Some of our favorite Christmas memories

Karen's memories

1. My brother, Chris, and I had to share a bed for a short while when we were real young. I remeber one Christmas Eve he woke me up and said, "Karen, do you hear that?" What I heard was a bell ringing. He told me that those must be the reindeer's bells. He was a good big brother trying to help me believe in Santa.

2. My mom's sweet potato casserole.

3. The year I realized Santa wasn't real. My brother, Chris, and my dad threw a carrot on the roof for Ruldolf. The next morning the carrot was still there.

4. The terrible Christmas plays I was in every year at church. Man am I a bad actor and singer. I remember being Mary one year and another year I dressed up like a sheep. I also remember that my dad made up the script for the Christmas play one year.

5. We used to go Christmas caroling every year with our church. One year I remember in particular. I answered the phone earlier that night and was supposed to relay a message to my parents to pick up a church member for caroling. However, I forgot. When we showed up at her house to sing Christmas carols to her, I was painfully reminded as she slammed the door in our faces. :) I can still picture myself saying, "Uh, Dad, I think I know why Lucille just did that."

6. Live Christmas trees. They just smell better! For a couple of years my dad picked up a tree that had roots and now those trees are in my parents front yard.


Shane's turn

"Mem-ries . . . like the corner of my mind" . . . I think maybe that's from Cats, but I know it from the movie Big. What a great movie. I used to watch it all the time. But, that has nothing to do with Christmas, does it?

5. Okay, this list counts down, but these really aren't in any specific order. I remember when I was younger my sister and I would wake up before dawn to open presents. I was used to getting up this early on weekend-like days, because Garfield was on at like 6:30 on Saturday mornings. Anyhow, it's funny how excited we used to get about the presents--like in that song "Christmas" on The Who's Tommy.

4. I don't have a lot of strong church-related Christmas memories. That's somehow sad and not right, but it is what it is. The one I do have happened a couple of years ago. It was the first time Living Stones had ever done a Christmas musical/pageant thing, and I was the sound man. There were all kinds of cues, and I had to practice with the group a few times to get it all down and everything. The thing was even advertised in the paper for a Sunday evening service, which we didn't normally do at Stones. So, Sunday evening rolls around, and where am I? I'm in the emergency room with my father, who for some reason couldn't swallow his food all the way. It was crazy! He was not really choking--the food was caught down at the bottom of his esophagus. He was hacking and wretching for almost 2 hours before my sister and I finally convinced him to go to the hospital. It cleared up about 5 minutes after we got there on its own. Fun times. At least Dad finally went and got the issue checked out (turns out it wasn't the first time it had happened! Dad hates going to the doctor--I do, too).

3. Passing out presents at my Grandma Corning's house. Somehow this always fell to one of the kids to do, and somehow it became my job sometime during junior high. However, once my cousin Peter was old enough, I nominated him, and he's been stuck doing it ever since. It doesn't seem like a big deal, except when you're a shallow, selfish little junior high kid, you want to open YOUR presents, not hand out everyone else's stuff. Sheesh.

2. My Grandma Corning's Christmas cookies. They are round and have lots of butter and sugar in them. Karen swears my mom and grandma put twice as much sugar in their cookies than normal.

1. And last, but not least, my favorite and funniest Christmas memories have to be of my cousin Travis at Christmas time. You see, we would always go over to my Dad's mom's house on Christmas Eve, and every year when I was in grade school, my cousin Travis, who is (I think) 2 years younger than I, would get really nervous about his presents. He would get all worked up, shaking the presents, trying to figure out what was in them. My Grandma Cress would always make him wait until after supper to open presents, which shouldn't have been a big deal, because my grandma was a total earlybird dinner special kind of lady--we would eat at like 4:30 in the afternoon. So, one Christmas, Travis got so nervous about his presents that he threw up all over the place. He was probably 8 or 9 years old. Hilarious.

Gosh. My memories took up a lot more space than Karen's. And I had one less. Go figure. You'd think that being an English major I would have more self-editing capability, but, surprisingly enough, I don't. Merry Christmas everyone.