Christmas of long ago...

The first Christmas for me, I really don't
remember, of course, but it was told enough
and the following years were proof.

My father bought a Lionel train set for under
the tree for my first Christmas present. It was
a beaut. We loved watching it go around under
the tree for years ... I wonder what ever happen to
it. You see, it was mine... given to me.. but I was
too young to run it... even when I was 6 or 7. And
then it became my brother's, so I could not run it.
But dad wouldn't let him run it until he was 10 and
only by dad's very watching eyes and a little high
raise of the voice of "be careful..you are going to
run it off the track" (which did happen many times),
and a few other directions. It got to be a source
of entertainment for my mother and I.

I remember my brother and I taking a present a
piece(under a mutual promise of not squealing on
the other) and opening it very carefully, so not to have
Mom find out that we had peeked. Forgot what his was,
but mine was a Kodak Brownie camera...

There were other toys that came before that, that come to
mind. A Sparkle Plenty doll, that I posted on years ago.
If you read it, you will know I cut off the hair. Also there was
a barn set with all the animals. I undid the tabs that held it
together, when I would get upset with my mother. What a
rotten child I was. She caught on after the second time, and
the third time I had to do it myself. Never did it a fourth time.

Teens, brought clothes, and a piece of jewelry of some type.
The beginning of Christmas were nothing the day before, and
the morning was presents AND the tree. After my brother found
out there wasn't any Santa, and being the rotten sister I was...
I probably told him... we got the tree a week before and presents
the morning of Christmas.

My own kids got to open one gift on the Eve. The morning they
were allowed to get their stockings and look. But no presents
until we got up. We got up at 7am.

One year was especially poor, and the kids picked names out
of a bowl and they had to make a gift for that person. I remember
son #2 (he was 12)made a doll house for daughter #4(she was 8).
She loved it.