Christmas/Winter holiday tales from your childhood.

[Mountain Cat]

This event happened when my cousin and I had probably turned 10 or 11 - she's only 3 weeks younger than me.

We were down at my grandparents' house in Louisville, KY. When we were together, we were inseparable - though since she lived elsewhere than me, it didn't happen all that often. Her parents, her younger siblings, my parents, and my younger brother were also all there, but in other rooms in the house. She and I got to share a space together.

We woke up around five or six in the morning of Christmas Day, excited to see what would be under the tree, and wanting to just bask under the lights and look for our gifts. No plans to open them, but simply to wonder.

The house was silent... we crept out silently as well... the tree was surrounded by gifts for everyone, just quite a pile.... but then... we noticed - in one chair, there was something....

We had enough light to look closer. It was a huge bolus of vomit.

M and I looked at each other.

"Uh- oh... we'll be blamed for THAT!" Scurried back to our beds/mattresses, with our figurative tails under ourselves. We could not get back to sleep. We didn't come out of the room until around 8 am after we heard everyone rustling around, and a comment, "Where is M. and Mountain Cat? I'm surprised they're not up to check the gifts today!" There were some other half-heard comments about something disgusting in a chair. But I couldn't catch more.

We finally crept out.

Apparently, my Dad, not prone to this sort of behavior, had bought some fake plastic vomit, and had set it in the chair before retiring to his own sleep the night before.

Aarrrgh!

But it really did look real.... Even in daylight.



Anyone here have a tale or tail to tell????

 

[Burt Blank]

Back in the day, Christmas eve in Liverpool I got very very drunk, I had crossed the Mersey to go to my Bank and collect a lot of travelers checks, pesetas and sterling for a boxing day flight to Teneriffe. Anyone that knows Liverpool knows taxis from Liverpool don't like going through the Mersey Tunnel at night because they can't pick up a return fair and the same for Birkenhead Taxi's.
I walked the best I could down to the tunnel entrance to get the tunnel bus, not a pleasant place to be at 01.30 Christmas morning. A black cab stopped and the driver got out and put me in the back. I could not remember much when I woke up in my bedroom about lunch time. I was in my shirt and keks. On the table was my wallet, watch and keys, with a piece of paper saying the amount he had taken for the fare. Nothing else was taken. When I got home from the break I had him found and rewarded him. He recognized by my Camel colored cashmere overcoat. He had taken me home before from various Birkenhead nightclubs. I was very very lucky.

 

[mjd]

I'm dating myself here but there used to be a large Toys-R-Us catalog that came out every season. We would circle anything we wanted. One year my mother sent me to her purse to get her cigarettes and I found a receipt for all the things my sister and I requested from Santa. We asked her about it and she lied. That's when I started wondering about what was going on. I think I was about 7 or 8 and my next sister was about 6 or 7 (we're 18 months apart).

My parents had two more children when I was in college. My baby brother would punch a hole in the top of gifts and stick a Christmas tree light in to see what was inside. He eventually grew up to be military police with the US Army and was in Afghanistan so he's learned to be a bit more stealth. ;-)

 

[epicuric]

Not childhood, but late teens, I was sharing digs with a couple of mates. They went home for Christmas, and one of my cousins decided he would come to stay with me for a couple of days. He was sporting a new gold earring, then pretty unheard of for men of the family, but he was pretty cool (I'm talking mid-Eighties), looking much like Tom Petty - this is what reminded me. I think it was Christmas Eve, and we were duly celebrating with copious quantities of beer. I reached the point when I had had enough, and went to bed, leaving him prone on the sitting room floor, still drinking beer and happily singing Christmas carols to himself. My later I was awakened by howls of pain from the sitting room. He had passed out on the floor, and had become attached to the carpet by his earring. He was too drunk to sort himself out, and I, knowing nothing of earrings resorted to a pair of wire cutters. I don't think he has worn one since! He wasn't the butt of many jokes on Christmas Day. Nope. Not at all.

 

[MypinchofItaly]

Not childhood, but late teens, I was sharing digs with a couple of mates. They went home for Christmas, and one of my cousins decided he would come to stay with me for a couple of days. He was sporting a new gold earring, then pretty unheard of for men of the family, but he was pretty cool (I'm talking mid-Eighties), looking much like Tom Petty - this is what reminded me. I think it was Christmas Eve, and we were duly celebrating with copious quantities of beer. I reached the point when I had had enough, and went to bed, leaving him prone on the sitting room floor, still drinking beer and happily singing Christmas carols to himself. My later I was awakened by howls of pain from the sitting room. He had passed out on the floor, and had become attached to the carpet by his earring. He was too drunk to sort himself out, and I, knowing nothing of earrings resorted to a pair of wire cutters. I don't think he has worn one since! He wasn't the butt of many jokes on Christmas Day. Nope. Not at all.

And how was the carpet?

 

[epicuric]

And how was the carpet?

It cleaned up OK

 

[caseydog]

This isn't a childhood thing. When I was in college/university, my parents lived in Puerto Rico. Dad's company (Gulf Oil) paid for me to visit them twice each year (as long as I was a full time student). So, Christmas break was spent swimming in their pool, hanging out at Dorado Beach (all food and drink expenses paid), play golf (badly), and eating like a king at the best restaurants in San Juan.

