Christmas Remembered

I was just thinking about Christmas since it is now that time of the year. I will not be able to travel home for the holiday so I have been thinking about family traditions. Every family has them, what they usually do during the holidays. I'm just going to list some memories I have from Christmases past.
When I was little and lived in Montana I remember each Christmas Santa would come to our back door on Christmas eve and deliver our presents. When ever any of the older kids at school tried to tell me that Santa wasn't real and that it was just my parents I could tell and show pictures and prove they were wrong because I saw Santa each year and both my parents, and he always brought me the present I had asked for. Once we moved to California Santa didn't come to the door, he would come at night while we were sleeping and we would find our presents in the morning.
My family every year would go out Christmas Caroling to friends and coworkers of my dad. My mother would make grandma's spice cake and we would give a loaf to each family we caroled to. We really only knew a few songs and would always sing the same ones. We never tried to be professional nor did we sing parts we just kind of gang sang. Just like a bunch of kids would do when asked to sing. One of the funny things about our caroling is that when we went out to sing to my dad's coworkers we always seem to go to a wrong house. We would go to the door ring the bell and start singing, the people would come open the door and look at us listen to us sing and thank us for being there. We would give them the loaf of spice cake and then turn and leave. We as kids didn't know until after we left the door that we just sang to a house where we didn't know anyone. So that seemed to be the running joke every year that we would sing to a wrong house. It didn't happen every year but it did happen more than once.
We always went on Christmas eve to our friends the Uribe's because they would make homemade tamales and they always asked us in after we sang to eat. They were the best tamales I had ever eaten. They were a great family. Mr. Uribe worked at the elementary school as a custodian and I would always walk up to him and say Hola, como esta? and he would always answer back to me in Spanish and I would then say No, No, No that's all I know hola, como esta and he would laugh. I always enjoyed that family.
After caroling we would come home and then read the story of Christ's birth. We always had a cardboard nativity that one of the kids would put together as the story was being told. My dad would read from the Bible of the Saviors birth and we always talked about what the true meaning of Christmas was. It wasn't about Santa Claus it was about the Savior.
My mother always loved having a flocked tree and all growing up we flocked our own. We would go and buy the tree and then buy the flocking stuff. We would get the lights out and cover all the bulbs with foil and string them on the tree. Then my dad or brothers would proceed to flock the tree. Now when I say flock the tree I mean by the time they were done the tree looked like it was in a blizzard. Once the tree was flocked and the flocking was dry we proceeded to go around the tree to find all the lights and take the foil off so the light could be seen once they were plugged in. Rarely did we find them all, so often we would find a light covered in foil while the tree was in the house. By the time Christmas was over and we were taking down the tree and removing the light strings we usually found one or more lights still with foil on them.
Come Christmas morning all the kids were always up long before my parents usually around 6 am but we were not allowed to wake our parents up until 7 am. Do you know how long a wait that is in kid years? it was almost unbearable but we always waited. Once our parents were up they would go in to the living room where the tree was, plug in the lights and then set up to get pictures of us coming in to the room. While they were doing that we were allowed to check our stockings. We always got an orange in our stockings every year along with candy and other items. The orange was there because my mother would not let us eat any candy until we had breakfast and if we ate the orange that was good enough and we could then eat some candy.
Opening presents was not a free for all in our house. My mother would sit on the floor in front of the tree and hand out the presents one at a time. Making sure everyone got a present to open, going in order from oldest child to youngest and then the parents and we would all had to wait our turn to open our presents. That way we all saw what each and every present everyone got. It also made it easier for them to take pictures and get our expressions as we saw what was in the wrapped present. Later as we got older my mother moved to the couch and then as the person who just opened their present was done they were in charge of getting the next present for the next person.
My mother got really frustrated with us when it came to the presents because we were really good at guessing what our presents were before we opened them. One year my mother devised a plan to keep us from knowing which presents under the tree were for which kid. If we didn't know which box was ours it made it hard to guess the present by the size, shape and weight, which was usually how we figured it out. My mother put numbers on the boxes and only she knew which number went to which kid. This system only worked one year. Her system was like this my oldest brother was number 11 because he was the first child first boy, my sister's number was 21, second child first girl and so on.
Well that's Christmas as I remember it from my youth. If I remember more I will add to this posting. Christmas is always a great time of year and it's so fun to see all the lights on the houses. I hope everyone has a great Christmas.