Countdown to Christmas part 1

Getting ready for the Holiday season for me starts with memories from childhood.  Getting the boxes out of the attic and checking Christmas lights to see if we needed to buy more.  Living in a three generation household was an amazing experience for me.

My grandfather loved holidays, his favorites being Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  We had two Blue Spruce trees in the front and back yard which were decorated with lights.  The entire house on the outside had lights going around the eaves, the shrubs also had lights.  We also had red and green light bulbs to replace the clear ones in the driveway lamp posts.  With a Santa on the roof and the nativity scene in the front hard we were set, and yes setup took longer than a weekend.

These are my thoughts every holiday.  And these are memories I pass down to my son who was also lucky enough to know my grandmother before she passed, as an adult as my grandfather passed away when he was 6 years old.

My first memories of Christmas was as a child, baking cookies to leave out for Santa.  My cousin and I would go to bed listening to an AM radio station that forecasted where Santa was.  We were sent to bed about 9pm on Christmas Eve, we were so excited that we slept in spurts.  Everytime we woke up we thought it was time to get up and we had only been asleep for an hour or so.  This went on all night.  The radio station keeping us informed on how close Santa was and then we would fall back asleep. I  want to say I was about 7 years old and she was 5.

At 5am Christmas morning we were up for good, there was no going back to sleep.  We tiptoed pass the bedrooms not ready to wake anyone else up, and saw on the table next to the tree that the cookies we had left out had been eaten and the milk was almost completely gone.  Santa had been there, we had to let everyone in the house know.

My cousin went and woke up her mother and I woke up mine, and our grandparents.  It was time to open presents, or so I thought.  My grandmother had other plans.  She stated it was time to have breakfast.  My heart sank,  I wanted to open gifts, I saw my name on a couple of the tags.  I was anxious.  I ate my breakfast like I had never eaten anything for a good long while, I stuffed my face as fast as I could.

After breakfast we sat around the tree, our tradition was for my grandfather to hand out the gifts.  In his calm voice he said my name "To Freida.  From Santa."

41 years later and I still remember the tone of his voice.

I will be sharing Christmas memories with you throughout the month of December.  Keep your holiday memories alive, share yours if you would like in the comment section.