Childhood memories

This year is one of the quietest Christmas Eves I've ever had. Although last year was pretty quiet too. I somehow doubt I will ever have the same Christmas Eves as I remember as a child. I remember spending the whole day writing Santa letters. One year my brother and I even went around and got writing samples from all of the adults just in case one of them was signing Santa onto the letters for us. We always left out pie crust instead of cookies. That's what we had on Christmas Eve. My grandmother would always make a bit of extra pie crust, sprinkle it with cinnamon sugar and bake it. Lovely! We don't really have that anymore since my mom doesn't make pie crust for pies by hand. It takes way too long when she's doing most of the cooking on her own. I try to help, but she always takes spoons and such away from me. I get only the simplest tasks. Mostly I just keep her company. We would also leave out carrots for Santa's reindeer. They must have been SOOO fat by the end of flying around the world and getting lots of carrots!

In the evening we would wrap the last of the presents. My grandmother always had the best of ribbons and bows and paper so some presents we would wait to wrap there. We'd get take out food for dinner because no one should do massive amounts of cooking on Christmas Eve dinner. Usually we'd get Chinese food. The women had been cooking all day for the next day's feast, they were tired and did not want to cook dinner for so many people.

My brother and I always had my grandfather's study to sleep in. It was a room attached to the living room. They would put up a brown curtain to separate it when we slept there. At night we would fall asleep to the sound of the adults talking a few rooms away, the lights of the tree shining through the curtain, and the whispers of parents putting things under the tree. That room always belonged to my brother and me. Even when there came more and more kids... that was our room. The other kids would sleep with their parents. My parents somehow also had the biggest bedroom, despite not having kids in there with them. I think part of that was that they were the oldest. They were the first married too. My dad's brother got the other guest room and his sister and her kids got to sleep on the floor of my grandmother's study. Later on my dad's brother's wife would require them to visit with her family and my uncle was often on call. They usually just showed up on Christmas day rather than on Christmas Eve.

Now it seems like everyone has their own thing going on. Someday I want to establish my own traditions. I know they'll be different from my childhood, but they'll be my own. I'll never forget the memories I had as a child, but in a way they're over. It is like the time I realized I was an adult. At the end of Christmas day I looked around and realized I did not have a single toy to play with. Everyone else had lots of toys and games and fun things. I was left with a pile of clothes and gift certificates. I must have been like 15 or 16 at the time. I was crushed. I cried, not because I didn't get lots of wonderful presents like I wanted, but because here it was, Christmas day, and I didn't have any toys. I guess we all have to grow up sometime. It always seems like it'll never happen, but when it does, it can be sad.

Tomorrow I look forward to opening my presents in the morning. No Christmas stockings, no last day of the advent calendar, just presents. There won't be lots of family everywhere, just the four of us. As much as I love my family, I wish I could be with my extended family on Christmas morning. I wish I could see the little ones open their Christmas stockings. Even though I'm too old to do it myself, I'd like to see the others happy. But, this is the way Christmas is. Perhaps next year it will be even more different. The BIG celebration of Christmas might be the day after Christmas so that my mom can host it. It might lose a bit of the magic because of not being on Christmas, but then I might be able to have my family all with me instead.