Advent Calendar Dec 24th - Christmas Eve

As a child, Christmas Eve was simply the day before we got to open presents. It was so hard to settle down at bedtime, but before we did we always set out sugar cookies and a glass of milk for Santa. My sister and I would head off to bed and whisper for a long time about Santa coming, how was he going to get in (we had no fireplace or chimney) and what he would leave for us.

As a parent, Christmas Eve has turned into a busy day of getting the house ready for family to come over, preparations for the Christmas meal and trying to keep the kids out of the presents already under the tree. As in years past, we attend the early Christmas Eve service at our church filled with wonderful carols and the children's pageant depicting the story of the birth of Jesus. We always manage to be home right about bedtime, so we get out cookies and milk for Santa as well as carrots for the reindeer (my husband's tradition), then we read either a story about the nativity or The Night Before Christmas or both. It is so much fun to see the delight and anticipation in our children's faces. It brings back fond memories of our own childhood.

After the kids are in bed, there is something very peaceful about the quiet. It is a time for us to relax for the busy day to come and to reflect upon the miracle that occurred over 2000 years ago.

On behalf of my family, we send good tidings to you at Christmas and the whole year through.

Advent Calendar Dec 23rd - Christmas Sweetheart Memories

My husband and I met in college. We had known each other for a short period of time before we actually started dating. It started around Thanksgiving and I wasn't sure what would come of it, if anything. By Christmas, things were progressing well and we decided to exchange gifts after our Christmas break. That gave me a reprieve to go home and be able to shop for something at a major mall rather than the few shops in our small college town.

I remember the anxiety of trying to pick out the perfect gift. Something that was nice but that didn't say too much. He was close to graduation so I finally settled on a nice tie tack, thinking he would need that in his chosen career. I had no idea what to expect from him but felt this was appropriate given the brief period we'd really known each other. He gave me a very nice watch which I still have but no longer wear. I think he still has that tie tack, too.

That was 16 years ago. We have been married for 12 years and have two beautiful children. At the time I had no idea where it would lead, but am now so happy where it has gone and look forward to what the future may hold.

Advent Calendar Dec 22nd - Christmas and Deceased Relatives

While I have a pretty large extended family, most of whom I don't know, my immediate world growing up consisted of my maternal grandparents, my mom and my sister. There were no other family members that we saw at the holidays so there was never any real discussion about remembering those family members who had passed away.

However, all of that changed for the Christmas of 1993. That year was the first Christmas without my grandfather, my father figure. I was home for break from college and it was very surreal to not have him be there to do the whole "bah humbug" thing even though I think he secretly enjoyed having "the kids" around. I recall it being a very quiet day with some tears that were shed. Even though we were all still grieving his loss, we also tried to remember some good things about him that made us laugh.

Every holiday after that got easier, but there was, and still is, a definite profound loss by not having him around. I wish he were here to enjoy my girls as they marvel at the sights and sounds of Christmas. I know he would have loved them.

Advent Calendar Dec 21st - Christmas Music

I remember having the Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas record as a child and it could only be played once and while Grandpa wasn't in the house. {smile} Otherwise, our Christmas music was whatever played on the radio, which was usually tuned to a country station. I do recall the year that "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" came out as my grandfather thought it was absolutely hysterical. Grandma, on the other hand, not so much!

After I moved away from home, I slowly started collecting Christmas music cd's. I am a huge country music fan so it includes Alan Jackson, Brad Paisley and Garth Brooks. But we also listen to the big band era including a Glenn Miller Christmas album as well as Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. It just wouldn't be Christmas without listening to "White Christmas" as well as watching him sing it in the movie of the same name.

Over the years we have amassed quite a collection of Christmas music which is enough to load into the 10-disc changer and set it to random. I can listen to a variety of songs for hours on end. This year I did that while decorating the tree and then another full afternoon of music while baking and cleaning.

Advent Calendar Dec 20th - Religious Services

As a child, we never attended church at Christmas, Easter or any other time of the year. A few years after we married, my husband and I started attending a local Episcopal church which is the denomination he was raised in. Before children we attended the 11 p.m. service, but now we always attend the early service on Christmas Eve. Our oldest daughter was able to participate in the pageant last year and will reprise her role as one of the angels this year. Both our girls love music and we love to sing (off-key, of course) the Christmas carols. One of my favorites of the evening is Silent Night as I wrote about for footnoteMaven's blog caroling.

