Christmas Memories Part II: THE EARLY YEARS

After I posted my last list of memories, several more have come to me so you'll have to indulge me.

* Christmas was a magical time for me as a child. There was a lot of music, decorations, baking, and sewing that went on in our house through the holidays. But the year I was seven years old really stands out in my mind. My mom sewed a beautiful Barbie wardrobe for me--she made Barbie several evening gowns, dresses, shawls, and my favorite...a beautiful wedding dress. The details on these pieces were incredible (and I didn't realize how much work went in to it until years later when I tried to make some doll clothes for my daughter and gave up before I was finished. Sewing something that tiny is very difficult.) Anyway, I dressed and re-dressed my doll all day long and about evening time, I started realizing that the fabrics used in the dresses were some of the same fabrics used in some of my dresses that my mother had made. I asked her about it and she told me that Santa needed some extra help that year and she had helped him. In coming weeks, I kept pressing her for more information and before long, I had it all figured out.


* My mother died when I was twelve and the first Christmas without her was a very lonely one. My father's mother came up and spent Christmas with us and I told her about all of the things we did on Christmas Eve and all of the things we ate. She took me to the store and we bought everything for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner and I worked so hard to do it just the way mom would have done it and was so proud of myself. When dad came home from work, he about fell apart. For years after that, he told me how proud he was of me that night but how very, very difficult it was for him and how much that made him miss his sweetheart.


* When dad re-married, he married a woman with five children so there was a household of 9 children living under one roof. Christmastime was pandemonium. You can't even imagine the amount of presents under a tree when there are 11 people in one household. So much fun! Well one year some time before Christmas, all of the girls (six of us) were having a sister slumberparty upstairs and my younger step sister, Gwen, admitted that she'd found the stash of Christmas gifts and proceeded to tell us all what we were getting. We were all so excited and I was especially thrilled to be getting the ice skates I wanted. So on Christmas morning, we all had to pretend excitement as we were opening presents that were no longer a surprise. As fun as it was to know what I was getting, it totally ruined my Christmas to not have any surprises.
* I attended BYU the years that Donny and Marie were there. My friend Janet and I looked up their schedule and arranged to be sitting outside their classrooms when they came out of class so we could get a glimpse of them. One day, I was sitting in class, and Janet showed up at the door, trying to get my attention. She motioned to me to come out of class. She had found out that they were filming their Christmas special for TV up at Sundance ski resort right then and we HAD to go up and watch. I remember not being dressed to be out in the cold and this was an outdoor stage. We were FREEZING, but enjoyed every minute of it and of course when it aired on TV, we scanned the audience to see if we could find ourselves. That is probably why this is still one of my favorite Christmas albums:

I think that's all but who knows...I may remember a few more before the holiday is over.