I am watching SNL's tribute to Christmas shows past. One segment has Garret Morris from SNL's first season singing Winter Wonderland. He could sing pretty well.

Well, post your fondest Christmas memories here.

Who remembers the Christmas wish book from Sears? My brother and I would get so excited when that catalog arrived in the mail. Just for shits and giggles I put "Sears Wish Book" into the eBay search engine and got a bunch of hits. I may just order one from the '60s .

Still have my Christmas Stocking my Mother gave to my wife that was embroiderd at Sears on Flatbush Ave, could have been Nostrand but remember going there and Korvettes at Christmas as a kid.

DP

One Christmas Eve when I was little, my old man was late getting home and everyone was mad at him because that meant he was out getting looped on Christmas Eve. I knew better, because I had been out with him a couple days before and he had dragged me from store to store looking for a pair of gloves for my mom. It was about 10 o'clock before he finally got home with the gloves. He was looped, too, but you can't have everything and it remains a special memory for me.

Lots of fabulous memories from Christmas but the best has to be the birth of my only daughter and eldest child, Jennifer, back on Christmas Day in 1995. It was a white Christmas that year as well. Magical moments indeed!!


Shame she has grown up to be an almighty pain in the arse then isn't it.......

Christmas 2007: Our first Christmas in South Jersey. Christmas Eve was spent with daughter and SIL. Christmas Day they were going to his parents house.

Christmas morning, we have a nice breakfast, sipping coffee, open presents. Wife makes lots of phone calls, I'm tinkering with a present I got. No rush. Early afternoon, watch TV. Then the question; where should we go for dinner. I call a few places...no answer. Wife says she'll cook something. We go to three supermarkets - closed. We weren't in New York anymore.

I suggest an AC casino restaurant. Response: I'm not spending Christmas in a casino! We wound up at Carmines in the Tropicana Quarter (attached, but not in the casino). If you have not been to a Carmines, their portions are monstrous. We figure one entre and salad will do. I ask for the smallest appetizer - stuffed mushrooms, meal in itself. We agree on the Porterhouse for two. It was listed as market price and we didn't ask. It was Chrismas.

In summary, we had a $75 steak that must have weighed 7 lbs. And a pleasant meal with happy people all around us...even the waitress. We ate steak and salad all week. So when the talk of what-are-we-doing-for-Christmas comes up, I can't resist...Lets go to Carmines!

Ha ha ha!!! Isn't there a little bit of "pain in the arse" in all of us. Kids.....gotta love 'em!

TIS

Indeed TIS

One of my fondest Christmas memories is what my older sister would give us each Christmas season. It was like a wall calendar, about the same size. Each December date had a little tab that you could fold back to reveal a little saying or Christmas related symbol like a Christmas tree or ornament. It was so much fun for my sisters and I to fold back each days tab to reveal what was underneath. A warm memory.

Does anyone here remember the King Family? They were a family of performers who used to have various televised holiday specials. Well, one of the King boys was in Viet Nam and his mom sang "I'll Be Home For Christmas" to his picture. In the middle of the number, he surprised her and showed up. I was pretty little, maybe 6 years old, and I didn't quite understand the concept of reruns. I watched it the next year, wondering if the Army would allow him home again!
[video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAf806Fdc0o[/video]

I certainly do. Wholesome.

I remember the King family as well. I didn't always watch the show, but I remember the episode you speak of SB.



TIS

How many of you had trains under your Christmas trees when you were a kid? We did every single year that I can remember. I still have the train that my dad set up on a platform with the little houses and lampposts, and people figurines. My Uncle Terry went even further with larger setups and tunnels and two trains. What about ya'll as kids and now? None of my kids have that - no trains or such.

We never had one under the tree, but my older brother had a train set. I always thought they were kind of neat. I don't think I know anyone who has a train set these days.

I do remember it was a big deal the day we went to pick out the "perfect" tree.

TIS

I think just before Chrismas I was apx 6 yrs old. They had a grab bag in school. Some stupid relative of mine said good things come in small packages.

So I grabbed a small package in it was a pair of used socks.

