Christmas Long Ago

Christmas Day to me is a conglomeration of all the ones which have been before.

The Christmas I was in the first grade my brother was born on Christmas Eve. Even though my sister, Jennie, and I were uprooted and shuffled off to Grandma and Grandpa's up the street we didn't care, all the better, and we got a baby brother, Mike, for Christmas.

Then there were the Christmas's when we watched the bubble lights, and the church programs where Jennie and I always ended up the angels even though it was a bit of a mistake in casting. The Christmas when Mother went on a snickerdoodle rampage and made hundreds (it seemed) of dozens of snickerdoodles! Christmas when my girls were growing up and how wonderful it was to have them with me, of me learning to put a bike together in the middle of the night, working at the flower shop until my legs felt like stubs, the girls and I making cookies, the year the cat kept knocking the tree down.

One of the sweetest memories of growing up was probably from the age of 6 to about 12. We didn't have much money and growing up we ate a lot of wild game - elk and deer. Grandpa saved the hides and then they were turned in for money to a company which dealt in things like that. For some unknown reason Jennie and I always thought that hide money was ours??????? I guess because Grandpa said it was and we rode down to the place with him to collect it. Grandpa split the money between us and we both ended up with about 7 or 8 dollars. We would spend the next day Christmas shopping at the dime store for EVERYONE. We bought things for our siblings, Mother and Daddy, Grandma and Grandpa, our uncle, our dogs, the neighbors, our friends. Then we'd come home and wrap everything. We really stretched those dollars and had so much fun.

This day was very quiet and I guess a good day to think about these things. Diane