Christmas Traditions

My wife started that for our kids some years ago.  We now have a young couple who hang out at our house so they have been included the last couple of years. 

my wife tries to match PJ’s to current interests every year.

I grew up in a very middle-class house with 2 older brothers and didn't know it until years later that we were the only Catholic family in an entirely Jewish neighborhood. I always used to ask my parents how come we didn't have one of those little Passover decorations on our door like all my friends.

So, often, we were the only house that would have Christmas lights and I used to be fascinated watching my father put them up. To this day I feel obligated to put up Christmas lights every year. It's a big damned house and all but one of my kids have moved out, but I still need to put up lights. I've spent as much as 3 entire days putting up Christmas lights in the past. It's so much work that I didn't do it last year and things just didn't seem the same to me or even the kids.

God only knows how much money I've spent on Christmas lights over the years and how often these "guaranteed for 10 years" lights last 2 years. And I'm never satisfied. I can always find more obscure places to put lights such that from a distance the place looks like Tokyo during a B-29 incendiary raid.

........And then the traditional arguments with my wife every fornicating year about my blowing too much money on Christmas gifts for the kids. She does have a valid point, but I always think of my parents and how excited I used to be as a little kid opening presents Christmas morning. So now I go Christmas shopping by myself and don't tell her what I'm doing. Around January 5th of each year she opens the mail and blows up at me all over again.

You're right about the Christmas ornaments. We make a big deal out of it every year and we've been collecting Christmas ornaments since we were first married. We have some that are up to 40 years old. Every time we go someplace we buy a Christmas ornament as a memory and now have some from all over. They make fantastic Christmas ornaments in communist China, by the way. I guess fervent political ideology is one thing, but profit is another. It's a great Christmas tree.

[From Dave: "Ask God to show you a need," she told me. "Doesn't matter how big or small, but find that need and fill it." That seemed simple enough, but she then added "and don't let anyone other than you and God know it was you who filled it."]

Your mother was saintly, Dave. And she was right. The office every year finds a few families that don't have anything for their kids for Christmas and asks them for Christmas lists for the kids. A collection is taken up and it always comes up pretty well short. The last few years I've just told one of the nurses to buy whatever the hell is on the list and send the remaining bill to me. I never know where the gifts are going or how many, but it's unquestionably the best money I spend all Christmas.........And my wife doesn't dare critique that expense...........................Luca

Did you not have Christmas until your teens..... 

I too was a teenaged kid in Southern California but I was also a kid and before that a infant in Southern California!

I grew up in an upper middle class lifestyle and I really had the best of both worlds in being my mothers side was all about the gifts, festivities, events, commercial side of the holiday, my fathers side being from war torn Austria were all about the tradition, the seasonal aspects and my grandmother being a florist for 50 years was all about the decorating and making sure everything here in So. Cal was winter like, Christmas like......, she recreated Tyrolian holidays! It was well into the 60's and my grandmother still insisted on real burning candles on the family tree! She has long passed but I still try and copy much of what she did, I still have many of her ornaments that she used going back to the 20's, 30's and 40's. 

My mothers side was all about big excessive gifts, they were west-siders (Beverly Hills) and drove big Cadillacs and the car was always packed with commercially wrapped gifts. My dads side still put out wooden shoes so that St. Nicholas could put out goodies. My grandparents retire to Laguna Woods and my dad every Christmas eve drove from CDM to grandmas and filled her shoes with goodies, mostly food, nuts and treats. 

Things that still stand out to me are running through the tree lots and playing in the flocking area. Don't tell me if you grew up in the 60's and 70's you never had a flocked tree! Another memory that always is revisited each year is the time I cornered my mom and made her tell me what I had figured..., there isn't really a Santa Claus! She was laying on the couch that day and she finally told me then warned me my Christmas was over if I told my younger sister. I felt so important and so much smarter than my dumb little sister who now was the only one fooled by the joke!


My father was the best Santa ever. He was the guy up all night putting together the train set, or building a house out of Lincoln Logs or setting up a Susie Homemaker cooking kitchen for my sister. I still have that Lionel Train set in it's original box in my closet among many other things I've kept.

Choo-Choo...!!

 

In Dutch legend, St. Nicholas is the Santa Claus equivalent who brings children gifts on Christmas. They put out their shoes on Christmas Eve and he would fill them with fruit, nuts and candy if they had been good, or lumps of coal if they had been bad. The Austrian version obviously didn't use wooden shoes (as they were much more socially advanced), and the gift giver was named Christkindl (or Christ child). It's the name Americans later converted to Kris Kringle.

To be fair, you should explain to MDDad that those are actually types of shoes. He thinks a "Yeezy" is what you call it when someone yanks up your underwear from behind. Understand with him that you're dealing with a guy who has 23 pairs of brogues, usually with spats. They go well with that bitchen' raccoon coat...............Luca

As if to prove my point....................What the hell is a Red Ball Jet? Us non-octogenarians need to look it up. From what I can find on the Internet it looks like they predated raccoon coats. Do you still do your Christmas shopping through a Sears catalog?.................................Luca