Advent Calendar Dec 19th - Christmas Shopping

Shopping was a distinct part of my childhood, no matter the time of the year. Once a week, my mother, grandmother, my sister and I would head to the local shopping areas followed by a trip to the grocery store. My mother has worked in retail most of my life so she always did a lot of our Christmas shopping at her store after her shift was over, rather than at the times we were with her. As we got older, I was given a small bit of money to buy my sister something and vice versa. When I got to high school and had my own job, I was able to buy something for my mom and sister with my own money.

I am usually good about starting in October and controlling the spending and making it all manageable. It's hard with two children to not go overboard when we know that each of the four grandparents are going to do something as well. I have even ventured out on a few Black Fridays primarily looking for great toy bargains that I donated to Toys For Tots.

In recent years, my husband and I will make a list of a few items we would like and go our separate shopping ways. We also will jointly discuss and shop for gifts for our parents, which usually includes photos or those great photo calendars filled with pictures of our girls.

I like to be done early with shopping so I can get it wrapped and shipped. Alas, that just did not happen this year.

Advent Calendar Dec 18th - Christmas Stockings

My mom made my sister and me each our own stocking when we were very little. They were from kits that she found in some stitchery catalog. They are made of felt and each had a different Christmas scene on the front. There was a lot of work involved in sewing all the pieces on and adding the beads and sequins. My sister and I always hung our stockings on the door knobs of the television cabinet in my grandparent's living room. I still have my stocking and used it up until about two years ago.


Last year my husband and I decided to buy four plain stockings and get an initial pin to put on each one to distinguish them for each of our family members. We have a fireplace where I place five metal stocking holders on the mantel that spell out Santa. As I placed them this year, I hung them in this order: D, A, M, T. I left the middle letter of the holders free of a stocking and instead hung a large decorative jingle bell on it. I never thought anything else about it until last week when my husband was sitting on the sofa facing the fireplace. He turned me to and said, "We need to have another baby and name it Isaac or Isabella or something so that our stockings spell D A M I T."

He's such a funny guy, damn it anyway!

Advent Calendar Dec 17th - The Year the Tree Fell Over

I'm sure my family can't be the only one that has had the catastrophe of the tree falling over.

At least I hope not.

I was in grade school, but don't recall my exact age. I do know that I was of the age that "good things came in big boxes" rather than the other way around. We had opened most of our presents and there were two large boxes tucked back behind the tree. I went to pull them out and in my hurry or struggle, I sent the live tree (with water in it's stand) toppling over. There was some water from the tree stand that was spilled and one of my glass Baby's First Christmas ornaments was broken in the melee. I remember feeling so bad about that beautiful glass ball ornament because my mother's good friend had given it to me.

And the big box......well it was either a pillow or a new blanket for my bed. Certainly not worthy of the disaster I caused!

Advent Calendar Dec 16th - Christmas at School

I remember lots of fun, festive activities at school including the annual Christmas party, learning various Christmas songs, and always the Christmas crafts or a gift for our parents.

Every year, it was tradition at my elementary school for the Kindergarten class to put on a pageant. I have no idea how long we must have spent rehearsing for this but I do remember we sang a couple of songs and each student had to stand in front of the microphone and recite a line from Clement Clarke Moore's "The Night Before Christmas". If I recall correctly, I had to recite this line, "More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled and shouted and called them by name". If I do say so myself, that's a pretty hard line for a five year old (with stage fright) to have to memorize. I know the teachers sent home a small slip of paper with instructions for our moms to help us memorize the line, and I remember my mom practicing with me. Somewhere there are some pictures of this momentous right of passage, but time constraints didn't allow me to track them down. Chances are I was wearing a plaid jumper.

And 30 years later, I still have no idea what "his coursers they came" actually means.

Advent Calendar Dec 15th - Holiday Happenings

Besides my sister's birthday that we celebrate each December, there are two other December events that I want to mention.

The first is the wedding anniversary of my second great-grandparents, Robert Nelson McNeill and Margaret Ledford. They were married Christmas Day 1877 in Mitchell Co, North Carolina.

The second is the marriage of my fourth great-grandfather Hector McNeill to his second wife, Martha "Patty" Gouge. They were married either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day some time during the 1860s in Mitchell Co, North Carolina.

The big January events that fall so close to Christmas include my mother's birthday, but also my grandfather Lee McNeill's birthday on 2 January 1912. That is also the date he and my grandmother married. 2010 would have been 65 years of marriage for them.

Advent Calendar Dec 14th - Fruitcake

Food soaked in booze....

