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October 2005
Posts: 5327
Location: Cicero, NY | Ok, we've all got one that stands out -
My daughter, 4 years old at the time and absolutely LIVING on grapes and raisins (this kid was famous for eating EVERYthing you put in front of her but she was a virtual vacuum with grapes and raisins), has her Christmas list committed to memory and we go to the mall to see the Big Guy. HUGE line and she’s practically in a sweat waiting to tell him about the Barbie doll, the sled that Dad and Mom and I can all sit on, the new purple sweater, yada, yada, yada…FINALLY gets to Santa’s lap and completely FREEZES. Couldn’t remember her NAME much less her list despite hours of practice leading up to this point. She looks at Santa who throws out the ol’ “…and what can Santa bring a nice little girl like you this year…?” and she says the ONLY thing that comes to mind – “GRAPES AND RAISINS, SANTA!”
Santa looks at my wife and I and we’re practically in tears and, with composure that absolutely stymied me, reaches into his bag. I’m thinking here comes the candy cane and, lo and behold, he hands her a little bag of grapes and another little box of raisins. Her eyes grew to the size of basketballs and she gave Santa a great big hug. Then tells her that, if she’s really good, she can look forward to even more under the tree. A moment that will live on forever for us.
Who’s next…? |
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January 2002
Posts: 14127
Location: 6 String Ranch | can't top it. |
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November 2003
Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | I caught on fire in New Zealand |
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October 2005
Posts: 5327
Location: Cicero, NY | ...AND WE HAVE A WINNER!!! |
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May 2008
Posts: 4996
Location: Phoenix AZ | Many years ago cut down a fresh tree, brought it home and as it was freezing cold (was living in NY at the time) I just stuck the tree into a pile of snow for a few days until we were ready to bring it in and decorate. Few days later we get around to it and I drag the tree in cover it with lights and start decorating it. A wonderful family affair, at that time my kids were probably 3 and 5. The tree was still a little frozen but as it thawed out we started to catch that sweet pine scent of xmas ... and the small of cat urine from the neighborhood cats that had pissed all over the god damn thing while it was outside. It was unbearable. We threw the whole friggin thing in the trash, lights decorations and all. Kids are balling their eyes out thinking that santa isn't going to come. That was my last ever real xmas tree. We went out and bought a fake one. |
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March 2007
Posts: 840
Location: CA | I write/edit for a living and interviewed this guy who is into cars and sailing, but he's a big guy with a full beared and looks like Santa all year long. Turns out that, among other things, he's a professional Santa, and learned from the master — HIS father. He started out at malls, but says that's tough because you have to work every day and you end up sicker than a dog every Christmas because ever third kid with a sniffle sneezes in your face. Now he's well enough known that he does mostly private parties and 'special appearance' gigs at people's homes. He loves kids, has a great rapport and of course has a million stories. Oh, and it pays pretty well. He says a mall Santa working every day from T'giving through Christmas eve can make $10-$15K. He's averaged $15-20K per season for the past few years. Almost makes me want to drink lots of beer and stop shaving. |
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Joined:
November 2003
Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Originally posted by Oddball:
Oh, and it pays pretty well. . . He's averaged $15-20K per season for the past few years. . . .
Almost makes me want to drink lots of beer and stop shaving. That'd make you an overachiever in my book... I don't need an excuse to do either. |
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November 2005
Posts: 4809
Location: Campbell River, British Columbia | (WARNING! ADULT CONTENT! ANY CHILDREN SHOULD GO IMMEDIATELY TO ANOTHER THREAD! PARENTAL GUIDANCE IS HIGHLY UNLIKELY)
Having a clear schedule at that time of year, and a little amateur theatre experience,I did Santa for two Christmases many years ago at a local department store. A friend of mine is a local Clown (not clown, Clown) with a costume shop as part of her business and recommended me for the 'job' which suited my work habits at the time.
Had the normal cross section of kids so scared they peed on me and office girls coming in at lunch for a 'sexy pic with Santa, etc.
But the best memories were the private parties and family calls.
One friend had 'done' Santa for his daughter a couple of years and she were starting to do the logic; 'Hmmm, Daddy comes home right after Santa leaves and I tell him all about what he missed.....'
So, just after bed time. They let me into the house after I'd picked up the sack in his work van outside, and the parents went to their room. I somewhat noisily stumbled up the stairs chuckling, and 'spoke not a word, but went straight to my work'
Father called out from the parents room, wondering what was going on in the living room; "What's all that noise?" and in a bit...the girl sneaked down the hall and peaked around the corner.
I put my finger to my lips, shhhh. And beckoned her out. (It was a less paranoid time...the 80's. Maybe...) We gathered around the living room and chatted about her interests and pretty soon the parents came and she brought me my milk (with brandy) and cookies.
