Special Christmas Moments

TheRoadDog

What's yours? Not the gift.

My father had one brother. My Uncle Jim. He had 3 kids. My Dad had 5. By 1975 or so, all we were scattered all over the West Coast and would never all get together again for any event. Until 1988. Somehow, we all ended up together on Christmas Eve, at my parents' home. We came from 5 different states. All in various relationship status'. Divorced. Going through Divorce. Married. Single.

We Vallandingham's love our cocktails and we got blasted and decided to go Caroling. Against the advice of my parents and my cousinn's parents. We were hammered.

My cousin, Johnny could belt out "Santa Clause is Back in Town" (in the style of Bruce Springsteen) We had a blast. No one called the cops. That was the last time all 8 of us cousins were ever together again.

My youngest brother, died of Aids in 1993. Johnny died of heart failure in 2009. I can remember that Christmas Eve like it was last night.

ket_the_jet

If I had one that ended with getting blasted and going caroling, I would absolutely post it here.
-wtk

AwesomelyAmber

Where to start? Guess i'll go with my top few!
1. Traveling from place to place... we go to my parent's, husband's parents, both sets of my grandparents, and meet up with my best friend of 16 years and her husband all within 2 days!
2. Carroling with my son's Awana group and seeing the faces of all the 'shut ins' light up when we go door to door...
3. Candy making with my mom (spend an awful lot of $ to give away stuff that makes people smile, but the memories of being able to just hang out with her for a full day with no outside interuptions is priceless!)
4. And overnight shopping with my dad. Each year we pick a date, hit every store we can, sing carrols, monkey walk through the isles, and act like goof balls and follow it up with breakfast sometime after midnight before heading home. No spouses, no kids, just me and my dad.

TheLeapist

One of my favorite christmases was one year the people behind the movie iRobot were doing some viral marketing for it. Before the movie was ever announced they made a site advertising the robots like they were real products. It was all very convincing and we believed it. We spent a good portion of the holiday discussing how much the seemingly huge jump in robotics technology blew our minds. And we were pretty much planning on a robot take over. Then we found out a few weeks later that it was for a movie where exactly that happens. Haha.

atsteele

I'm not much of a story teller but being back home to go hunting with my son brought back a lot of memories of time spent at home and at my Grandparents' house (which is now the "hunting cabin"). We lost a lot of our hunting party, mostly via old age: my grandfater, my great uncle, two of my Dad's good friends, my good friend. It was odd to be in the same house aka cabin and not have them there but at the same time have my oldest son with me. It was like traveling back in time, only I'm the parent now. Definitely bittersweet.