💭 Share your favourite holiday memories!

[Neshira Namea Returns]

Hey guys! With the Holidays fast approaching I know that many people, myself included, get nostalgic. We may miss home or may even be home. Everyone's got holiday memories to share that make us laugh, cry, ragequit, or just connect us to the things we love most. Let's share those memories here in this thread.

Anyone is welcome to share but please keep the themes within the GaiaOnline TOS as always.

Happy Holidays from everyone on staff here at R:G.  

[Troupe du Gothique]

I don't know about 'favorite', but it was certainly memorable. Some months ago I watched back a DVD that had a collab of old family video tapes.

Apparently during one Christmas when I was little, I had the tendency to say "Wow!" after opening every present because I wanted to seem surprised and grateful (and because I knew my dad was recording). Some of the 'wows' were obligatory, some were genuine. XP  

[Faerie KatrinaZ]

One year, my brother and I got up really super early on Christmas morning, around 3 AM or so. I turned on the piano light and we sat on the living room floor near the piano, dumping the goodies out of our stockings and playing as quietly as we could with the toys that Santa left for us. After about an hour or so, we quietly repacked our stockings and put the toys back under the tree. I turned the piano light off and we went back to bed, only to get up a few hours later and trying to act surprised at all the stuff that Santa brought us! To this day, we still don't know if Mom and Dad knew we had gotten up much earlier that Christmas morning. xd  

[Lycanthropos]

i have one that sticks out in my minds for two reasons:
~ I got confirmation on my kid's street smarts
~ Community generosity

We were probably the family at our old synagogue with the lowest income, or certainly one of them (and everybody knew it which kinda sucked), and we would sometimes get surprise charity around various holidays. Usually nothing spectacular, but it always made a difference, and we were happy & grateful for it. One year the Jewish women's club selected our family to receive Hanukkah gifts. My wife and I were thrilled because we could only get stuff from the dollar store for gifts, so we figured our daughter would get one or two nice presents that year. (she was maybe in 2nd or 3rd grade, my memory is fuzzy) The ladies provided gifts for all 8 nights of Hannukah, some nights more than one gift. (they were very generous, even gave a few gifts for my wife and one for me)

The gifts were all things our daughter would know were beyond us, so we made up a story that they came from the 'Hanukkah Fairy'. We assumed she was young enough to buy it, though I don't know why since we had told her that gentiles fabricated Santa Claus. We were all serious about it, and my in-laws played along. My kid didn't believe it for a minute, though she humoured us when when she asked where the gifts really came from and we told her the fairy brought them each night. She kept asking every night, saying she knew there was no fairy and wanted to know where they came from. We eventually told her at some point, and she said she knew it was charity, she didn't care, and why did we make up that stupid story instead of just telling her. She's still like that, very good at reading situations and figuring out quickly what's going on. whee