Then telling her to go to bed so Christmas would come that much sooner, they let me out and that was that.
Many years later, when she was home from university, I met her again with her parents and was 'outed'. She told me that was one of her fondest childhood memories. |
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October 2007
Posts: 283
Location: Portland, OR | In December of 1970, Nixon gave many of us a drop to come home early. Not for that I wouldn't have made it in time for Christmas. Came through Ft. Lewis, caught a bus and was home in time for Christmas in our new home with my wife and two year old daughter. So many Christmases before and since, but that one is the closest I came to a Jimmy Stewart experience. |
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March 2008
Posts: 2683
Location: Hot Springs, S.D. | When I was about four or five, Santa came to the Christmas party at church. I sat on his knee and when he asked if I'd been good, I of course replied "Yes." Then Santa reminded me of the time I sassed my mother, fought with my sister, tried to sneak an extra cookie when no one was looking, etc. Well, let me tell you, I then KNEW that Santa "knew if I'd been bad or good"! It was years later before I found out that Santa had been my Dad. (Merry Christmas, Pops.) |
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June 2003
Posts: 1792
Location: Rego Park, NY, | When I was about four or five I was looking forward to all the new toys that I asked for on my Christmas list. I openned the gift from my aunt. It was a bathrobe. The first thing I said was "Who told her to buy me this?" |
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February 2005
Posts: 11840
Location: closely held secret | Originally posted by Jeff W.:
I caught on fire in New Zealand Next time try not to spill the accelerant on your shoe. |
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March 2005
Posts: 12750
Location: Boise, Idaho | This one was pretty good:
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December 2001
Posts: 10581
Location: NJ | are there no prisons?
no work houses? |
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Joined:
February 2005
Posts: 11840
Location: closely held secret | It was Christmas in prison
And the food was real good
We had turkey and pistols
Carved out of wood
And I dream of her always
Even when I don't dream
Her name's on my tongue
And her blood's in my stream. |
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January 2006
Posts: 5881
Location: Colorado Rocky Mountains | One of my few remaining regular dance gigs is the dancing Santa at all of the Colorado Symphony’s Christmas Pops concerts. This is a big deal. Numerous performances at the downtown concert hall, 150 orchestra members on stage, 65 junior high school aged singing and professionally choreographed performers on stage in front of the orchestra, another 200 adult and 120 children chorus members on risers behind the orchestra, a full house of patrons numbering approximately 2,800, and CBS doing a live broadcast with ten cameras strategically positioned throughout the place. True story. About five years ago, my entrance was to come down a rope from an upper balcony on stage right, remove a pair of thick leather gloves and hand them off to a stage hand at the bottom of the rope, then join SWMBO (performing as Mrs. Claus) and move hand-in-hand very quickly about 30 feet to downstage center to join the kids in the dance already in progress. This concert hall is an “in the round” 360 degree type, so performers are pretty much seen from every angle at all times. As I hit the floor, the stagehand and SWMBO began batting my beard and I felt like the rope had somehow become entangled in my costume, but I had no time to screw with it so I ripped the rope away, grabbed SWMBO's hand and took off downstage. It was then that I noticed the smell and smoke. As I had come down the rope, part of my monofilament beard had worked its way between my gloves and the nylon rope and with as much heat as is generated through friction, the beard had actually caught on fire. The stagehand and SWMBO were trying to put the fire out! The cameras had caught some of the commotion and the smoke, which was easily dismissed as rosin dust, but there was no denying that Santa pretty much looked only half-bearded for the rest of that number. The other half of the beard was found melted to the rope back on stage right. After 18 years of doing this gig, with all kinds of entrances, I have a few other stories. Like the time SWMBO’s and my belt buckles jammed together during a complicated hustle dance and we could not break apart. The dance took on a certain “adult” look for the next five seconds until I could bust the darn buckles apart. You gotta love live theater! |
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May 2003
Posts: 4389
Location: Capital District, NY, USA Minor Outlying Islands | I guess that would be me watching Dad out our apartment window on the lower east side of manhattan ... back in the day when normal middle class people lived there ...
He brought home an electic train set. It was missing a part, so on christmas eve he walked all the way back to the shop and got the part. And the snow was blowing about. We set up the train set, and watched it go round 'n round. I learned so much from him that day. That day seems so huge to me, like I spent a tenth of my life there. |
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June 2005
Posts: 1320
Location: Round Rock, TX | A few years ago it got laid on my heart that a hospital was a terrible place to spend Christmas. At that time our church had two families in one of Austin's hospitals, one of whose mother was in for cancer treatments and another couple whose 1st child was born prematurely after a difficult pregnancy. Unfortunately I didn't get the idea laid on me until Dec 23rd, but I went ahead and sent out an email that night to about twenty people from church hoping that I would get at least two or three to show up to help me play and sing carols to these guys. There hadn't been time to hear from anybody when my family and I went down to the hospital the next day, so I had no idea if anyone was gonna show or not. I'm far from being a great lead singer, but I'm the best my family's got, so there was definitely the possibility that this was gonna be rough.
