Sarah's Top 10 Christmas Memories
Here it is…what you’ve all been waiting for: Sarah’s Top 10 Christmas Memories. I figure you all got enough helpful tips from the Thanksgiving edition. This time I’ll let the hilarity of my own life amuse you. By popular demand, this list has been created, updated, quotated, translated, and G-rated for your reading pleasure:
10. Faking Jenny out with the Barbie dream house. My sister is so damn set in her ways that she insists that we each have a “side” of the tree that our gifts would go under when we were kids. You can only imagine the horror when, poor dad - after having assembled the damn dream house all night-, made the mistake and put it on my side instead. Not only did Jenny think that she had gotten a ridiculous plastic kitchen set, but she saw HER dream house on MY side.
9. My dog ate my Christmas cookies. Some of you may remember my spastic dog, Belle. Well, we had done a HUGE cookie exchange through mom’s work and with what cookies we received we split them 3 ways for mom, Jen and I. Jen accidentally left her Tupperware FULL of cookies on the counter - as opposed to on top of the fridge like mom and I. The dog actually chewed through the Tupperware and ate every last cookie. She got really sick too. We shouldn’t be surprised though. This is the dog that ate paper-towels soaked in bacon grease.
8. Making play-dough ornaments. I have to be highly descriptive in this one. Jen and I made play-dough ornaments shaped like Christmas trees at school and they had a little hole cut out of the back where we glued in our school picture. Very cute, right? Well, one might look at the difference in quality and then attest to the difference because of the three year age difference between Jen and me. I happen to think that the difference is highly applicable to the difference in our personalities today, even as our age gap has come close to closing. Jen’s looked something like this: a nice bright green tree with 3 or 4 different colored balls of play-dough to serve as ornaments. In her picture she is smiling properly with her hands on her lap. Mine: Baby-food peas/puke green tree with about 3 or 4 different colors mashed together to make crazy looking ornaments of very varying sizes. In the picture I have the lovely bowl cut that my mom had me sporting for so long and a look on my face like I just stole the last cookie from the jar and don’t care that it turned to crumbs in my pocket. Gonna eat it anyway.
7. Communion Blunders, part une: Jen seems to think this is horrible, but I think it’s hilarious. One year our church did Christmas Eve communion where you walked up front with the other members of your pew, grabbed a piece of bread and then dipped it in the grape juice chalice. Yeah, well I dropped my bread in the chalice. To make things worse I want in fishing for it. It wasn’t as though fingers went into the juice. I had long enough nails to pick it right out. I get shit for this all the time, though.
6. Neena’s Christmas picture torture. The first few years we lived in Colorado Neena bought Jen and I these fabulous (-ly hideous) Christmas sweat-suits that she would dress us up in and go to K-mart to have our pictures taken. When my next oldest cousin, Elizabeth, was born she got to join in the fun too. We would trade who got to wear red, green, or white each year. The pictures are pretty horrid. There are various stages of lost teeth, mullet hair cuts, and my ever-present Koolaid mustache. Good stuff.
5. Faking Jenny out, part deux. This happened many years after the dream house incident. I bought Jen some concert tickets and I was very pleased with myself and this gift. I didn’t want to just hand her an envelope Christmas day, though. Oh no. I had to do something far more creative. $5 later at Walmart I had the nastiest looking red and black leopard print pleather bra and thong set. I took glittery letter stickers and monogrammed everything and then taped the tickets to the crotch of the thong. Until Christmas I warned Jenny that she had better be nice to me or I would make her open the gift at Neena and Pa’s house in front of the whole family.
