"So This is Christmas" Geneameme

So I go most of the last six months without posting at all, and decide on the holidays as the perfect time to start writing again. It's not like I have anything else going on, right? I'm not busy these days, right? In the spirit of "Why not write 4 posts in 1 week, when I couldn't write 1 post in 4 months?" I'm participating in Sharn White's "So This is Christmas" Geneameme.

SO THIS IS CHRISTMAS - GENEMEME 2014

1.WHAT KIND OF CHRISTMAS DID YOU HAVE AS A CHILD?
Our Christmases were religious - we always went to Mass on Christmas morning - but primarily they were family-oriented. We always spent Christmas Eve with my mother's family, having a big Italian fish dinner with 30-50 people, and Christmas Day with my father's family, which was much smaller at only 16-20 people.

2. WHERE DID YOU SPEND  CHRISTMAS?
Because we were lucky enough to have both sides of our family close living nearby, we always woke up in our own beds on Christmas morning, and yet were still able to see all of our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, who we visited either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

3. A LETTER AND SOMETHING YUMMY FOR SANTA
We always wrote letters to Santa. Once, several months after Christmas, I found them hidden in a cabinet above the fridge. When I showed them to my Dad, he assured me that he had made copies to mail to Santa, even though he'd held on to the originals.

4. THE CHRISTMAS TREE
We always had a live Christmas tree, usually from a small local farm. (They only grew vegetables, but sold trees in the winter anyway.) Sometimes the whole family would go pick it out, but more often my mom would stay home to get ready for dinner and decorating while my dad took my sisters and I. We always listened to Christmas music on the way, sometimes for the first time that year. I distinctly remember the year someone quickly grabbed a Christmas cassette out of storage on the way out the door and it turned out to be my mom's Joni Mitchell tape. We ended up listening to "River" - not exactly an upbeat carol - on the way to get the tree and were not happy about it.

5. DECORATING THE CHRISTMAS TREE
We all helped decorate the tree. My mom would usually make appetizers - particularly those little mini quiches and pigs in a blanket - which we would eat while we decorated and listened to Christmas music (most often "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and Stevie Wonder's Christmas album).

6. DID YOU DECORATE OUTDOORS?
We always decorated outdoors, with lights, wooden soldiers, and a Nativity scene. Dad did most of the work, but we all helped. My major contribution was untangling the strings of lights.

7. CHRISTMAS CARDS
We always sent and received cards, which was mostly my mom's domain. I remember always being very excited to be get to open cards as they arrived, and excitement that lasted until I was really too old for that - at least into college. The cards were always strung on twine and hung around the dining room doorway.

8. CHRISTMAS STOCKINGS
We all had stockings, which hung by the fireplace. I liked my stocking, but it had my name written on it in glitter that was really quite ugly - or maybe it had once been pretty and had gotten icky and worn out over the years. Both of my sisters had their names written on their stockings quite nicely, and I was always jealous.

9. CHRISTMAS PRESENTS
We always got presents from our parents and Santa on Christmas morning, and from other relatives on Christmas Eve or at Christmas dinner. Eventually, the number of kids got too be too much to handle, and the presents from other family members were scaled back considerably.

10. YOUR FAVOURITE CHRISTMAS PRESENT
Honestly, I have no idea. Maybe my bike? Not because I was more excited for it than for anything else at the time, but because I'm still using it on a daily basis 10+ years later!

11. WAS THERE A PRESENT YOU WANTED BUT NEVER RECEIVED?
I wouldn't say I had an unrealistic Christmas present I never received, but I spent several years wanting "young" Barbies - a Skipper, or maybe there were Barbie babies at some point? All I knew was that both of my sisters had Barbie "kids" and I wanted some but never got them. I'm sure there were tons of gifts I asked for but didn't get over the years, and I have no idea why this one tiny thing sticks out in my mind after all this time!

12. DID YOU GIVE GIFTS TO TEACHERS AND FRIENDS AT SCHOOL?
Once I hit about middle school, I remember always giving gifts to friends. Usually they were little trinkety things like small candles, candies, etc. I'm sure we also gave gifts to my teachers (I hope), but I have no real recollection of that.

13. CHRISTMAS FOOD
Oh the food! Our real Christmas feast was always Christmas Eve. Being Italian, we always had fish on Christmas Eve - baked clams, raw clams, fried shrimp (that was my mom's job), spaghetti with squid. And then lobster! It's everyone's favorite night of the year.

14. A SPECIAL CHRISTMAS RECIPE
We're still having the same big Christmas Eve dinners, although most people now buy, rather than make, their contributions. My mom is the one main exception - she always spends Christmas Eve morning up to her elbows in flour-coated shrimp, frying them for the evening's meal. I know that while my grandmother was alive, she appreciated that my mom still took the time to do it by hand.

15. CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS
See the above description of our Christmas Eve feasts. After dinner, there's always dancing!

16. CHRISTMAS MUSIC
We always listened to pretty standard Christmas music. I know that my paternal grandmother, who was Irish, loved the song "Feliz Navidad," and because my mom loves it, the main soundtrack of our Christmas was always Vince Guaraldi's "A Charlie Brown Christmas." When I was in Kindergarten, I was chosen as 1 of 3 girls to get up on stage at the annual Christmas concert and dance in a bathing suit and grass skirt while an older grade sang "Mele Kalikimaka."


17. YOUR FAVOURITE CHRISTMAS CAROL
There are lots that I love, of course. "Mele Kalikimaka" has fond memories for me because of the aforementioned Christmas concert. I've always loved "Away in a Manger," although now that I'm the parent of a newborn, the line "no crying he makes" makes me laugh. Jesus was human, right? That's the point of the Incarnation. And human babies - trust me on this - they cry. As I got older, I began to really love "We Three Kings," too.


18. CHRISTMAS PARTIES
I don't remember the specifics of many parties, or of parties that were annual traditions when I was a kid, except that for many years my dad's extended family had a party a day or two after Christmas which was great, because I got to know my second cousins pretty well over the years. As a college student, my roommate and I always hosted a Christmas party in which we insisted that our friends behave like grownups for once and at least wear fancy clothes while they got drunk. It was always a roaring success.

19. CHRISTMAS CONCERTS/PLAYS
As mentioned above, I was a dancer in the Christmas concert the year I was in Kindergarten. We had Christmas or holiday concerts every year after that; the only other one that bears mentioning was that in 2nd grade (I was in Catholic school at the time), I was an angel in our Nativity play.

20. CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS
Because it was winter, we were often a bit cooped up inside, unless it happened to be good weather for playing outside in the snow. Since Christmas usually fell towards the beginning of the break, I guess we probably spent most of our time playing with our new toys!

21. WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST CHRISTMAS MEMORY?
My memory is not particularly vivid, but I do remember my sister having chicken pox at Christmas one year. I couldn't have been older than 3.