Now it is always better things come in giant packages. Also never steal anything small.

Oh, thank God. When I saw that you posted in this thread, I thought it was going to be about finding Santa Claus dead under the tree.

I remember when I was 9, two neighborhoods up, a guy dressed up as Santa Claus and got stuck in the chimney of his house on christmas eve. I would expect that was an expensive christmas for them.

I seem to remember about 20 yrs ago Some guy was going into a Te Amo to buy a cigar around Christmas time. He was crossing the street and some drunk was bothering a young women who had a child with her.

I think that stranger told the guy to move on and leave the women alone. Then he called out the stranger. Then I remember something about the guy who bothered the lady being in a Christmas card picture just a head shot that only a few people received.

Sal tells the story of Christmas

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3fgRV5N_qQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player

How many of you are old enough to remember your Dad taking home movies at Christmas with film, not video? Remember the array of glaring lights that were necessary for indoor shots?

Oh yes! My parents had so many 8mm/super8 of our family. They put it all on VHS in the 80s and we recently have them all on DVD now. Many Christmas, vacation, wedding, holidays. What great memories.

Way back in the mid 60s, a great Uncle from Detroit came to visit. He told my mom/dad that he had an old 8mm movie with a short clip from my mom/dad's engagement party which was in 1940. He spliced (?) the portion and gave it to my parents. It's now on DVD with my families movies. Not very good quality, kind of scratchy/jumpy BUT I see my grandfathers (whom I never knew)grandmothers, aunts, uncles, and my parents at 16 & 19. If only they had talkies back then.

TIS

My fondest memory as a little kid was hanging out in my friend James's apartment. He had an elaborate electric train set that took up the entire floor of their living room--not an el-cheapo Marx set, but a Lionel with smoke-producing locomotive, whistles, RR crossings, etc. His family also had an elaborate tree, with bubbling electric candles (anyone remember them?).

Worst memories from workplace:
--Secretaries would bring in box radios on the Monday after T'giving and play the same Christmas songs over and over again for eight hours straight, until after the holiday.
--The boss's Christmas party: It'd call for noon at a private room in a local restaurant. People would filter in until about 1 p.m. Then the one waitress they assigned to our big group would start taking drink orders. She wouldn't take lunch orders until about 2:30. We wouldn't actually get our lunches until 4. Killed the entire afternoon, just waiting around in forced bonhomie, pretending that we actually wanted to be there.

Oh, God, yeah. Remember how heavy those lights were?

My dad had a lightbar about 40 inches long with four flood light bulbs on it. Half of the movies were taken of people shading their eyes.

That's hysterical. And not only were they heavy, those lights were as hot as Hell.

My first train set was American flyers on the two tracks. Donnie and I was robbing an apartment in East Harlem found them and took them. Unfortunely I had no place to set them up in so we sold it to a fence. My end was 6 dollars.

Here is a movie made with the camera and the light bar it had no sound.


Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAnkykMplgc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

The guy that shot this movie was the son of the guy in the bandit town story I told you about. The town in Sicily where they put convicted mafia guys. Wide open town his father was tge guy who got shot in the head while living in the town.

In the movie is my uncle and my favorite aunt irene there anniversary. Their son was my cousin he Was unfortunately a homo I used to use his name as an alias. I still do on one of the soccer sites I am on.

When my uncle got sick with cancer I took them both into my house. We helped take care of them. Never liked uncle joe a working stiff worked as a mail man. But he fought that cancer like he was fighting a real person. It beat him but he fought it like a man I respected him for that.

Friends of ours got married about a year before us (my wife was her maid of honor). They insisted on everything deluxe, including having color movies of the ceremony (rare for that time among working-class people). I'll never forget it: Two guys--a cameraman and a fat, cigar-smoking guy walking backwards and thrusting one of those light bars in wedding party participants' faces. It was like being in a movie set rather than a religious ceremony. The film showed everyone either squinting or shielding their eyes. What a great production.

I celebrate Festivus.

So do I, Moe. But I still send out a Christmas card to my closest friends.