Old Fashioned Christmas Fun

[doc henderson]

Well, sledding and listening to the radio/TV by the fire.  Caroling and Midnight mass.  What are the Winter Holiday memories for all of you?  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY2pTAAn9pc

Merry Christmas!

[doc henderson]

My favorite movies are It is a wonderful life, and a Christmas story.  Elf and A Christmas Vacation a lot of fun but new.

[doc henderson]

My Mom used to make cinnamon rolls and could take the roll of dough before it was cut and make candy cane and wreath shapes.  She would slit the roll half through to give it some texture and interest.  She also would make fruit cakes and dad would help as she made so many that her arms got tired stirring everything.  

[SawyerTed]

Going to Grandma and Grandpa's on Christmas Day and seeing the family.   My uncles, cousins and my brother would play ole time music and traditional Christmas songs. 

We would have a big covered dish dinner and listen to Grandpa tell stories.  Grandma would give everybody something she had crocheted. 

I recall the smell of a fresh cut cedar tree in grandma's living room and the ornaments my dad, aunt and uncles gave grandma in the 1950s after the old house was renovated.   

Coming in from playing outside with cousins and our new toys, being so cold and standing next to the big Monitor oil burning stove that was always turned up too high for 40 or 50 people to be in the house.

My cousins'  and uncles' hunting stories always fascinated me, they hunted rabbits with dogs wigh names like Smut, Maggie, Nan and Red. 

[SawyerTed]

Since my Dad was a minister for 42 years, our Christmas Eve was spent at church.  There were hymns and candle light services and sometimes the Christmas play.  Sometimes the choir cantata was on Christmas Eve.  In high school and college, I often sang in the cantata as a baritone or bass voice. As a baritone more often than not I was tapped for a solo, thank goodness it was in church!  People HAD to be nice. 

After we were married, Emily and I usually found ourselves at our own church Christmas Eve service much like those of my childhood.  The exception was that Miss Harriet Allen would write the script and direct our Christmas play.   On occasion Emily or I were characters in the play.  Of course our children were in the plays until they "aged out".  

Miss Harriet was a school teacher in the early 1920s and 1930s and later the school secretary.  She never married and her life revolved around church and school.  Writing the Christmas play for church was something she did with great passion.  My father-in-law couldn't remember at time when Miss Harriet didn't write and direct the play.  She wrote an original play every year for over 70 years.   

Often she wrote the play with different church members in mind for parts.  You could NOT tell her no!   It just wasn't done!

[doc henderson]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZEgIDr5jSc

[hardtailjohn]

As a kid it was always sleigh rides and sledding parties! Usually there was a smaller lake frozen over by then, so we'd do at least one skating party.  We fed cows with a team of horses and a sled, so the sleigh rides weren't quite as big of a deal until our friends showed up.
Grandmas and Mom would cook until there was no more room for food anywhere. Lots of German and Norwegian goodies!!!
Now, we have my wife's niece and her family, as well as some other friends over on Christmas day. Usually we wind up with a shooting contest including the neighbors and then a huge meal. A little extra good hay shot to the cows and horses. This year again, it's an open winter, so not going to be too white, but that's ok with me!
John

[Magicman]

Love those pictures John. 

[Resonator]

Just got back from Christmas caroling. Each year about this time, a couple churches get together as a group (we had 22 on the bus today) and visit nursing homes and shut-ins. We sing a set of traditional Christmas songs, and have a little fun too.
The group knows I'll do just about any song by request, and one of the elderly residents is named Elvira. So they asked me to do a verse of the Oak Ridge Boys song, while the choir backed me up on the oom-pa-pa mow-mows.
Previous year someone requested "Rusty Chevrolet" (By the Yoopers), so of course I had to do a verse of that.
We enjoy doing it every year, often we draw a crowd in the dining halls with any resident that hears us. Judging by the smiles and applause, for some I think it is the highlight of their day.

[Magicman]

I smiled reading about it. 

[Ianab]

Christmas in NZ is a different flavor. It's still celebrated, but it's also the main summer holiday, and much of the country simply closes down for ~2 weeks.

Kids went to Christmas as the Bowl in New Plymouth last night which is a family style outdoor show, some carols and other music, and fireworks. Not my scene, but it was well attended.
https://christmasatthebowl.co.nz/whats-on/

All of us are however going to Rock the Bowl, same venue, but a lineup of NZ bands. It's a brilliant outdoor venue, big grassed bowl surrounded by trees, 10,000+ capacity. Just the thing for outdoor Summer concerts, although not big enough for the stadium size international acts.

Lara wanted to put up outdoor lights this year, and arrived home with a 2m tall blow up Santa, and some solar powered fairy lights.  Need more I thought, so I found an old lamp fitting and a rotating LED disco lamp that were laying around. Now we have disco Santa on the lawn.

Disco Santa

That's my contribution to lighting up Christmas anyway. 

[Ron Scott]

I appreciate the family time together and good food.

[aigheadish]

I was on the tail end, in the late 1970's or early 1980's, of the old-school department store Santa experience.

In Cincinnati, if my memory serves, we had Shillito's Department Store, downtown, with all the big window displays and all that. In my mind there was a line 6 miles long, through a corridor of Christmas decorations and lights and displays, all inside, to go sit on Santa's lap. It was magical and thinking back on it my mom or grandma or whomever took me must have had way more patience than I do.

Well, I looked it up and apparently they started it in 1979 (conflicting reports, now I'm seeing the 1950's), so not so old-school but these figures are exactly what my memory is showing! Weird! The link below seems like it's a pop-up version but still look like what I remember.

Pretty great video here:
https://www.wlwt.com/article/shillitos-elves-christmas-tradition-cincinnati-2024/62870411

https://downtowncincinnati.com/elves/

We also had some neighbors back in the day that were the one house with a billion lights, they had a washing machine converted to rock a life-sized Santa sleigh and reindeer thing around in the sky and converted their shed into a Santa's workshop. People would come from all over to this overwise kind of trashy street to see this house. I wonder if they are still around and still do it.