Childhood Christmas Memories

(Some of my favorite pics from our church holiday tea)

I can think of a few of  my favorite childhood memories of Christmas. My first memory is having all the aunt, uncles, cousins, and grandparents get together for a Christmas day meal, followed  by opening of presents. Sometimes Santa would even show up at our house!(My grandfather dressed up in a Santa suit, which we all knew, but it was still pretty awesome!) Then after the present opening time, we would have white elephant bingo. My grandfather always was the number caller. To my knowledge he never played the game, himself. All the families brought small gifts wrapped up, so nobody knew what they won if they got a bingo!

I also remember as a small child hanging one of our socks on the end of our beds on Christmas Eve. We always tried to find the biggest, longest socks to hang out, so that we would hopefully get more stuff in them. On Christmas morning we would wake up and the socks were filled up with goodies. No matter how hard we tried to stay awake to see Santa fill the socks, we could never catch him in the act!

Another memory I have is that my mom was so creative at Christmas! She built a life-sized Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, and a donkey(out of wood, foam, and burlap) that was displayed on our front porch every year! They actually were quite life-like in appearance. It definitely got people's attention when they drove by our house!  

Ahhhh,...such good memories!
Wishing you a blessed Christmas season, with lots of good past, present, and future memories of family, friends, and blessings from above!!

In His Love, 

Ann
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