I would come back to college in North Texas, with a deep tan, and everyone would ask me where I went. Then, of course, it was back to classes, cheap food, cheap beer, and my camera-store job after classes and on weekends.

But, for two weeks, I lived the good life.

Oh, as a side benefit, my parent's adopted a really cool dog down there, and that dog took to me immediately. She followed me around, slept in my bed with me, and just thought I was the best thing ever.

CD

 

[TastyReuben]

I thought I'd posted this last year, though I can't find it, so I'll just post the very abbreviated version:

We didn't celebrate Christmas when I was a kid, against our religion, though my mom wasn't opposed to it.

We lived next to the firehouse, which was also the village community center, and every year, someone dressed up like Santa, and kids were allowed to come in, sit on his lap, tell him what they wanted, and get a little bag of candy as well. Very low-key affair.

Small village, so everyone knew everyone else (bit of an understatement) and one year, my mom saw Mr. Fritz a few hours before the festivities, and she asked him, "When you get your outfit on, can you just peek over the fence and wave to the kids? You know how Buddy is about Christmas, but I think they'd like that. Just try and do it before he gets home."

This was 1971, I was five.

Mr. Fritz obliged, and even better. He brought all us kids a bag of candy, and waved to us, strutted up and down the yard, ho-hi-ho'ing.

And then Dad came home. Early.

After some "pleasantries" were exchanged, my dad laid into Mr. Fritz (they had a previous history of dislike) and cleaned his plate up one side and down the other. Beat him raw and stupid, bloodied up his costume, and all with hardly any time at all before the proper celebration was supposed to start.

 

[mjd]

I thought I'd posted this last year, though I can't find it, so I'll just post the very abbreviated version:

We didn't celebrate Christmas when I was a kid, against our religion, though my mom wasn't opposed to it.

We lived next to the firehouse, which was also the village community center, and every year, someone dressed up like Santa, and kids were allowed to come in, sit on his lap, tell him what they wanted, and get a little bag of candy as well. Very low-key affair.

Small village, so everyone knew everyone else (bit of an understatement) and one year, my mom saw Mr. Fritz a few hours before the festivities, and she asked him, "When you get your outfit on, can you just peek over the fence and wave to the kids? You know how Buddy is about Christmas, but I think they'd like that. Just try and do it before he gets home."

This was 1971, I was five.

Mr. Fritz obliged, and even better. He brought all us kids a bag of candy, and waved to us, strutted up and down the yard, ho-hi-ho'ing.

And then Dad came home. Early.

After some "pleasantries" were exchanged, my dad laid into Mr. Fritz (they had a previous history of dislike) and cleaned his plate up one side and down the other. Beat him raw and stupid, bloodied up his costume, and all with hardly any time at all before the proper celebration was supposed to start.

TastyReuben,...my father (a 6'3" Chicago cop, Army veteran) yelled at the ice cream man because of that loud music the ice cream trucks used to play when we were kids. The guy apparently didn't heed the warning. The next time my father, sleep deprived working 3rd shift, went out with his gun. We didn't hear that truck for the rest of our time in that neighborhood. Now, there are noise ordinance laws and some neighborhoods have completely outlawed ice cream trucks. Times have changed considerably since we were kids.

 

[TastyReuben]

TastyReuben,...my father (a 6'3" Chicago cop, Army veteran) yelled at the ice cream man because of that loud music the ice cream trucks used to play when we were kids. The guy apparently didn't heed the warning. The next time my father, sleep deprived working 3rd shift, went out with his gun. We didn't hear that truck for the rest of our time in that neighborhood. Now, there are noise ordinance laws and some neighborhoods have completely outlawed ice cream trucks. Times have changed considerably since we were kids.

Sleep deprivation, we found out many years later, was a significant source of Dad's extremely short fuse.

Growing up, it was kind of a family joke that my dad could fall asleep at a moment's notice, sleep standing up, etc. He worked very hard and always stayed busy, but if he had a spare few minutes, he'd nod right off.

In his 50's, he was diagnosed with pretty severe sleep apnea, and he'd never really had a good night's sleep in his life. He had surgery and also went on a sleep machine and while he remains an incredibly sarcastic, sometimes verbally cruel person, he's much more even tempered.

I remember that same year, earlier in the year, neighborhood kids waking him up a couple of nights in a row, roughhousing in front of our house after bedtime. By kids, I mean they were around 17-20 years old, the village smart-asses.

Dad warned them a couple of times, but they did it one too many times and he grabbed his blackjack and went out in his t-shirt and baggy underwear and worked every one of them over pretty thoroughly. They always gave him a wide berth after that, even years later.

 

[rascal]

You reminded me when I was a kid, we used to have 6 o clock closing in the 60s, pubs had to shut at 6pm.two neighbours across the road from us, mr flutey and mr ball, they hated each other. Often they would arrive at home at the same time, and if one of them said something to the other it was all on, fisticuffs, and yet no one said or did anything. Everyone watched from the safety of their kitchens or lounges. About once a month, and no one even called the cops. Crazy now I think about it.

Russ