Do You Have Christmas Memories?

Yesterday I read a post by my blogging buddy Flowering Mama. Where she related how thankful she was for her country neighbors and it left an impression. I began to think about Christmas memories. Do you have Christmas memories?

I am not talking about those traditions we all go through year after year but memories. What pops in your head first when you think of Christmas past? Is it a gift, a place, a relative, maybe just a simple sense like the smell of pine?

As I spent the afternoon battling this cold, a pattern emerged. I began to realize my memories were nothing like what I expected. What I was remembering were not gifts or any monetary asset I had been bestowed but rather true Christmas memories.

My earliest memory was a smell. As a child my mother’s father always visited for Christmas and with his visit came a special Christmas breakfast. He was a true handy man which could take anything apart and put it back together and have it work. I wonder now if it was not a ploy on my mothers side for all our gifts that had the dreaded. “Assembly required” tag on it.

Any who, the breakfast was always special. Every Christmas morning we had eggs, biscuits, fried potatoes and… country ham and red eye gravy. I sure miss those Christmas mornings. There is nothing like a good country ham.

My mind moved on the junior high. Where I took wood shop and made a sewing chest for my mother. I had to get my boyfriend and 3 other guys to help me get it home, it would not fit on the bus. The tears in her eyes when she opened that gift made it all worth it.

Move on to adulthood to my favorite Christmas memory of all. Once my grandparents got too old to drive to my parents country home I became the elderly taxi driver. A solid hour and a half of three elderly people screaming at each other due to not having proper volume levels adjusted on their hearing aids.

The routine was to load them up and then pick my other grandmother up. This particular Christmas when I arrived my grandfather had the car warming and was rearing to go.

It wasn’t two miles into the trip that it turned into an adventure. Turning around to say something to my grandfather, my grandmother looks at me and says, “Your grandfather is cold, can we turn the heat up?” “Sure,” I responded and proceed to turn the fan up. You are not going to believe this.

The moment I turned that fan on it was as if we suddenly found ourselves in a snow globe. Out every vent portal in the car, the fan blew small white pieces of paper. It wasn’t long before I had to pull over.

A family of mice had decided their car was the perfect place for a winter home. They must have spent all summer hoarding the amount of paper that was stuffed in that car.

Back on the road I once again turned the fan on and I left it on high trying to blow all the paper out. This is when the icing on the cake appeared. Yes, there in the floor board were the dead remnants of the paper shredding bandit.

I pulled into a gas station and vacuumed up our snow globe. We related the story to my other grandmother and laughed all the way to mom’s house. My father, once he inherited the car had to take it apart to get all the paper out.

I know this is a “had to be there” memory but the memory is not my point. The point is I look back now and see the experience is the joy, not the gifts and glitter.

This Christmas I’m wishing for you the experience. To have the ability to take the adventures and turn them into life long memories. This is what Christmas was meant to be; joy and memories.

If you have made it this far I wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and JOY! I’m not sure if I will post again before Christmas, depends on how things play out.

Peace….

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