Share one of your best holiday memories when you were a child

When I was small enough to believe in Santa we lived on a farm, so while we certainly had plenty to eat we were always on the edge financially. We were allowed to ask Santa for one gift and we got one from our parents and one from our siblings. When we came down to the living room in the morning there would be a small blue spruce in a bucket with lights on it and a pile of 3 gifts for each of us. After we opened the gifts we would all decorate the tree.THEN - my aunts and uncles and cousins would start to arrive and the gifts would come rolling in AND THEN - OMG - my grandparents would come - loaded down with gifts for us and our cousins. I always thought my Grandpap was really Santa. The huge dinner with all the family - us kids all playing with our cousins all day - and some of them lived far away and they would stay over. (My dad was one of 16 children so Aunts, Uncles and cousins really dominated my childhood). On NY day my dad would very carefully take the decorations off the little tree and take it out in the yard to a hole he had dug before it got cold and plant it. We had an entire yard full of blue spruce trees. By the time we moved off the farm into the city we no longer believed in Santa, so all my memories of magical Christmases are pretty much at the farm.

My parents made Christmas a magical time! I grew up in the '60's and my parents didn't have a lot but they always decorated everything that stood still and got my brother and I super special gifts. The best part was the booby trap that my Dad put up on Christmas Eve across the living room door. It was rigged with bells that would ring if we disturbed it! It was a blast! I still remember the feeling of not being able to sleep because of all of the pent up excitement!

Any Christmas going up was the best. We'd start the day by opening gifts at home. Then off to my fathers parents house to pickup my grandmother to go to mass. When we got back, we'd get a card with some cash. Then we'd head to my mothers parents house for a big meal, followed by opening Christmas presents. There was always a real tree decorated to the hilt. Family was very important to my father. We were spoiled by seeing both sets of grandparents every Christmas.

When I was young we lived in the country and for two months before Christmas my Mother, sister and myself made Christmas ornaments. We did snowflakes and stars and pine cones all decorated with glitter and crayons. We strung popcorn and cranberries. We had one string of bubble lights and some tinsel. I remember watching Daddy coming across the creek with our Christmas tree behind the tractor. The tree was huge! We decorated it with all of our homemade ornaments and garland. It was the most beautiful tree we had ever seen. We had a lot of love but not a lot of money. Santa left my sister and I both a big coloring book and a package of eight crayons. Our stockings were filled with an orange, nuts, hard ribbon candy and a candy cane that was a foot long and about and inch around! We were so excited that morning we came out and saw what Santa had left us. My Dad has been gone for eighteen years and I still have the leather gloves he wore and I can in my mind still see him coming across the creek and see him blowing on his hands with those gloves on because it was so cold. It really was a magical Christmas!

We had many nice Christmas's. When I was very young, I always wondered why Santa and Mom's handwriting was so similar! We had a very sweet old neighbor that would drop off red bags filled with Santa presents...he would ring the doorbell and run away fast. Also 1 year I swear I thought I saw Santa and his reindeers flying in the sky!!

We would always go to my Grandma and Grandpa's house about 2hrs away...there were MANY cousins and aunts and uncles. All the kids would sit on the floor and eat off of tv trays, while the adults barely fit at the table. So many people there, I really miss those days!!

Merry Christmas everybody!!

It's such a small thing, but Christmas morning was the only time of the year that we had pastries for breakfast like danish or some sort of cake bought from a real bakery. We'd go through our stockings then open the bakery box, untying the red and white twisted string that kept it closed, and dive into a gooey, sweet treat before opening gifts. Usually we'd get a sip or two of milky coffee, too.

I never think twice now about having what I want, when I want it. Remembering this reminds me to leave somethings as special and anticipated.

All the Christmas hoopla didn't start till the Friday after Thanksgiving.

When we still believed in Santa, we would go to bed around 6:00 p.m for a nap before going to midnight mass and would come home and immediately have to go to bed. We were told Santa would be coming soon so we had to be asleep. When we woke up the tree was magically trimmed with presents under the tree. After we were older we would decorate the tree while watching one of the old Scrooge movies, nap and go to midnight mass and then come home and open gifts and eat ham sandwiches and candy. Those days can never be recreated but the memories make me smile and happy!!