Here's a little writing of mine.....from yesterday. Was feeling a bit nostalgic. Thought I'd share here. Many MANY more memories of the holidays, but of course, I can't remember them all, and certainly couldn't put them all down or they'd knock me out for overuse of mybloggers space! LOL

Christmas Memories
Today is Christmas 2011. It is a good day to sit and reflect upon all the beautiful, happy, funny and even sad memories of Christmases past. I don’t really know where to begin. It may be rather hodge-podge…but I’ll do my best to try to keep things in some sort of order!
Christmas in the Thomsen family was filled to overflowing with memories that I will treasure all of my life.
It would all start with the trip to the A&W in Mt Vernon or Lisbon, and picking out the perfect tree. Dad would search through so many trees, to find just exactly the right one. These trees had been cut for quite some time, and had had the limbs tied up, so there was much pounding the bottom of the trunk on the concrete to get the branches to open up. We’d get it home and put it up. The lights were strung….those big old style lights. Then ornaments and the cotton ball puffs that went over the bulbs. Those were so cool and I think they had come from our years in Canada. I wish I could find those again. After all the decorations were hung, and the star placed atop the tree, then the tinsel began. Our trees were always COVERED with tinsel. It was a painstakingly slow process, as each piece was put on, one by one by one. By the time we were done, hours later, they almost looked like they were made of aluminum foil because we had on so much. Dad had taken an old BB gun box, made a wooden frame with two bars on it. Every year, we took that tinsel off one strand at a time, to hang it on the racks to be saved for next year. Kind of amazing to me, when you consider how much a box of tinsel costs. It’s not that much!
Our house was always filled with music, but most especially at Christmas time. We grew up listening to and singing with Perry Como, Nat King Cole, Sing Along with Mitch and of course our favorite….the Harry Simione Chorale. It was from this album that we learned the renditions of Christmas Carols that fill our Christmas celebrations to this day.
When it came time for wrapping the presents, Mom would enlist our help. She would hand us boxes, after she had peeked inside of them, and tell us to wrap them but we could not look inside. Sometimes they were things for ourselves, or something that was for someone else, but yet we were getting the same thing…..so we couldn’t see what we were wrapping.
Now, I don’t remember ever sneaking a peek at the Christmas presents. If I did, I sure don’t remember it. But I do remember the story my oldest sister will tell…..she was working at Shutt’s Drug Store, and saved her money to be able to buy something special for each one of us that year. She had them all neatly wrapped, sitting under the desk in her room. One day, I guess curiousity got the better of me…..I unwrapped every single present. Then I hid them all over the house….I guess thinking that she wouldn’t notice they were gone. She had bought Colorforms for me and Mary. When she found me, I was in the closet in our room, playing with the colorforms. And I had wisely shoved all the wrapping paper under Mary’s bed….thinking that Barb would think Mary had done this. She wasn’t fooled and she sure wasn’t amused!
Christmas Eve when I was young, were a family affair at my Aunt Sarah and Uncle Bob’s house. We had a few little treats to eat, and then Christmas carols were sung, usually accompanied by one of my cousins playing the piano. These gatherings were very nice, but honestly just don’t compare to the Christmas Eve gatherings we have today.The celebrations eventually moved to my oldest sister’s house. They are a huge gathering of family and friends….everyone is welcome. We spend plenty of time chowing down on all kinds of Christmas goodies……sugar cookies, fudge, peanut butter balls, hanky-panky’s, puppy chow, an awesome cheese dip with potato chips and many other goodies. Someone usually figures we need to be a little healthy, so there may be some relishes there as well. We all eat until we can eat no more, and then the singing begins. We always start with the youngest in the family choosing their favorite Christmas song. We move through the whole gang, with the eldest family member choosing last. Obviously with such a large group of people, we sing many of the songs more than once. We have also progressed to song books, which were created so we could all sing all the words to every verse of the carols. We’ve added new songs….like Must Be Santa……and of course always have the old traditional songs like Joy to the World, We Three Kings, Silent Night, etc. Two favorites are our production of Little Drummer Boy, and then the biggie….The Twelve Days of Christmas. With some of the songs, our singing along with the Harry Simione Chorale all those days, add to our personal renditions. ….”There’s a star in the East on Christmas day…RISE UP SHEPHERDS AND FOLLOW……Follow the star of Beth-Lee-Hheeemmm….RISE UP SHEPHERDS AND FOLLOW….Follow….FOLLOW…RISE…UP…SHEPHERDS….AND FOLLOW…..” Guess ya gotta be there for that! Trust me, we are so darned good!
