The Community Christmas Countdown | An Unforgettable Christmas

#82

I almost didn’t do this one, but I’m gonna share a story that still kind of fills me with wonder and awe when I look back on it with perspective.
So, when I was younger, 4-6yrs old I guess, I used to go to my Aunt and Uncle’s house to hang out with my only other cousin that is an only child. So we would just hang out and do kid stuff, you know annoy the adults and be crazy… until it happened, and the first time it happened SEALED THE DEAL for me, Santa was real. So, this is what we heard from inside the house, a clatter of hooves on the roof, my cousin and I froze, all suspicions of whether or not Santa Claus was real was gone in an instant, he is on the roof! We did not know what to, everything our parents told us about Santa starts racing through our heads, were we naughty or nice this year? If we were, either, did he really know, and well at that point we KNEW reindeer could fly. Then, our child’s brains explode when SANTA walks through the front door! Ho, Ho, Hoing all the way in. Now you have to know that none of our parents, even dressed up, would come to look anything like Santa, aka Plump, long white hair and beard, so that had us convinced it wasn’t them. Ok, so Santa is in the living, we are staring, our parents tell us to sit on the couch because Santa wants to talk to us…So we sit down and Santa, full dress, Jolly as can be, has a red sack with him, but not his Big one for presents, it was his Naughty or Nice “list”, which was actually an amazing looking book. Now, this is the part when we really lost it! Santa asks us if we have been Naughty or Nice AND starts naming some of the presents we asked for, in our Letters to Santa. Of course, we both say “Nice!”. Then Santa would lay it on us, “So, Chris, you said you were nice this year but what about…” and he would mention something I did that my parents yelled at me for r something like that, then he would also bring up the “Nice” things I had done that year and sort fo mentally weigh them against each other. Santa would do this for both my cousin and I and when he was done and had made his decision on which list either of us would end up on he would give us, if we were Nice that year, (only once my cousin got Naughty) a present from his bag. It was never just some random present, it was ALWAYS the ONE thing either of us really wanted. Then he would get up and Merrily Ho Ho Ho his way out the door and a couple minutes later we would hear the hooves again. MINDS BLOWN! SANTA, SANTA JUST CAME TO SEE US!!! It wasn’t until years later I decided to ask how our parents pulled that off, it was pretty impressive and as a kid, there was 0 doubt in my mind Santa was real, hell he walked in and knew things no one else could know! I am still proud of my parents and aunt and uncle for what they did to make Christmas special.

P.S Since my Birthday is 8 days before Christmas he would usually give me a present for that too and my cousin would get so jealous!

Cheers Mom and Dad!

#83

Soo many to choose from…

One Christmas that really sticks out though is 21 years ago, I was working in the Middle East, away from home for the first time at Christmas. It was a really sad morning, decorations were illegal and no presents because a package from home had gotten stuck at customs and hadn’t arrived.

We had arranged to meet some friends in the afternoon, so Christmas Lunch was a drive thru from McDonalds on my own.

Great afternoon spent with friends, but waking up like that in Christmas morning kind of sucked.

Christmases did get a lot better though. 2 kids now and every year is awesome. In fact my wife and kids make pretty much every day feel like Christmas Day now. Very blessed these days.

#84

I have a Hanukkah story, one Hanukkah, I really wanted a Razer gaming mouse, that night my mom handed me my gift… Ok fine I am not going to say a cliche “And it was what I wanted!” but no. she just gave me 30 bucks :stuck_out_tongue:

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#85

My sons 9th birthday was one that Ill never forget for both good and bad reason. To understand the memory here, my sons uncle was about 30 years older than me and never actually had any kids of his own while also being an art teacher for a university.

About a month before christmas his uncle called and asked what my son wanted for christmas, I started giving him some of the things on my his list that I thought might be easy finds. He decided to go to the horses mouth and ask directly, accumulating a very long list of both feesible and not so realistic items. Nothing was said afterwords and he said his farewells.

I later found out from my sister-in-law that he went to a local toys’r’us and stood at the entrance for about 30 minutes trying to figure out where anything might be located since it was his first time in a toy store in decades. He finally asked for the manager, handed him a sheet of paper and told the man “Anything on this list you find I will buy”. Well, long story short for the next hour 3 employees searched high and low for everything on the list, being the early 90s there wasnt an easy inventory system so it took time.

This was one of my most memorable christmases, with the best part being the story I hadnt even witnessed. Sadly though, this was one of the last years we saw him so healthy, but the story will never die.

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#86

I haven’t really had any memorable Christmases, but the best ones were when I was like 10-12, because I still believed :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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#87

I had a crazy Christmas story where I was sledding down a hill, and hit a tree, and broke my back. Almost died. Glad I didn’t though.

#88

the most memorable moment is to have the family united as one …share the precious time with our love ones …seeing the lil ones open their gifts with so much joy is one of a kind moments …

#89

It was 3 Christmas ago when our whole family got together for the first time in 10 years. Easily the best Christmas ever

#90

One Christmas we went to Disneyland Paris - it was raining all the time and freezing cold. The good thing was that there were no queues for anything. We rode Pirates of the Carribean 7 times in a row because it was a lot warmer than walking to the next attraction.

#91

Thanks! I grew up in FL, so never really had the opportunity to make a snowman before. I decided to really commit to it! LOL

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#92

The year I got Super Mario Bros. 3. I literally cried I was so happy.

#93

Way, way back, when I got my first real paying job, I decided to splurge on Christmas gifts for my parents. Unfortunately, I was 16 at the time and my judgement was…suspect.

My dad’s present was at least explainable. He was an early tech adopter, and had a Mac in the mid-80s, so I thought I’d get hime something special for it. I don’t remember the store–it might have been a Best Buy, which appeared right around that time–but I do remember going in and finding the most expensive piece of software they had, a program called Hypercard, for $75 dollars. It came on like 16 disks. Hypercard turns out to have a place in computing history as an influence on the development of the World Wide Web but for my dad, well, I remember seeing still unopened on his shelf 10 years later.

However, what was really memorable was my mom’s present. Sigh. I remembered her telling me stories about this boa constrictor she had in her 20s, how she had to move and give it up eventually and I thought, “A ha! I bet she wants another one!” So I bought my mom a snake.

But not the snake I thought. Buying your mom a snake for Christmas is already sketchy, but the icing on the cake is it wasn’t the snake I thought I was getting, The pet store, said, “Ball python! Makes a great pet!” What the pet store sold me was, “Haitian boa! Notoriously vicious!” She named it Sweetie Pie.

Sweetie Pie’s distinguishing characteristic was that she (?) would strike at the wall of her cage like a rabid dog trying to get to you any time you got near. She’d leave smears of snake saliva on the glass, hitting it over and over again and a couple of times breaking teeth in her fever to bite you (they grow back). We very rapidly decided we like the mice we got to feed her a lot better, and approximately as rapidly found Sweetie Pie a new home.

Were they good presents? In no conceivable way. But 30-plus years later, I sure do remember that Christmas.

#94

Easily the year I got a Honda 100XR at age 10 - I came downstairs and it was parked in the living room. I was the coolest fricking kid in the world. And there was snow outside, but I rode in it anyway. It was amazing.

#95

it was not what i expected but well told/ written