I was the youngest girl in the family. I had one younger brother and four older sisters. Christmas time for our family was always a time when family would gather around and laugh and sing and exchange gifts. I remember one doll that I received when I was about four years old. She was called a Chatty Cathy. As I got older the dolls did too, I remember getting a Skipper, a Barbie, a Madge and a Ken doll. My neighbor Sherree and I spent hours playing dolls. We both had quite an imagination back then. Sherree has a grown daughter now and we rarely get to see each other anymore but the memories of our friendship will be with me always. Like the time that her Dad got this big cedar Christmas tree. It was so big that it touched the ceiling. When it was decorated it was the most beautiful thing I think that I have ever seen. The smell of the tree made their whole house smell like Christmas.
There have been many traditions that have been passed down in our family through the years. The one that I like the most is how on Christmas the whole family goes to my parent's house. There are wall-to-wall people. All of my sisters and my brother and their families go. It is the one time of the year when I get to see everyone all at once. This year there will be over 30 people there at one time, five generations. The oldest being my Grandfather who is 97 and the youngest my grandson JonPaul who will be 20 months in December.
I recently took JonPaul to the mall shopping. The giant Christmas tree stands in the center of the mall along with other decorations for the Santa Booth. JonPaul stood at the bottom of the Christmas tree and looked way up at it. I remembered two years before taking his sister Desiree who is now seven to see Santa Claus at that same mall. I wondered if he would like Santa as much as she did. He is just now beginning to understand a little about the something very wonderful that is going to happen next month.
There used to be this tiny manger scene that my mother used to put out at Christmas with her other decorations. It had Mary and Joseph and Jesus in a small wooden crib that looked like a bin where hay is stored. I was also taught from an early age that Christmas was when we celebrated the birth of Jesus. When my children were small the story of Jesus and how he was born was one I would read to them for bedtime. There were also some more commercial things that were tradition in our house.
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