Christmases past, present and future

 

Merry Christmas!  

This has been a busy December.  Here are a few thoughts of Christmases past, present and future.

This year, like every Christmas, my thoughts were often on my childhood Christmases. 

I remember going to the Christmas Eve program at the old white church every single year.  The Primary presented the nativity, we sang Christmas carols, and Santa was there.  We sat on Santa's lap and received an orange and a small brown bag with peanuts, hardtack candy, and maybe candy orange slices or a piece of chocolate (the kind that was sold in bulk).

I remember getting a tree from our dry farm every year, and my dad would work magic on the tree, filling in gaps with other tree branches until it looked perfect.  

I remember how excited I was waiting for Christmas morning!  

I remember Aunt Ruth piping her Christmas music all around the town through some kind of speaker system--I loved that music. (Not everyone did and she had to stop!) 

I remember that as I got older, I was the main one to decorate the tree every year.  

Maybe this is where my Christmas tree hobby/obsession developed!  Now that I am a mother myself, I know why my mother didn't help decorate the tree--mothers are too busy at Christmas and kids need to pitch in!

 Pictured above is a tree from 1971.  Isn't it a huge tree?!

I used these ornaments shown on this tree from my childhood on my "shiny" tree this year, along with what I would call "character ornaments," for a bit of a different look. Usually, I add so many decorative layers so that there are a lot of decorations on the tree.  It is very time consuming to decorate it.

Because I was sick, the kids needed to decorate the tree.  Having done marathon tree decorating in the past according to my rules of tree decorating, they balked.  So I compromised and simplified.  I thought it turned out really nice (above).  My husband couldn't understand why, after all these years of my trying to "perfect" the shiny tree with little tweaks every single year for about ten years, I would just totally throw out all that work this year, but one must be practical.  Note the train track that goes around the tree.  The train must be hiding behind the tree.  The train is B's contribution to the "look" of the tree.

One thing I remember about my childhood Christmases is that I did not receive as many gifts as my own children receive.  This is a "display" of things I got for Christmas in 1971.  (I would always arrange my presents into a "display." Then I would go to visit my friends to see what they received for Christmas and bring them to my house to see my "display.")

Although J thought there weren't as many presents here this year, I think the deal is, these teenagers want bigger ticket items.  I think everyone was happy with the things they gave and received, even Santa.

Because we had a big family Thanksgiving at our house, I couldn't put up the trees and decorate them as early as I would have liked because there would not have been room, so my German ornaments did not make it on the hall tree.  Once again, the layering of the tree takes the time it takes, and this tree was still undecorated on Wednesday so T was given the task of decorating this tree.  

These are ornaments and picks from my mother's house. Seeing these decorations was a nice reminder of my mother since she passed away nearly a year ago.

There were some fun things we did this year.  Every year, I've wanted to have time to make sugar cookies with the kids.  This has never happened until this year.  Being sick this year meant that I just had to cut back on things I usually do and it meant that I was home more (albeit it lying on the couch coughing and wheezing).

L decorated these cookies and did a great job!  Very festive decorating!

This year, I also made some gifts for the kids. I made three "taco blankets."  

(The taco blanket got its name when my mother made a throw blanket for my nephew J that was brown on one side and green on the other.  When he rolled up in it one time, someone said he looked like a taco, and the name stuck.)

These taco blankets were for T (green) and J (blue).

This is L's taco blanket.

I also crawled off my sick bed on Christmas Eve to sew pajama pants for T and J, who have just about loved their other pajama pants to death.  I had had the PJ's cut out for weeks but I had been either too sick or too busy or both to sew them up.  

(Back when I started my blog, I had thought that one key feature of the blog would be posting all of the many projects I would do.  Well, I don't get around to projects very often at all.  So this is a chance to tip my hat to that initial blog objective.)

We also had some festive "house decorating."

For YM/YW, L and J created this gingerbread house out of graham crackers, icing and candies.  T claimed to have been the inspector or overseer of the project, as his contribution to the house.  When the kids were small, we made one or more gingerbread houses every Christmas from kits (which is maybe why we never got around to the sugar cookies).  That tradition has phased out a bit as the children have grown older so it was fun to revisit that tradition this year.

 L did the house and yard--and did her usual artful job--while J concentrated on the outhouse.

This is J's masterpiece viewed from above (note the toilet paper roll).  The best touch was the half moon he chiseled into the outhouse door.  You can almost see it from this angle if you know it is there.

This is a picture of the house I made with the help of my little friend A.  

(Boy, I look tired and I probably was).

Because of illness, I missed the YW activity when the girls learned to make cute characters out of fondant.  This is L's cupcake and snowman.  Cute, huh? She really has a knack for molding little figures.

There were other people working on Christmas sewing projects around here.

L made this pillowcase for J.

L made this pillowcase for T.

J made these initial pillows for all of us.

J made this apron in FACS class at school and decided it would be just right for me, an apron lover!  

It is reversible (how nice is that?!) and I do love it. 

Well, that's a wrap!   And like my mother used to say, "There's nothing as 'over' as Christmas!"

A friend of mine once said that the average person has eighty Christmases.  My lifetime stockpile of eighty Christmases is lessened by one more Christmas, as Christmas 2010 has become one of my Christmases past!  Twenty-nine "Christmases future" to go--I intend to fully enjoy them all.