn't get much. I grew up poor. My birthday is in early February and I had my choice of either a Christmas present or a birthday gift. Being an impatient kid, I opted for Christmas. Then bubkis for birthday. Some years, we didn't get toys but socks, underwear and maybe nothing. We'd just have a "family gift" like a new garbage disposal or new water heater.
And YES, I know that Christmas is the celebration of Jesus' birth. But I'm not Christian, so I don't need to preached by one person who posted that condescending remark. I know what Christmas is.
I celebrate Hanukkah, so there!!! | |
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| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/10/2007 10:33:52 PM | ....I loved "A Christmas Story"...still do. It brings back memories of growing up in my family as well. Dinner was always on the table shortly after my dad arriving home and we all sat down and ate together as a family. Everything of importance was discussed between my mom and dad before any major decision were made. We all had our daily chores, my brothers did boy stuff and I being the only girl of course "did girl stuff." Saturdays was a big cleaning day at our house and I wasn't allowed out till every single thing was done....this was the case with my my friends and relatives as well. You had house rules and you followed them...you were taught to respect your parents, elders and figures of authority. That was the way things were and we never questioned it. It many ways I take comfort in that..I guess because things were different then....not perfect, just simpler.
...maeflowers | |
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| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/11/2007 6:25:44 AM | I was thinking how Christmas is not the same for me anymore. I used to be so into it.
I blame on my age and the age of my children, but I got to thinking, it's not only that. Since my mom has passed it's not the same any more.
There were so many things that we did together that I miss. Sure I miss the kids being little, I even miss the traditions I shared with hubby number one and number two. (Thing one and thing two, lol; but I digress).
I suppose if she were still here our traditions would have had to change anyway along with our changing families but....sigh. | |
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| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/11/2007 8:23:30 PM | | Time changes everything. I remember great Christmas's as a kid. Just loved it. Always went to church just up the street. Then as an adult it was fun to get together with the family. As a parent it was wonderful to do the things for my daughters. But my Dad died just before I turned 9, that Christmas my older brother,16, was in charge of putting up the lights and the tree. It was difficult and a frustration for him. I remember the tree going out the door with a merry"F**K Christmas" Then there was the Christmas when I came home from the Army and an old girl friend who I had broken up with just a few months before told me she was pregnant. Then there was the Christmas a few years later after I found out I was not the father. Since my girls were babies we always went to my parents house, but since Mom passed,2001 it has been weird. This year will be my first Christmas since separating , went shopping last night with the soon to be ex. Several times I had to walk away because I was on the verge of tears. Thinking about all the truly good memories that I have had, really. My girls are teens now, and my family is several states away. So it will be different again this year. And it time it will be good again, just different. | |
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| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/13/2007 9:57:29 AM | | When I was in early grade school, we lived on the south side of Chicago. I can still remember going shopping with my mother and looking at the decorated windows of Marshal Field's and the other stores. I could stand there forever, no matter how cold it was. | |
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| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/13/2007 11:21:17 AM | | friendlyldy==happy early birthday. | |
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| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/13/2007 12:21:49 PM | I had the best Christmas past. My parents always were very much in to the Christmas spirit, My mother always made a christmas village on top of my piano and it stayed lit up.We always had a real tree and everything was so beautiful. Every room had something in it to remind me of the meaning of Christmas. I was much younger than my sisters and brothers ,which I never see anymore .My oldest son is in California and i havent see him in 5 yrs now. My youngest son has a family of his own and does not come very often. I think girls tend to spend more time with their family and when sons marry they go with what ever their wives want to do.
I havent had a xmas tree in 4 yrs. My parents died and I have been alone. This year I am trying really hard because My ex step daughter and her daughter which is 9yrs old is living here. So this year I put up a real tree and I am trying very hard. I miss my sons and our christmases togather .
I have tried to find someone on POF who also loves christmas and what it stands for.I get really teary eyed thinking of all the lonely people that has no one to spend Christmas with and does nothing that day or the day before. I love life and Christmas should be special for family and or friends. I wish everyone on here to have a beautiful Christmas this year.
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| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/13/2007 12:27:50 PM | | Michiganman, I know the feeling and I am right there with you. Try your best, is all you can do and prayto make it thru it. I still have not got over my parents dying and christmas is not the same and never will be again.But we have to do the best we can if not for us ,but for any little ones we have in our life. Merry christmas sweetie.I do wish for you a good one. | |
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| Christmas Past
Posted: 12/13/2007 5:38:32 PM | Christmas is so steeped with traditions that as we grow older and our lives change the traditions we held so dear become a casualty of that change.
I remember...so long ago when I was first married my new husband and I were eager to establish our own traditions; borrowing from our favorite childhood ones and incorporating them into our new ones. It was a decision to create these traditions. A challenge and adventure.
When divorce, death, or other lifestyle changes are forced upon us Christmas becomes a reminder of the things and people we miss.
It is still an opportunity to begin new traditions, you just have to make it a decision to do so. Look at it as an opportunity, a challenge and adventure and embrace it as such. | |
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