Early Christmastime memories

In this blog, I will try to remember some of my earliest Christmas-associated memories. I'm going to try to stick to memories that happened before I entered elementary school--meaning I was five or younger.

(I was going to post this last week, but I forgot. It was the first week I missed posting on this blog. But that's OK, because this isn't my priority blog.)

I remember a visit to Temple Square with my cousins and grandparents. Some of the lights had little flowery coverings surrounding the lights--I think that was a 90s thing. I remember walking up the ramp to see the Christus statue and being fascinated with the planets on the mural. I think it was this same trip when I remember driving home in my grandparents' van, and there was a plate of Christmas sugar cookies.

I can remember looking out the window in our living room overlooking our driveway and watching my family bring in our Christmas tree.

I can remember making a homemade garland with cranberries, and I think my cousin Tammy was there; the next year I wondered where it was when we got out our decorations.

Once in preschool, we went to an old folks home and danced, I think the Mexican Hat Dance. Afterwards, they gave us those red suckers with white powder on them. Then I went to the Festival of Trees (I can't remember whether it was with them or with my family) and they had giant plastic suckers like the ones we had gotten. (I'm not sure whether the decorations were meant to look like those suckers, but I thought they did.)

Perhaps that same year, I also went to the Festival of Trees with my family and got an anthropomorphic Christmas tree filled with candy. My brother got a snake with 24 pieces of candy so you could eat one a day until Christmas. We came home and caught the tail end of a cartoon about the Twelve Days of Christmas, and then my cousins had to go home. I think that the adults said, "It's over" when it was at a commercial break, but we kids didn't believe them. But when the commercial break was over, it was only the credits, so they had been right.

I liked to watch my Christmas Sing-Along, and I remember asking my dad when Christmas was, in part because I wanted to watch it.

One time I went to my friend David Christensen's house, and his dad had drawn a picture of a stick of holly, a present, and a candle. We were impressed with how he had drawn the holly leaves. So I decided that I wanted to draw one myself. So I lay down on the kitchen floor with my crayons and drew the picture. I couldn't draw the points on the holly leaves, so they were just regular leaves. I figured it didn't matter what color the present was, so it had pink ribbon. My mom was very impressed.

One time I was playing with our neighbor, Taryn Pay, on the day we were bringing out our Christmas decorations. She found two wreaths, one made out of cloth and one made out of twigs. She suggested we put the wreaths around our faces and walk around like that. I was annoyed that she kept the cloth wreath and made me use the scratchy one.

I remember getting in our car one December and driving down the hill. The stars were literally twinkling in the sky in a flashy cartoony manner. I'm pretty sure this was a dream.

My sister was tutored by Coach Wangsguard from South Davis Junior High when I was just a little kid. One time during tutoring, my mom and I went outside and played in the snow. One of us threw a snowball at the window. When we went inside, Wangs said she had said, "Who threw that snowball?" We had a puzzle-piece reindeer on our fireplace, and Wangs asked me what its name was. I said it was Rudolph, and she said, "It can't be Rudolph if it doesn't have a red nose!"

I remember hearing "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" on the radio a few days after Christmas, and I wondered why they were playing a Christmas song after Christmas, but I think I deduced it was because Christmas was over and the song was only relevant after Christmas (because it was past tense).

I loved playing with our plastic nativity, and one angel for a long time was separated from the rest of the nativity.

My mom made little Christmas mice that held candy canes in them as the tail. I remember being at my grandparents' office in their old house with my cousin April and there were leftover candy cane mice.

My grandparents had a garland with musical bells in it. I loved hearing it, and I fell in love with "The Little Drummer Boy." I thought the "rum pum pum pum" was hilarious.

We had a little paper with flaps that described Santa Claus traditions in other countries. That paper made me think of Santa Claus differently than most people. When I heard people say that Santa Claus went around the world in one night, I thought they were wrong. Our Santa Claus only had to travel across America. Other countries had their own Santa (Father Christmas, Père Noël, etc.). If you ask me, that makes a little more sense than there being only one Santa for the whole world.