Journal Topic #8

Christmas as a Kid:

I mentioned before that we didn't have a whole lot of extra money to go around. But Christmas was never a disappointment. As a child I was somewhat fascinated with the Nativity and with Mary especially. The idea that this incredibly blessed woman got to give birth to the Lord and Savior of the world! I used to imagine how she felt when she looked upon Jesus, I wondered how much of his mission she understood at his birth. She was no doubt a holy woman, so surely she must have had a great understanding. I still think on it, but as I got older I started thinking more about the Savior and the hope for the world, that his birth instilled, even before the actual atonement came to pass.

My dad LOVES Christmas and has really fond childhood Christmas memories of his own so it was important to him to give us good memories of Christmas as well. My mom was not so fond of Christmas. She loves Jesus, don't get me wrong... but the commercial aspect made her say "bah, humbug" many a time. The drain it put on them financially stressed her out. They put the gifts on their credit card and it took them about half of the year to pay it off (I'm remembering this part from something she had said when I was younger... I really don't actually know how long it took to pay off). My dad, it didn't bother him. He loved to see our happy faces on Christmas morning. I'm sure my mom did to.

I don't mean to take any credit away from my mom. She actually did quite a lot for us to make Christmas special. She baked and decorated cookies with us every year. She had ornaments for us to paint. She painted several decorations herself... especially folk tole painted Santa Clauses. Many times we secretly dropped off cookies at a neighbors home. Ringing their doorbell and running away giggling, hiding behind a bush so we could see them looking around for the person who had left the Christmas goodies. A lot of the traditions I have with my family are because of her efforts.

Every year we got to go to my dad's work Christmas party. What a treat. They always had a Santa Claus who would let you sit on his lap and be told what you wanted for Christmas. He also would hand us a gift. I often got a new barbie at the party. There were soooo many delicious goodies to eat and my parents didn't tell us how many we could eat, where normally my mom was very good at limiting our sugar intake, it was harder to do so at the party because they would be distracted talking with someone and we would sneak off to get more. Luckily I was smart enough to stop before I got sick.

Our church had a Christmas party every year too. I remember them handing out stockings that had candy in them... maybe a coloring book as well. Looked something like the following... but it wasn't filled with quite that much.



My favorite Christmas's include the year I got my yellow bike. The year I got a keyboard. The year I got a MyChild doll.

Christmas traditions as a kid: Making/decorating cookies with my mom. Taking cookies to people houses anonymously. My mom would make and we would decorate a ginger bread house, she made delicious ginger bread. painting ornaments together. Big Christmas breakfast together. Going to my Grandma and Grandpa Soules house on Christmas Eve. Getting a big package full of lots of goodies including gifts for all of us and cookies in a tin and a popcorn tin from my Grandma and Grandpa Delaney. My mom would wrap each kids gift in a different wrapping paper so she didn't have to label every gift... just one... and we knew what pile was ours.

my sneaky tradition. I would get up at about 3 a.m. on Christmas. I would open my stocking and partially open my gifts to see what I got. Then I would put my stocking back together... maybe eat a few pieces of chocolate. Make sure my presents were wrapped properly. Sneak back to bed and dream about my gifts. This made me much more "patient" (technically by opening everything early shows how impatient I really was) in waiting for my parents to wake up.

My brothers and sisters didn't do this BUT they did search and find most of our gifts each year. I didn't partake in that tradition. So they didn't need to get up because they already knew what they were getting. I don't know what my two youngest sisters did.

Here are a few pictures from Christmas past. I'm the blonde in front. The boy is my brother Ryan, girl holding Ryan is my oldest sister Lorraine. Girl in the red is my older sister Laura. Connor, Kileen, and Maureen aren't born yet. They are poor quality because I took a picture of the picture... to upload the quickest.




This is me with a Strawberry Shortcake doll my mom made! My daughter Violet looks a lot like me at this age.