Let me just say that it's the booze part that likely would have been the reason that I don't recall fruitcake every being around my home as a child. While my grandpa might have enjoyed that, grandma wouldn't have! I can recall one time years ago tasting fruitcake. I'm not a big fan of candied fruits anyway so it has never held any real appeal. I'd be willing to try a bite again if I knew it was going to be the good kind that other bloggers have raved about.

One other holiday food that for me ranks right up there with fruitcake is mincemeat. My mom and grandma used to make a mincemeat pie every Christmas that they, as well as my grandpa, enjoyed. I remember also trying one bite of that and not caring for it. I'm not even sure what mincemeat is, but the name alone doesn't make it particularly appealing.

Advent Calendar Dec 13th - Holiday Travel

Until I was in college, the extent of my holiday travel was going from one end of the house to the other. During my college days, I usually flew home rather than make the rather treacherous and guaranteed-to-be snowy drive home. After my husband and I married, we have tried to visit his family on the East Coast about every third Christmas.

In 1999 and 2002, we flew to New Jersey and spent a wonderful week with his family. His parents are divorced so we while we would stay with his mother, we split our time between each parent doing a variety of things, including shopping - New Jersey has the best malls! Other things included going to a Rutgers men's basketball game at the RAC, a New Jersey Devils game, and Christmas Eve services at the beautiful Episcopal church in my husband's hometown.

One of the favorite "touristy" things we did was go into New York City for a day. It was easy to catch the train near my mother-in-law's home to take into the City. We saw the beautiful Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center on both trips and wandered around the beautiful streets to Manhattan looking at the great department store windows. I remember seeing some at Bloomingdale's and going down to Herald's Square to see Macy's. We even went in that store just to ride the wooden escalator.

In 2002, our trip was especially somber as we took a cab down to Ground Zero. The cabbie wanted to drop us off a few blocks before so we walked past City Hall and crossed over to the Episcopal Church where so many of the rescue workers rested during those horrific days following September 11, 2001. The fierce winter winds blew all around us as we walked past the church towards the fenced off areas that once contained the magnificent World Trade Center. The chain link fences were very high and surrounded the entire area. At this point in time it was 15 months after the attacks, so cleanup was still very much going on. The large pieces of construction equipment looked like Tonka trucks as they worked the five or six stories below street level. I remember even seeing one building still with obvious damage from debris that had yet to be repaired. Manhattan is a VERY noisy place with much activity so it was truly amazing to be standing there in near silence. Many people just silently watched as the trucks worked. It was a very overwhelming and somber moment.

Advent Calendar Dec 12th - Charitable Work

As a child, I can't remember any instance of any member of my family doing charitable work during the holiday season. I do remember participating in a canned food drive either through Brownies or through school. The only other time a member of my family did charity work was my grandfather. He was a member of the Masonic Lodge and the Shriners. In one instance I recall my grandparents participated in a caravan to Salt Lake City to the children's hospital to take donations of food, clothing and the like, but I don't think that occurred around Christmas.

When I was in high school, I became involved with Key Club, which is the youth organization of Kiwanis International. Our group was very successful and had many members. We actively did local volunteer work throughout the year. One of the annual activities was helping at the local Salvation Army handing out food boxes to the recipients. We helped load the items in the family's vehicle, including their turkey and Christmas gifts. I believe they were also able to "shop" for any necessary clothing items their family may have needed. This was a very rewarding experience just to be able to see the joy on the children's faces when they saw some wrapped packages just for them.

In more recent times, we have participated in the Angel tree through our church where members select Angel tags that list the wishes of a child who has an incarcerated parent. Each child has two tags on the tree: one for clothing and one for a toy or two. Now that my oldest daughter is old enough to understand gifts, she helped this year in selecting a tag for a little four year old girl. My daughter helped shop for the toys, selected the wrapping paper and the bow. We impressed upon her that this little girl's parents may not be able to give her a present on Christmas morning so we were doing it instead and she seemed to understand the purpose.

I hadn't thought much more about it until watching the local evening news last week. One of the main stories was that our local Salvation Army was not likely to have enough food to meet the requests this year. My daughter turned to me and said, "Oh, Mommy, can we help those people?" My heart just melted. On Saturday we went to the grocery store early in the morning where she helped me shop for the items to donate. Our local NBC affiliate was having a big donation drive that day so we took several bags of groceries to help support their efforts to be donated to our local Rescue Mission, the Salvation Army or the local food bank. They received 21 tons of food that day. I am immensely proud of her for wanting to help and for understanding at her young age that there are others out there not as fortunate as she is.

