Remembering those old shotgun style houses, cram packed with aunts and uncles and cousins.
The pile of coats kids could get lost in on the guest bed.
Blisteringly hot in the kitchen but oh all the good smells of the homemade bread, pies, ham, and so many other goodies. And how it didn't matter how cold it was, there was a window open because it was just that hot.
The fog of cigarette smoke throughout the house from everybody smoking.
"DON'T SLAM THE SCREEN DOOR!" along with the whoop of kids running out and the "clackityclackity" of the dogs toenails on the linoleum.
Three women trying to simultaneously season and stir pots on the stove... along with the kid that wants a taste.
Grandma's strong, tight, slightly sweaty hug.
How the house practically shook with laughter when everyone is in there cooking and joking and cutting up.
After the meal, and after the food coma passed, how the instruments would come out and guitars, fiddles, harmonica (daddy called it a french harp), and more... and then the house shook with music and laughter.
And then after that, the old stories... war stories from the vets, stories of family long passed but still remembered, funny stories, sad stories, but still stories of us.

What's some of your Christmas memories?

I had a much more boring family

Now there isn't many left and the ones that are alive are spread out .

I don't really have any special Christmas memories

Oh almost all the people in those memories are long dead for me. But telling the stories keeps them alive and fresh so the stories themselves are precious and need to be shared and remembered. Most of my living cousins are too busy being better than everybody else to remember who we were and what we come from.

Remembering relatives that I spent Christmas with that are no longer here

Grandpa dressed up like Santa coming up from the basement delivering a puppy to us on Christmas morning 55 or so years ago.

Dad running over the same dog the next Christmas doing the "I forgot something" (his trick for putting packages under the tree while everyone was out of the house) as we were heading for Christmas Eve church service.

Proposing to my wife 33 years ago on Christmas. Her ring was a tree ornament that she didn't see until I pulled it off the tree Christmas morning.

My daughter the first couple Christmases . She could care less what she was unwrapping she just wanted to shred the paper off the gifts including mommy and daddy’s . The shriek of seeing the presents under the tree .. pure magic

Katt you nailed almost every Christmas I had until my grandparents passed. They were the catalyst that held the family together. Now we only see each other on Facebook or at funerals. The only difference would be the music. Our family would break out the card tables and play 42 or spades. The winners cheated and the losers blamed each other.

I'd give anything to have that back.

I really enjoyed hanging out w RoF, his brother, crew and those that showed for BUMRUSH in the snow an ice. we fed and clothed a lot of good people and shared many hugs and tears. we must have had at least 20 trucks in our convoy. good times, wonder if hes ever coming back from Toronto?

This sums it up far better than I can....

https://youtu.be/P37xPiRz1sg

Actually, my favorite Christmas memory was up in north/central Iowa at my grandmother's. Every other year we would go up there for a week, week and a half for Christmas and New Year's Eve. During one of these trips one heckuva blizzard blew through and dumped what seemed like 10 feet of snow to me at the time. In reality MAYBE 3 feet. It was enough to basically shut the small town down for a few days. Thankfully the town was small enough that all relatives were within walking distance. We ended up camping in the basement because it was easiest to keep nice and warm. The kids had a card table set up for board games and the men had their own table for poker and dominoes. Seemed like grandma spent her time going up and down those stairs replacing the snacks and such whenever a plate or bowl was emptied. After a couple days of that things started to return to normal and one of grandma's neighbors, a transplanted Cajun named Ray Cooper, showed up at the door to ask if we wanted to do a fish fry. Ol Ray spent the spring and summers catching catfish out of the Boone River and his deep freeze always had a few used milk jugs full of frozen fillets. The idea of a "fish fry" was foreign to most of my Iowa relatives but my Dad and I piped up and said we were all for it. Although the weather had settled down it was still in the single digits the day of the fish fry. We set up in grandma's garage and proceeded to get the oil heating. Seemed to take forever but that kitchen match Ray dropped in the grease finally lit and he got to frying. Still, to this day some 40 years later, that was the best fish fry ever.

I just remember feeling safe, close, warm, loved and happy. Nobody seemed to get stir crazy being shuttered up in the house. The frantic atmosphere that seems to surround the holidays now simply did not exist then. I guess the reason for the season was still the priority?

I’m enjoying the nice memories, good post kat-

I wish I had a nice story to tell, unfortunately most of my memories are of my folks struggling through that time of year-
They were a couple that were not happy but were staying together “for the kids”.

They did us no favors by doing that, except I did learn the kind of marriage I didn’t want-

My good Christmas memories have been the last 30+ years with my wife and my own kids-

I am thankful for my wife-

Going through the Sears Christmas catalog and making a wish list as a kid.

This little lady was my aunt Zel and the best cook that ever lived. I can remember Christmas where the boys would have gone hunting and shot a deer and the Christmas dinner was venison roast in brown gravy over rice with home grown canned green beans with the tomatoes and a little bacon and a home grown peach pie for dessert. I don't remember hardly a single present, but I can remember just as clear as day, standing at her elbow watching her cook.

Any of y'all got old pictures to share?

Christmas (and thanksgiving) 97-07 were spent with my best friends in the world, we would hunt any number of south Texas ranches, even had permission to hunt most of them. We would swing through one of their grandparents house for a to go bag of food every once in a while since we spent all of our money on beer. Great times.

When I was 5, I got a Hasbro (Mattel?) slot car track.

When I was 8, I got an HO-scale model railroad.

It's a tie between these two.

I'd say when everyone leaves.