Question of the Day, Friday, Christmas Day! 2020

posiepurrs

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Our most interesting was probably the year my eldest was in kindergarten. School closed the day before Christmas Eve. He woke up Christmas eve really ill. We went off to the doctors. He had scarlet fever. Around 2 AM Christmas morning my daughter woke up ill and then when my youngest got up to open the gifts, he threw up all over them. I knew what was wrong and that medication should not wait. Luckily, my best friends husband was a doctor and they lived across the street from us. I called to ask if he thought it necessary for us to go to the ER on Christmas Day. He came over checked the kids out and wrote prescriptions for them and told my husband where he could get them filled. I could have hugged him! I really didn't want to spend Christmas Day sitting in the ER with 2 sick kids!!!
 

di and bob

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My most 'interesting' Christmas was when we drove 350 miles through a raging blizzard to get to my inlaws ranch in a remote place in South Dakota. My husband insisted it wasn't that bad, although you couldn't see in front of the hood of the car and couldn't even see where the highway was! I'm talking remote, neighbors were 25 miles apart, their ranch was 50 miles from the nearest town. It took us like 12 hours to get there and the 70mph winds created drifts taller than the house. I just remember my husband yelling (quite often) that if he could stop, he would put me in the trunk!
We helped them feed the cattle the next morning, the actual temperature was 20 below zero, and with the horrible 60mph wind, the wind chill temp was 90 below zero. All exposed skin had to be covered, and you got white spots of frostbit skin within minutes. The ice on the tanks was like a foot thick and had to be broke and lifted off with pitchforks! The only bright spot was a calf being born on Christmas day, thank goodness in the barn, and her name was Noel.
 

Xraystyle

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Honestly none of my Christmases have been overly interesting in good ways or bad ways. The past few years of course have been pretty much non-events for me although I skype call with my family. Last year I flew back from Hanoi on Christmas, so basically missed the whole day. One year I think my favorite band had a concert on Christmas Eve so that was fun.

Oh! Over the course of a week of Christmas vacation in 6th grade I broke both of my arms playing soccer! I had a goalkeeper training session and blocked a ball just as an older boy was kicking it and thought I'd just sprained my wrist, so we got a brace and that weekend we had the Christmas indoor soccer tournament, so I was playing in goal and went to block a shot but the girl kicked my other arm. The worst thing was that the ref didn't see it, so when I dropped the ball and it went into the net, he counted it as a goal! I was so angry! And also in pain.
I actually tried to play in our next game out on the field, but the movement was too much and a guy who had some medic experience was like...you should probably go get x-rayed. So we sat in urgent care for a few hours and got both arms x-rayed. I think that year for christmas my brother got a playstation and I got a nintendo 64, but I remember having to just watch him play his dumb racing games for hours on end because I couldn't hold the controllers!
 

Jem

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With the exception for one, about 4 years ago, my Christmases have never really been memorable or stand out from one another. Our Christmases, even if some things were a little different, and I do have some various memories, the overall feel of them have been the same. Unfortunately the one exception was not a good exception. But thankfully, it only involved one person, and only one of the (many) gatherings we have over the holidays, so it didn't ruin Christmas as a whole.
My MIL is.......I don't really have one word to sum her up. But she started something at our dinner and it blew up into a huge fight. I won't go into details, but it was horrible for my husband. I usually don't get involved with her "antics" when she starts, but that time, she took things way too far and my husband needed "backup". So my usually reserved and even tempered self, became the all protective mama bear, that put everyone in their place, and ended the fight. I don't get mad often...but when I do, people need to (and always tend to) pay attention, and better do what I say! The only thing missing from that night, was sending her to the corner for a time out, LOL! Although, she did scuttle off to the kitchen to do dishes by herself....ask me if I offered to help that year. ;)
 
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susanm9006

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A treasured Christmas story from when I was a 24 year old college student with a six year old child and lived way across town from my family. I didn’t have a car that Christmas but had been using one of my boyfriends. But early that Christmas Eve he announced our breakup. Devastating of course but suddenly being without a car on Christmas Eve even worse..