Advent Calendar Dec 10th - Christmas Gifts

While I don't remember many specific gifts that we received as children, I do know that we usually received at least one of the things off our wish list or letter to Santa. It was always very exciting when the JCPenney catalog would arrive. Those were the days they still carried toys so my sister and I carefully examined every pink page in the toy section. We were allowed to mark things with our initial or maybe circling the item. Some pages had lots of marks!

A couple of the memorable standouts was my first bicycle with the training wheels and the blue and white banana seat. Another year my mom was able to get two of the hottest toys on the market: Cabbage Patch Kids. My mom is a great seamstress so we also got some handmade doll clothes for our new dolls.

Probably the most excitement every year was when the box from our paternal grandma came in the mail. It always seemed to be a good size box and held several wonderfully wrapped presents for each of us and always something for my mother, usually a sweater if I recall. However, one of the most distinct memories I have is not of what presents we received, but rather the way the presents smelled. My grandma has always worn Chanel No. 5 and the box and it's contents always had that lingering pleasant scent of her perfume. Still to this day when I walk past a department store's perfume counter and I smell Chanel No. 5, I always think of Grandma.

Advent Calendar Dec 9 - The Year We Had To Go Back To Bed

Like most children, my sister and I could hardly wait for Christmas morning to come. The rule was we could get up and go look at what Santa brought but we couldn't open anything until my mom and grandparents were up and seated in the living room, preferably with a cup of coffee and the camera at the ready.

We don't remember the exact year but it was the early 1980s and even today it still brings about fond memories and laughter. My sister and I might have been about 5 and 8 or 6 and 9, respectively. Neither of us remember who woke up first (we shared a bedroom), but one of us got the other awake. We ran to the living room and flipped on the lights. With loud little girl giggles and exclamations of glees, we discovered all the wonderful presents Santa had left for us. If I recall there was quite the spread including a bicycle. My sister thought it was mine, but I would have already had mine by that age, so likely it was her first two-wheeler.

And that was all the farther we got because my grandfather, whose bedroom was adjacent to the living room, got out of bed, came to his bedroom doorway and told us it was 4:30 a.m. and in no uncertain terms we had to go back to bed!

Oh the devastation and disappointment! Of course, we hadn't bothered to look at the clock. We were kids! So we shut off the light and managed to get back to our room. We climbed back into bed and I remember whispering back and forth for quite a while because, of course, we were too keyed up to go back to sleep. Sleep finally came and we didn't wake up for the second time until after 8 a.m., which was long past the normal time of present opening!

I'm guessing Grandpa probably dozed in the chair that afternoon.

Advent Calendar Dec 8th - Christmas Cookies

I always loved the day every year when mom announced it was time to make sugar cookies. It was just painful to have to wait for her to mix the dough and then for it to chill. Finally it would be time to roll it out (and to sneak a few bites of the yummy dough) and my sister and I could select which cookie cutters we wanted to use. I remember we had a tree, an angel, two stars, and a large gingerbread man. After they baked and cooled, mom would mix up some powdered sugar frosting and drop in a few drops of food coloring. We always had red, green and yellow frosting and some years we had sprinkles. It was always a delightful time, but the very best thing was getting to eat one.

Since I missed the deadline for the Geneabloggers' Holiday 2009 cookbook, I am including a link here to my all-time favorite cookie, Jubilee Jumbles. I remember my grandmother making this cookie throughout the year even though apparently it is considered to be a Christmas cookie. The link provided states the contributor found this in the 1969 Betty Crocker cookbook, but I believe my grandma said hers came from an old Workbasket magazine. These are just wonderfully soft (almost cake-like) cookies with a browned butter glaze.

I have yet to make any cookies this year, but am considering finding recipes that represent some of my children's heritage, such as these Polish Kolacky cookies, or these delicious Norwegian almond bars that I found a year or two ago. If this idea sticks, then I'll have to find cookie recipes that are representative of England, Germany and Scotland to round it out. Any suggestions?

Advent Calendar Dec 7th - Holiday Parties

To say that my family members were not "party people" is a supreme understatement. All of our Christmas festivities were kept to ourselves. I believe that after my mother started working she did attend her annual Christmas dinner, but otherwise the only other party we were involved in was the Christmas party at school. Every year the "room mothers" brought in various treats and punch for all the kids. I remember it being a delightful time and we were full of sugar and sent home to our parents! Some of those treats included frosted sugar cookies, occasionally cupcakes (sometimes baked in an ice cream cone), or my all-time favorite were the jello-flavored popcorn balls. For Christmas they were cherry or strawberry, orange for Halloween, and usually something pink or maybe green for Easter. Of course, those were the days when the public school I attended allowed parties with the Christian titles. Now my daughter as a Harvest Party, a Holiday Party, etc.

