Most of the Christmases during the time I was growing up except one are all like a rerun of each other. I have already covered the one different one earlier in this blog. The rest of them are memorable not for anything special, but for their similarity.
I won’t classify us as poor, but money was always tight. We didn’t really want for anything, but there were no frills. Dad always managed to buy a tree at Christmas time, and it wasn’t always very pretty. However, we did decorate it with the glass ornaments and lights. It usually went up about a week before Christmas. Startimg when I was in the third grad, we went to Midnight Mass on Christmas eve. The biggest reason for that was Bob and I were servers and had to participate in Midnight Mass forming a large group of lit candle holders. After mass we went home and jumped into bed.
Christmas morning, we got up and there was always one or two gifts for each of us that mysteriously appeared overnight under the tree. One of the items would be something that we had hinted about wanting, and the other was usually underwear or socks that we really needed. There would be little bowls of candy for us.
Christmas dinner would be either ham or fried chicken with all the trimmings. Mom was a really good cook and could make the simplest things taste out of this world.
Even though they all run together, they are all very warm memories of the Christmases growing up.
