Christmas Pasts

While over at Barbara's :Life & Faith in Caneyhead her lastest post about Christmas Pasts inspired me to this post! :) I definately recommend going and reading about Barbara's Christmas's growing up! There's something so peaceful about simple Christmas's where stress was ultimately not the focus of the day!

While I was a child we normally woke up at home Christmas morning. Quite often Christmas Eve was spent either at home with many of my dad's siblings there (my dad is #5 out of 12 siblings!). We'd often bake cookies. Many years on Christmas Eve at my Grandma's, my Aunt J will be making no bake cookies, and sugar cookies and getting all us kids involved, then she'd load us into her little Honda car and we'd drive around singing Christmas Carols and looking at the Christmas lights. Some years we'd get to open up a gift on Christmas Eve from a relative that wasn't going to be around on Christmas Day, but it was rare.  I loved waking up on Christmas morning when we believed in S.C my brother and I would lay there whispering (because on this one night we'd get in the others bed and wait and giggle just dying to get downstairs!) Far too many Christmas mornings my parents could not have been in bed more than an hour or two and we'd be dashing down those stairs, running to my parents room and waking them up and running into the living room and of course being thrilled with what ever Santa left! We'd open the gifts and haul our treasures upstairs and we'd either play quietly upstairs or go back to bed for a couple more hours while Mom and Dad went back to bed! Dinner was always a full house of my grandma, parents, aunts, uncles, lots of cousins varying in ages from adult to babies, some would even drag a friend or two along (those poor souls! LOL) Because of so many people, once Grandma said Dinner was ready you ate or you went without! After dinner we'd exchange gifts, then it was off to football watching, card playing, and kids outside playing. On my dad's side of the family it was never a get together with out game after games of the card game Pitch. Sadly I don't know how to play, one day I will have to have my parents teach Chad and I. Every memory of mine with my dad's side of the family has them playing Pitch. They would play late into the night as well, well after midnight and often times the next day we'd get together and there'd be more pitch playing! There was never a quiet time during the holidays! There was always a housefull of people, lots of food, us kids always seemed to be cracking nuts and eating them, running around to play with our new toys, playing tag, hide and seek, cuddling the babies, and lots of laughter!

My children are growing up differently in many ways. Being in the Army we don't always live near family. Up until last year we lived about 1 1/2 hrs from my family and 13 hrs from my husband's. We'd often to go my side of the families for the holiday, although a couple of those years we'd try to make it up to Ohio in between Thanksgiving and Christmas and they'd have a large meal and we'd all exchange gifts.

Something important that I want to be the norm for my children is waking up in our home Christmas morning and so far we've done that almost every year. I want my boys to feel like the day is simple and relaxing, that no one was stressed out, that most importantly the focus was on Christ.

 

So tell me what was your Christmas like growing up and what's it like now as an adult?!