4. The “Life of Christ Laser Lights Show.” Last year Jen and I were in Texas for Christmas, visiting dad and MaryAnn. We went with some of MaryAnn’s family to their very large, almost commercialized church. The Christmas Eve service was complete with a small ice rink on stage, a live nativity reenactment (real camels and an elephant involved - INSIDE the church) and, of course, what Jenny and I have dubbed the “Life of Christ Laser Lights Show.” Just imagine watching scenes from “The Passion of the Christ” on the big screen while fog and lasers tantalize your curious, yet somewhat fearful eyes. We were just waiting for the Pink Floyd to start playing…
3. Tying the car doors shut. A few years back Mom, Jen, and I were finally ready to put on a great Christmas all by ourselves, without a man involved. We went to the tree farm, picked out a real nice one and had the guy put it on the roof. After that it was all up to us. We busted out the twine, I got inside the car, rolled down the windows and helped Jen and mom pass the twine through the open windows to tie the tree down. Then, Success! The tree was firmly attached. The car doors were firmly tied shut with me inside. We laughed so hard and what a great lesson: drive an SUV with a rack on top.
2. Communion Blunders, part deux. Another communion service. Another church. Another year. We had arrived late and we were in the back of the church, in the dark and communion was “pass around the basket” style. This wasn’t a basket, though. These were paper thin wafers that tasted like *gasp* paper. Jen got hers, put it in her mouth and was suddenly panic-stricken and fearful that she had grabbed the paper from the bottom of the basket instead of an actual wafer. She leaned over to mom and whispered, “I think I ate the paper!” They couldn’t stop laughing and got death glares from Neena and Pa until they were able to control themselves.
1. Granny’s breast pump. I wasn’t even actually present for this story, but it’s just about my favorite holiday story from my family. My grandfather used to videotape Christmas morning at their house so that they could mail it to us in Georgia and we wouldn’t feel like we were missing as much. Ok, so Pa was filming and everyone is opening gifts left and right. Everyone is in their element…including Granny (Neena’s mother, my great-grandmother). She is in her usual chair slowly opening gifts. She pulls one in particular out of its box and says, “Who got me a breast pump??” All of a sudden the camera takes a bit of a tumble and the video goes to black. When the picture comes back on everyone has moved on to other gifts. Apparently they took a moment off camera to inform Granny that the gift was a horn for her walker. Turns out that was the gift from us in Georgia.
Well, there you have it. It’s not all pretty and some of it is “you just had to be there” material, but they are my favorite Christmas memories. I’m sure there will be more down the road and I certainly look forward to them. I think it builds character. So there.
10. Faking Jenny out with the Barbie dream house. My sister is so damn set in her ways that she insists that we each have a “side” of the tree that our gifts would go under when we were kids. You can only imagine the horror when, poor dad - after having assembled the damn dream house all night-, made the mistake and put it on my side instead. Not only did Jenny think that she had gotten a ridiculous plastic kitchen set, but she saw HER dream house on MY side.
9. My dog ate my Christmas cookies. Some of you may remember my spastic dog, Belle. Well, we had done a HUGE cookie exchange through mom’s work and with what cookies we received we split them 3 ways for mom, Jen and I. Jen accidentally left her Tupperware FULL of cookies on the counter - as opposed to on top of the fridge like mom and I. The dog actually chewed through the Tupperware and ate every last cookie. She got really sick too. We shouldn’t be surprised though. This is the dog that ate paper-towels soaked in bacon grease.
8. Making play-dough ornaments. I have to be highly descriptive in this one. Jen and I made play-dough ornaments shaped like Christmas trees at school and they had a little hole cut out of the back where we glued in our school picture. Very cute, right? Well, one might look at the difference in quality and then attest to the difference because of the three year age difference between Jen and me. I happen to think that the difference is highly applicable to the difference in our personalities today, even as our age gap has come close to closing. Jen’s looked something like this: a nice bright green tree with 3 or 4 different colored balls of play-dough to serve as ornaments. In her picture she is smiling properly with her hands on her lap. Mine: Baby-food peas/puke green tree with about 3 or 4 different colors mashed together to make crazy looking ornaments of very varying sizes. In the picture I have the lovely bowl cut that my mom had me sporting for so long and a look on my face like I just stole the last cookie from the jar and don’t care that it turned to crumbs in my pocket. Gonna eat it anyway.
