Christmas was a special time with a litter of kids. It made shopping FUN! Thing 1 got all the toys I loved as a child. Thing 2 got all the toys I wanted as a child. Thing 3 and 4 threw blew my mind. OH MY GOSH! This didn’t –exist- when I was a child! Believe me, I played with ALL of them before wrapping ‘em.
Then we have the wonderful presents that you forget need assembly before wrapping. Oops. Stay up half the night, put ‘em together and get woken up at 5 a.m. because it’s Christmas!
Note to parents and grandparents: REMEMBER THE BATTERIES!!!
I developed a hard and fast rule early when it came to my children – what’s opened at Gramma’s stays at Gramma’s. If it made noise, had a lot of parts, needed batteries, or HEAVEN HELP (coming from someone with granddaughters) had glitter, it wasn’t coming home. There is a special place in hell for anyone that gets a child slime with glitter in it.
My grandmother, known as the Queen in our family, was also the Queen of Christmas. When I was little she had a notebook with everyone’s presents in it, and we had to open them in order, sometimes back-to-back sitting on the floor if we got the same thing and she didn’t want us to see it until we opened our own. She passed that trait on to me. I do it. I can pull my notebooks and tell you every gift I’ve gotten kids and family since 1996. Scary.
My mother schooled us this year though. Thanksgiving was at her house (we kind of take turns) and she not only had grandkids bring her decorations down from the attic but decorate her house! In my dreams…
One of my favorites is the Christmas tree tradition. We always had real trees. They had to be cut down and left outside overnight so all the resident bugs could vacate.
Out here in the boonies, little boys were potty trained on trees. My nephew, little as he was, walked by two bathrooms and went outside to pee. Usually he and the rest of the boys would go out to the big oak in their grandmother’s front yard, but this time he took a short-cut. The Christmas tree was standing on the side of the house to be brought in the next day to be decorated and it was chilly outside.
It’s been called a Pissmas-tree ever since.
Bess
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| Bess Tuggle |