Before you know it, it’s time to go. We were go out and drive around Mt Vernon and then into Cedar Rapids, just look at the Christmas lights that people had spent so much time putting up. Then it was off to the midnight candlelight service at church. Then back home and get to bed. The jolly old man in the red suit is flying through the air somewhere over the earth…and he won’t come to our house until we go to sleep. Cookies, milk and a note to Santa, and off we go. You know, we never even dared to THINK about coming out of our room. Mary and I shared a room. We had this goofy little thing we did….I have no clue how we ever came up with it….but we would hook our pillows on our feet, kick our legs so the pillow would bounce up and down in the air and say “Just can’t wait…..just can’t wait….just can’t wait….” We were so excited! We would finally drift off to sleep, only to wake up bright and early. Into Mom & Dad’s room we would go, only to be told it was too early and we needed to go back to bed. We would go back to our room, and play a game of some sort…Monopoly or something….then a bit later, go ask again if we could be awake yet. After several trips back to our room to WAIT…..finally they would say Yes. We could not go downstairs yet…..we had to sit on the steps, waiting very impatiently for Dad to go down first. He had to make sure that Santa had come and plug in the Christmas tree lights. And then we heard those magical words “Okay, you can come down! Santa has been here!” We would tear down the steps, then stand there wide-eyed, in total shock and amazement at the mass of gifts under and around the tree. You can imagine how many there were with 5 of us kids! And our stockings were hanging there, waiting for us to discover the treasures hidden inside. We would sit down in front of the tree and literally tear through our packages. I remember asking Mom more than once “What did I get?” when I was finished. We’d torn through them so fast, that we couldn’t even remember what we’d gotten. A favorite toy memory was the year that both Mary and I got a Chatty Kathy doll. That was the big item of the year! (And you all wonder why I talk so much….blame it on Chatty Kathy! She taught me all I know about speaking out!) The stockings were hanging, filled with all sorts of little goodies….including things like combs, a tooth brush, gum, life savers, M&M’s, other sweet treats, and of course, the requisite apple and orange shoved into the foot of the stocking. Nothing in the stockings was wrapped, and aside from very rare occasions, nothing under the tree was NOT wrapped. We had the most awesome stockings….all hand knit by Gramma Strickland. Eventually the knitting has gotten passed down through the family….now my niece, Mary, knits most all of the family stockings! They all have our name on them, and are very special. I still have mine…..somewhere! I need to dig it out of the storage shed one of these days! As new members join the family, the knitting is almost a full time job for Mary! Another funny recent memory was when Barb told me that her daughter, Abby, had told her she should quit wasting the time and money on the apples and oranges, because nobody wanted them anyway. So I convinced Barb to pull a good one on Abby. That Christmas morning, Abby came down stairs and found her stocking filled to overflowing with nothing but apples and oranges. Barb had the real goodies hidden in the next room. When Abby saw it and started saying something about it, Barb said, “Oh, I thought you said you only wanted apples and oranges!”
The Christmas Eve family gathering/food-fest/singing gala was always, and still is, a very happy time for the family. The dark year was in 1974. Dad had died of cancer in September. It was our first Christmas without him. That was a tough year. I do believe it changed me……for the better. My appreciation for family grew tremendously, and the realization hit me that we never know when our last moment on earth will be…..so we must treasure every moment….good and bad. It also taught me the importance of traditions and special memories. Those are things that no one can ever take away.
Christmas Eve is still a big part of Christmas. We added a Christmas morning brunch to the tradition. The brunch has now become a split affair…part of the family at one house, part at another…..the family has gotten so huge, it’s hard to have everyone at one house. But there we are….eating….again! I think singing and food are the life blood of the family!
As I grew up and moved out into the world, I tried valiantly to carry on the traditions with my own two kids. I implemented the waiting for mom and dad to go downstairs first. The stockings hung on the stairway railing…..and I always wanted the kids to have that same sense of wonderment that I always felt on Christmas morning. Then one day, I found out that they had been sneaking downstairs for years…..they’d played with many of their presents in the middle of the night, and they really didn’t care about the stockings….because of course they had already looked through them while we were sleeping. It certainly explained why in many different years, I had gifts for them that I thought would absolutely thrill them to death, and yet they hardly seemed to even notice them. It is also when I started wrapping everything that was in their stockings! It saddens me some that they don’t have that special memory of “the wait”……but still, their memories of Christmas are still very happy. They will develop their own special memories with their families, as they grow.
These are just some of the many special memories I have of Christmas as I was growing up. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope it triggers your mind to go back to special memories in your life.
Christmas is the celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It is also a time to treasure your family, and make memories that will last a lifetime.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU AND YOURS, FROM ME AND MINE!