7. Communion Blunders, part une: Jen seems to think this is horrible, but I think it’s hilarious. One year our church did Christmas Eve communion where you walked up front with the other members of your pew, grabbed a piece of bread and then dipped it in the grape juice chalice. Yeah, well I dropped my bread in the chalice. To make things worse I want in fishing for it. It wasn’t as though fingers went into the juice. I had long enough nails to pick it right out. I get shit for this all the time, though.
6. Neena’s Christmas picture torture. The first few years we lived in Colorado Neena bought Jen and I these fabulous (-ly hideous) Christmas sweat-suits that she would dress us up in and go to K-mart to have our pictures taken. When my next oldest cousin, Elizabeth, was born she got to join in the fun too. We would trade who got to wear red, green, or white each year. The pictures are pretty horrid. There are various stages of lost teeth, mullet hair cuts, and my ever-present Koolaid mustache. Good stuff.
5. Faking Jenny out, part deux. This happened many years after the dream house incident. I bought Jen some concert tickets and I was very pleased with myself and this gift. I didn’t want to just hand her an envelope Christmas day, though. Oh no. I had to do something far more creative. $5 later at Walmart I had the nastiest looking red and black leopard print pleather bra and thong set. I took glittery letter stickers and monogrammed everything and then taped the tickets to the crotch of the thong. Until Christmas I warned Jenny that she had better be nice to me or I would make her open the gift at Neena and Pa’s house in front of the whole family.
4. The “Life of Christ Laser Lights Show.” Last year Jen and I were in Texas for Christmas, visiting dad and MaryAnn. We went with some of MaryAnn’s family to their very large, almost commercialized church. The Christmas Eve service was complete with a small ice rink on stage, a live nativity reenactment (real camels and an elephant involved - INSIDE the church) and, of course, what Jenny and I have dubbed the “Life of Christ Laser Lights Show.” Just imagine watching scenes from “The Passion of the Christ” on the big screen while fog and lasers tantalize your curious, yet somewhat fearful eyes. We were just waiting for the Pink Floyd to start playing…
3. Tying the car doors shut. A few years back Mom, Jen, and I were finally ready to put on a great Christmas all by ourselves, without a man involved. We went to the tree farm, picked out a real nice one and had the guy put it on the roof. After that it was all up to us. We busted out the twine, I got inside the car, rolled down the windows and helped Jen and mom pass the twine through the open windows to tie the tree down. Then, Success! The tree was firmly attached. The car doors were firmly tied shut with me inside. We laughed so hard and what a great lesson: drive an SUV with a rack on top.
2. Communion Blunders, part deux. Another communion service. Another church. Another year. We had arrived late and we were in the back of the church, in the dark and communion was “pass around the basket” style. This wasn’t a basket, though. These were paper thin wafers that tasted like *gasp* paper. Jen got hers, put it in her mouth and was suddenly panic-stricken and fearful that she had grabbed the paper from the bottom of the basket instead of an actual wafer. She leaned over to mom and whispered, “I think I ate the paper!” They couldn’t stop laughing and got death glares from Neena and Pa until they were able to control themselves.
1. Granny’s breast pump. I wasn’t even actually present for this story, but it’s just about my favorite holiday story from my family. My grandfather used to videotape Christmas morning at their house so that they could mail it to us in Georgia and we wouldn’t feel like we were missing as much. Ok, so Pa was filming and everyone is opening gifts left and right. Everyone is in their element…including Granny (Neena’s mother, my great-grandmother). She is in her usual chair slowly opening gifts. She pulls one in particular out of its box and says, “Who got me a breast pump??” All of a sudden the camera takes a bit of a tumble and the video goes to black. When the picture comes back on everyone has moved on to other gifts. Apparently they took a moment off camera to inform Granny that the gift was a horn for her walker. Turns out that was the gift from us in Georgia.
Well, there you have it. It’s not all pretty and some of it is “you just had to be there” material, but they are my favorite Christmas memories. I’m sure there will be more down the road and I certainly look forward to them. I think it builds character. So there.