The first year or two of our marriage, we attended my husband's company party. Those were the golden years of the company and they went all out. The one I distinctly remember was held at a local sports arena and concert venue. Of course this was also the location of our local hockey team, so to hold the party they put flooring down over the ice rink. Did I mention this party was semi-formal so I spent a cold evening in dress heels standing on flooring not six inches above very frozen ice? This company also offered an annual Children's Party with free games, those big blow-up jump houses and slides, crafts, cookies, etc. They also had some very wonderful Santas that you could stand in line to visit and get a photo. Unfortunately the economy has taken precedent and this is the first year in my husband's twelve years with the company that it will not be offered. I hope some day times will turn around enough that they can offer this again. The only admission charge is canned food for our local food bank.

In more recent times we have attended my employer's annual sit-down dinner. My company is quite generous and we always have a wonderful meal followed by either entertainment or dancing, and each year there is a lovely gift for each employee. We have three locations so the dinner seating arrangements are always such that you get to visit with those in other offices that you don't see very frequently. It's always fun and it's nice to see the bosses "let their hair down", so to speak. I don't think it's unusual for a spouse to not want to go to the other spouse's work party, but this party isn't like that. Everyone is absolutely made to feel welcome. It's really one of the most well done parties I've ever had the privilege of attending.

Advent Calendar Dec 6th - Santa Claus

It was a tradition at my elementary school that all the second graders would write a short letter to Santa Claus and they were all published in the local weekly newspaper. At the time, all I could think about was what exactly I wanted to write. In hindsight, I'm sure it was a good lesson in letter writing and sentence structure.

If I recall my letter was worded something like this:

Dear Santa,
How are you? How are the reindeers? I would like a Pink and Pretty Barbie.
From Tracy

Somewhere I still have that circa 1982 newspaper clipping with my letter along with the letters of my other 60 to 70 peers.

And evidence that Santa read the Owyhee Avalanche: he did bring me the Pink and Pretty Barbie that year!

Advent Calendar Dec 5th - Outdoor Decorations

As a child, my family never put up outdoor decorations of any kind. I think perhaps after I was in junior high my mother brought home a set of blinking or moving lights to wrap around the small tree by our apartment's front door.

It wasn't until I was married that outdoor decorations became a routine. After we purchased our first home, we decided to wrap some lights and garland around the white front porch railing. From there it escalated into white lights on the shrubs, and then on the roofline. It got even more elaborate after we made friends with the neighbors down the street who must have been the favorite customer at the power company! My husband would help that husband and vice versa.

After we had children, our time was more restricted and we now only decorate our front pillars with some garland and lights as well as with some white snowflakes along the two front flower beds. I also have this wooden "lightpost" that is lit with white lights and garland that always sits by the front door. This year my daughter could hardly wait to decorate so she thought if she helped Dad, he might be more motivated to do it. I bundled her up and sent her out. According to my husband she was a good helper for a while but then lost interest. However, she can now appreciate the work involved. This was proven last week after we were driving past a heavily decorated home. From the backseat, I heard the typical "ooohs" and "aaahs" followed by "Wow, that must have been a lot of hard work!"

Advent Calendar Dec 4th - Christmas Cards

As a child, I remember my mother and grandmother receiving Christmas cards from friends and family and oftentimes that was their only communication with those individuals during the whole year. Many of my mother's cards would include photos of their children and she would always include our school pictures in the cards she sent.

After I became an adult, I started sending my own cards. After we married, my list became our list and my husband's family and close friends were added. It varies every year but we have on average about 40 cards that we send every year. I do remember our first Christmas as a married couple, I made color copies of some wedding snapshots to send to those friends and family who could not attend. I don't remember if it was that year or a year or two later that I began writing an annual Christmas letter but it has now become a tradition.

What I didn't realize at the time was that I was recording our own family history each December. I have most of then saved as Word documents and some I even have extra copies on the Christmas-themed paper that I didn't trash after all the cards were mailed. I need to gather as many of those together into a scrapbook as possible. It would be a simple way to include our family stories with a couple of photos. Perhaps one day my own grandchildren and great-grandchildren can marvel at the way our lives were lived.