Wednesday, December 23, 2009

What's your earliest Christmas memory?

At the Cousins Christmas, some were discussing earliest memories. Barb and I continued that discussion over lunch yesterday, and that got me to thinking about what my earliest Christmas memory is. I've given this some thought and the earliest I can come up with is proudly wearing a cowboy hat, chaps, and toting a pair of cap pistols in my new holster. These items were most certainly a Christmas present, and I place that memory when  we lived in the house on Hullum Street, so I would have been five or less.

Somewhere in that same era is the recollection of a package arriving from Grandmother Anderson; a gift for me in that parcel was a puzzle of the United States, with the pieces made up by the various shapes of the states.

How about you? What's the very earliest Christmas memory that you have?

4 comments:

Sarah said...

I have very few memories of the house that we moved out of when I was 7, and most of them would be Christmas since Christmas is so memorable! And, I guess since it is so photographed. When I was either 3 or 4, our family had our picture taken for the local paper in our "Christmas finery" at our house -- I would have to ask my parents why. I remember the photo shoot. I remember getting the baby that ate and promptly needed a diaper change -- probably same Christmas. One Christmas, (they all run together now) Santa came to our house. Honestly, he scared the bejabbers out of me. Considering the gift he left me, I was probably LITTLE-- maybe 2. That may be the earliest.

Rob said...

I remember a year when Santa came to visit at Mom and Pops. Not sure why we were there on Christmas Day, since New Year's was our normal time, but I remember I got a Dallas Cowboy helmet and jersey - perhaps the pants, too. It was a Roger Staubach jersey. I would guess I was around 5 or so.

I also remember the silver aluminum tree that Grandmother and Granddaddy Brown had in there front window in Bay City. They also had the light that had a tri-colored disc that turned, making the tree light up in different colors. My guess is that they had that tree for a while, so someone would have to figure out when they moved from BC to get the earliest date.

Since Christmas happened in the house in Austin, I have more memories of that place, but have no way to place them on a time line.

pat said...

I do want to respond, but too busy at the moment - 30 people coming this evening.

pat said...

Only 29 showed.

I think one of my earliest memories was of being in Tyler at our grandparents and receiving a doll bed that Granddaddy made with a blanket and pillow that Grandmother made. I had to have been fairly young.

But the most memorable one was the year that Mother and Daddy put an envelope on the Christmas tree that told Jim and I that we were going to have a baby brother or sister the next June. So exciting!!

And Rob, we found Mom and Pops aluminum tree in the attic at the lake. All neatly packaged in the paper sleeves, but with some missing branches. We didn't find the color wheel though.

John and Joann display it every Christmas in the alcove above their entrance door. He has a changing LED light set-up that illuminates it.