Our family tradition was for me to have Christmas Eve dinner with my mom and aunt at my apartment and then to drive us to my sister’s house, more than twenty miles away
to spend the night and celebrate Christmas and Santa’s arrival the next day. My mom and aunt took the bus to my apartment so that wasn’t a problem but getting to my sister‘s was. Our only solution was a scary one. A bus ride to downtown St Paul, a wait for a second bus, and then after that a mile walk to my aunts house, where my sister could pick us up after her evening at her MIL’s.

And not just three women, none over five feet tall and a child traveling by bus and foot at night , but all the Christmas gifts including Santa presents as well which we packed into a stuffed shopping cart. A mugging waiting to happen so we armed ourselves with hairspray, the only potential weapon we could think of and headed off into what was also a snowy as well as dark night.

But as we waited for our second bus in downtown St. Paul the night started to take an unexpected turn. Rather than dark and scary there was a lot of activity and to my son‘s delight, Santa was everywhere. He zoomed by us in cars and buses only to reappear in another bus a few minutes later. The twenty minutes or so we waited were filled with “Santa!” sightings and shouts from my son which continued on the long ride across town.

The last part of our journey, the long walk from the bus to my aunts was equally magical. It was snowing but not cold and by now it was a fun adventure instead of a stressful trip. And santa was still everywhere, driving by, and entering houses. For a six year old being out at night and seeing Santa at work was the best thing in the world. We reached my aunts house, never had to use the hairspray, and had hot chocolate while we waited for my sister.

Not your usual Christmas Eve but so much fun and such a wonderful memory that my son talks still talks about how special that night was. And for me it was finding out that if you can push through what seems to be a bad thing it may turn out much much better than you think.
 
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MonaLyssa33

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There have been a lot of favorite memories of Christmas, but I think the most common one is playing board games and laughing hysterically at something someone said or did. I remember one year we played a game called Tesselations and it's kind of like the Telephone game where you whisper something to someone and they tell the next person, then that person tells the next person, etc. and you see how accurate the thing that was said when it reaches the last person. With this game though it involved drawing and passing it along. For one particular round, it started with my dad and ended with me and what started out as Jesus ended with me thinking it was Donna Summer. My dad just about fell off his chair laughing so hard.
 

debbila

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A memory that comes to mind is the Christmas eve when we went, as usual, to see the lights and decorations on houses, in my dad's car. My adult sister and her two kids lived with us. The kids came but my sister didn't want to. When we came home, what a wondrous sight! A Christmas tree beautifully decorated stood in our living room! Santa had come and done this for us while my sister was asleep on the couch. She woke up and was just as excited as we kids were. 😉
 

MoochNNoodles

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Hmm... 2002. DH and I had just gotten engaged in September and I was going home with him for Christmas. A few days before Christmas I was at DH's house and we got Subway for dinner. He was exhausted from work so I took his car and drove myself home. Meanwhile my Mom, Step-dad and stepsiblings left in the middle of the night to go visit my family in completely the other direction. They had to pick up 2 more of my step-siblings on the way. They ran into one of those 3' of snow lake effect storms and basically spent the weekend driving!

Meanwhile I was at home...with food poisoning! I've never been so sick in my life. I had to wake DH who had to wake his roommate to drive him to my house so he could take me to the er. Thankfully we hadn't eaten the same sub. The ER gave me meds that helped immensely. I was exhausted so one of my friends came to help me pack and make sure I wasn't alone when DH had to go home for a bit. My unofficial godmother came by. We still made it to the in-laws house 9 hours away the next day. I didn't dare eat a thing the whole drive until we got there.

Christmas turned out to be very nice though. I was feeling better and I got to experience DH's family traditions. He had a 5 year old nephew and an infant niece so it was really fun to experience Christmas from their point of view. MIL and FIL wanted to read the Christmas story before presents with the whole family. Our nephew was so antsy! Poor kiddo! :lol: It actually snowed while we were down there too so the in-laws borrowed a sled from the neighbor's and the 4 of us went sledding! They had a boxer-shepherd mix who was gigantic. He got in the way and ended up on the sled with me once! :flail:That was probably the last time I went sledding. It's too flat here.
 
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