Holidays

COH Under 18 yrs. Joined: Feb 15, 2008 Posts: 98

Does anyone else remember holidays? All those bullcrap christmas specials, even a christmas story about ralphie and his "dysfunctional" family who got along pretty fine in the end. Maybe seeing a friend and his or her family. Or better yet, everyone getting out of school all psyched but you had to go home . Home being a bit different word for you and the cheering mob. Or was that just me? Bah Humbug.

Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 2:57 pm Post subject:

Holidays at my house were spent trimming Christmas trees. My father would hoard everything he could find, (pathways through chainsaws, old saw blades, bushels of rotten apples) and if we weren't working on a school project, we would be sent to work at the Christmas tree farm, pulling weeds, trimming them, planting them. Then come Christmas, no holidays for us, we'd be out selling the Christmas trees. None of them could come home, they were all for selling. One time I cried about that and dad let me pick out a Christmas tree (I was very young, maybe 9). I picked one out and his comment was "that's the ugliest one of the bunch." I still get teary eyed thinking about it. He was such a b/st/rd...

Active Member Joined: Apr 29, 2008 Posts: 441

Wow, this hit a nerve. I spent many years crying at Christmas, because I never felt like I did it well enough, chose gifts that were good enough, and I felt like it was all on me to make it perfect. I didn't know how to select gifts, proper etiquette for gift giving, and in my teen years when I was invited to other homes for Christmas, my mother would tell me to regift some treasure she had saved for years. It would be bent, yellowed and obviously not new, but she would tell me it was a really special gift, and I didn't know what else to do, not having much money or time to come up with something. It was a horrible, inadequate feeling especially when I was given lovely thoughtful gifts in return. But I had a learning curve. As an adult I enjoyed getting up at 5 AM and making the room magical with lights on and trains running, just to see the joy in my daughter's eyes when she'd run down the stairs Christmas morning. Santa finally showed up in my life, it just took him a little longer.

Active Member Joined: Feb 02, 2008 Posts: 43

I used to love the run-up to Christmas. Back then, it seemed like the whole world stopped for Christmas. It was a massive, massive deal, to everyone.

At primary school there would be the carol concert, the party, the card-designing competition, we'd make snowflakes by folding and cutting paper and paper chains with those bits of paper that have sticky stuff on one end. There'd be carols in Assembly instead of normal hymns, and we'd tell each other the rude versions ("We three kings of Leicester Square, selling knickers tuppence a pair...") and dare each other to sing them instead.

At secondary school there was the Christmas Disco, no-uniform day, Christmas Kisses, covering one another with Silly String out of those spray cans, counting the number of cards you'd sent/got, exchanging cheap presents with your friends like boxes of Malteasers, arguing over what the Christmas Number One would be in the music charts.

It would be dark outside, and cold. Maybe it would snow, and we'd have a snowball fight on the way home, or go sledging in the Hollow using cushions or newspapers in bin liners because nobody had a real sledge. Walking back, everyone would have their curtains open so that you could see their Christmas tree all lit up (we don't decorate our houses/front gardens in the UK). You could look into everyone's living rooms and see happy families doing their normal, family things and cosy, domestic warmth.

And then... then... it would be time to go home.

Ah, home. No decorations, because Mum wasn't "quite sure where they are at the moment". No tree, because there was nowhere to put one "and the kids are too old anyway". Curtains firmly closed, Mum trying out explanations to see how they sounded: "Well, we might have the tree in the BACK room this year, and then they wouldn't be able to see it, would they?" Dad drunk as a skunk, sitting on the floor, guardian of the television. ("I was watching that! Turn it back over!" with his eyes still shut.) Only two clear chairs, so my sister and I had to sit on the stairs if for some unknown reason we wanted "family time", watching the telly between the bannister railings.

Upstairs in our bedrooms, pathetic childish attempts to "make it look like Christmas" - some elderly paper chains, some pictures we'd done at school, the paper snowflakes that we were allowed to bring home on the last day of term. When we were older, Christmas music on the ghetto blaster (sorry if that's not PC, I don't know what the proper name is) to drown out the arguments from downstairs. Carrier bags instead of stockings. Microwave food because "nobody really likes Turkey anyway, do they?" (reality: the oven was broken). Cheap presents - it wouldn't have mattered, if everything else had been right, but as things were it was just another disappointment.

When I was a kid, I would promise myself that when I was "grown up" I'd have proper Christmasses. And I do! That's one promise I've kept to my childhood self. I have brilliant Christmasses these days. I have a 7' tree (most people in the UK have artifical trees, not real ones) and I buy all new decorations every so often. I have scented candles, Christmas music, fully-stuffed stockings, little dishes of chocolates and nuts scattered about the place, the works. I buy a copy of the Radio Times (TV listings) and I watch every single thing that I want to watch and I throw it away when I'm done with it. And I cook a proper meal. So yeah, like VJ, Father Christmas is alive and well - it's not his fault he couldn't find my house when I was a kid.