Christmas Growing-Up

Christmas was by far my favorite holiday as a child! There was very little I did not like about Christmas Day and the weeks leading up to it. Maybe this is true of all children. If so, I was not an exception to the rule.

The first thing I remember is going to school early each morning to sing Christmas carols in the hall in front of the principals office. Each year the staff would decorate a large tree (at least it seemed very large to me as a child). We would sit around the base of the tree and sing song after song. The staff provided paper copies of the words so that we could sing every song with gusto, whether or not we knew the words. For example, I could never remember all 12 days of Christmas.

When Grandma Curtis decided to get rid of her artificial aluminum Christmas tree, I was very happy because my family receive it. Before then we would purchase a live tree from one of the seasonal lots that would pop up on Main Street each Christmas (there was one at Johnson's Texaco station as I remember). The tree had a rotating color wheel beneath that sat on the floor. The silver needles on the tree would reflect the colors from the wheel as a color passed in front of the light. I would lay on my back beneath the tree and watch the changing colors for hours.

Christmas morning after all the kids were awake we would line up by age and march into the front room. The night before we would have created a paper sign with our name on it and placed it where we wanted Santa to put our gifts. Santa did not wrap his gifts. And Santa was always more generous than our parents were.


When we were young our parents would give us each money to buy Christmas gifts for our family and friends. I think we each had $5.00 to work with. For this reason we gave each other inexpensive simple gifts. Lifesaver boxes were very popular. I think there were five or ten roles of different flavors in each box.

When I was older I was able to use my own money to buy larger family gifts. Probably the most memorable gift was a ping-pong table that I was able to sneak into the basement for Christmas morning.