"Please, God, let there be at least one person show up", I thought as I went into the lobby. The 1st people I saw were the two people that I hoped most would show (great singers, both of them). Behind them were the other 30 people that came out to sing with us - more than I had emailed.
We first went to sing for the woman with cancer. Her mother and sister were in town to be with her and they were all more than a little surprised to see this troop of people come in with (as I remember it) about 5 guitars and, of course, 30-odd voices, troop in and start singing carols. Actually we couldn't all fit in the hospital room and we overflowed out into the hall. So when we went to sing for the couple that had the premature child, her husband wheeled her into the NICU (Neonatal ICU) waiting room, where we sang for her and all the other parents that were there. after we had been singing for a couple of songs, the nurses opened the door to the nursery so the babies (and, of course, the nurses) could hear. As the singing went on, I noticed that the crying in the nursery had completely stopped. The crying the waiting room. on the other hand, was in full flow, but it was good crying. At the end one of the men from church had us put all the parents in the middle of a circle and we all laid hands on them and prayed for them and their babies.
I have had a tremendously blessed life and had a lot of great Christmases, but that year stands way out as the best.
Peace on earth and good will towards all men. |
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December 2001
Posts: 7209
Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | I was a Cryptologist in the Navy (you had to be able to spell it to be one) and I am also Jewish. So one might ask, what do these have in common?
First, I would always offer to work on Christmas eve so someone who celebrated could be with their family, and two... a tradition now taken up by NORAD, was the important job of tracking Santa with our Worldwide High Frequency Direction Finding Network (HFDF) network, which I believe NORAD was a part of.
One station would start, usually Keflavik Iceland if I recall. They would plot a course and speed, and based on that data, the next station would pick up the track. We'd report any other air traffic near Santa's track to keep him safe, and so to not interrupt his rounds.
It may have sounded like a game, and on some level it was, but as we had to plot these tracks manually it was good exercise, and we all took it very seriously. Compensating for weather, speed, the weight of the load changing, climate, etc.. It was all calculated and double-checked.
A few years ago I decided to search on "track Santa" and it was rather heartwarming to see that while knowing many of the HFDF sites were closed, NORAD was still on the ball.
While not a "family" moment, I have fond memories of working with my military colleagues, Army, Navy, Marine, Air Force, Coast Guard, and also some Canadian Armed Forces folks, on one of the most sophisticated communications and direction finding systems ever built in a joint mission that was about as "peaceful" as one could possibly get.
What made this operation special was that this was during the "cold war", when everyone was snooping on everyone else's communications and "Santa's Sleigh" did indeed get tracked to EVERY country, regardless of politics. While acknowledging the communications of the "enemy" any other night would get you either a Courts Martial or sent to Siberia (depending on where you were from), we had confirmations and sightings during the entire track. For a few hours, every year, there was no wall, there were no borders, there was no cold war.
As a friend of mine would say... "It was a beautiful thing."
FYI http://www.noradsanta.org/ |
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December 2001
Posts: 10581
Location: NJ | well I guess i was about 10 or 12 and my parents sat us down and told us not to be too disappointed this christmas, times were tough and there was not much cash. I never realized how tough until many years later but I digress.
that christmas morning my sisters and i gathered around the tree to open our presents. we got got one toy which I cannot even remember what it was, but in another box was a 3 pack of underwear and a 3 pack of t shirts (remember when you actually wore them under your shirt?) and a pair of gloves and maybe a stocking hat.
my sisters and I decided that we should buy these half busted nativity figures at a local junk store and I took out my model car paints and touched them up so they didn't look so bad. (I still have some of them that I even display) my parents opened the box and acted like it was a box of 100 dollar bills
our stockings were filled with apples and oranges and some nuts and candies that my parents tranferred out of the icebox crisper and the bowls on the kitchen table.
we opened the gifts laughed had a good time and didn't complain. the night before it had snowed (yes a real white christmas) and we got dressed and since no one had shoveled the snow yet and the streets were not plowed walked the dozen blocks in the middle of the street along with many of our neighbors to christmas day mass.
when we got home my mom made breakfast and we ate the cookies and cakes she had made and had a blast.
since that day I never really gave a crap about the whole gift giving business, but I will always get together with members of my family and share a laugh and a bottle of wine or whatever. |
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November 2004
Posts: 4413
| I like al's best.
Great stories. |
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THE Family Christmas Memory
