We started talking in the office last week about our favorite Christmas memories, and it really took us back to a simpler time.
OK, so the conversation really wasn’t that relaxed and nostalgic. I had to write a column, and I yelled, ‘OK, people — I’m on deadline — I need your Christmas memories right now!”
But it did start a fun and lengthy conversation.
The youngest woman remembered an experience from when she was only 2 or 3 years old.
“I got a red tricycle for Christmas, and I was allowed to ride it around the living room. Well, the coffee table had square edges, and I fell off my tricycle and hit the coffee table, and I have a huge scar on my forehead because of it,” she said. Even though she was young, she said, she remembers her family “freaking out” and arguing about whether to take her to the emergency room. She ended up going and getting stitches.
Another memory started when she was 10 and continued through high school. She said when school was out every year during Christmas break, she and her mother put together a 10,000-piece puzzle of the Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany. It was her mother’s favorite architecture, and she wanted to see it in person someday. Her mother has since died, so my friend says one of her dreams is to go to the castle during Christmas, “so I can see it snowing like it was in our puzzle.”
Some memories were funny.
A woman in her early 50s recalled a Christmas when she was about 7 and her parents bought a blue-spruce tree. After Christmas, the sanitation department charged to pick up the trees that had been thrown out — a whopping $2.50, my friend recalled. Her frugal parents (that’s being generous — her dad apparently squeaked when he walked) decided they weren’t going to pay it. Her dad had a plan.
“My dad got a chain saw and chopped down the tree in the living room!” she said. That night, they shoved all the pieces into the fireplace and lit it. The creosote-soaked tree burned like crazy, and it almost burned down the house, she said. The fire department came and brought huge fans, she recalled, and all the windows had to be opened, letting in the frigid air. The wool rugs and her mother’s custom draperies were ruined. “The whole side of the house had to be redone,” she said. That cost a lot more than $2.50.
My favorite part of the story, though, was that she said her little nana sat calmly on the couch the whole time, and when the excitement — and fire — had died down, Nana said: “To heck with this; let’s turn on Ed Sullivan.”
Still another co-worker has a treasured memory about Santa. Her family always opened all their presents on Christmas Eve because, as she told it, her mother was too excited to wait till Christmas. The co-worker, who was then about 5 years old, and her sister were in their little polyester ruffly shorty pajamas and their fake-fur bonnet-type hats that tied at the chin (I had one, too — we were cool in the late ’60s), and they were about to go play outside. All of a sudden, they heard sleigh bells, hoof steps on the roof and the thud of a sleigh.
They were going crazy trying to figure out what was happening, and Santa suddenly appeared in their living room. They sat on his lap, and he pulled out presents from his sack. This woman’s favorite was a “walking, growling Panda bear, and he was on a gold leash.” She imitated his growl. “I loved that bear,” she said, wistfully.
Our newest employee’s favorite Christmas memory is of when she was 10 or 11 and had the measles. Now, one would think that would be a worst Christmas memory, but she explained.
“I guess everybody just felt really sorry for me because I had the measles, and it was Christmas. Everybody sent all my presents there because I couldn’t go anywhere. It was the most laid-back Christmas,” she said. Her mother was a single mom, and it was just the two of them.
Her mother bought her new bedding, including a “mosquito-net bed canopy” in seafoam green. “”It was like I was in quarantine, but that wasn’t why she got it.” My co-worker remembers that she snuggled underneath the canopy with all her Barbies.
“We just played all day. Even though I didn’t feel good, I remember that feeling of happiness and contentment and not having to run anywhere,” she said.
I wish you all a healthy, happy, contented, fireproof Christmas. And, if all else fails, find a rerun of The Ed Sullivan Show and relax.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.