Merry Christmas Eve 2023


 Smudge in the window.  

Christmas Eve when I was a kid always meant opening presents.  We always opened them that evening.  So did my sister's family.  (Just bear with that idea for a bit.  Haha...I don't want to go off on a rabbit trail here.)  Her mom and family always did a big get together on Christmas Eve evening.  

Anyway.  Here is where I run up against it when it comes to Christmas memories.  I do not have any overwhelming memory of specific gifts really.  I seem to remember something about getting this toy called the Sunshine Family.  It was big back in the 70s.  I really wanted them.   I remember there was a family of 3 with a traveling van or something like that.  I was thrilled. I must have been 7 or 8 maybe.  I don't remember.

I think I remember birthday presents more than Christmas.  Birthdays always marked milestones.  When we kids turned 10 my dad always got us a new bicycle.  Also when I turned ten Dad thought I was old enough to carry a pocket knife.  That was a rite of passage.  At age ten I was also deemed responsible enough to have a little hatchet and chop kindling.  

Christmas meant gifts, of course, and I never lacked a pile of them.  But birthdays were more a rite of passage. 

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