Christmas memories and traditions

One of my favourite memories is seeing reindeer tracks in the frost in the front yard. Knowing that my Dad went out of his way to make them just makes it extra special now. I was so amazed as a kid and freaking convinced.

I made reindeer food (a bunch of smelly gross hay and grass and twigs) and INSISTED that my father put it up on the roof as a five year old child. I watched him climb up there in his military fatigues and scatter that reindeer food all over the place at my behest. We didn't have a chimney, but I didn't care. All I knew was that Santa's pets needed a pick me up after all that hard work they were doing flying that fat fuck around everywhere. The next day all that reindeer food was gone and I believed the reindeers had eaten it. I found out MUCH later that my father crawled back up there in the middle of the night to get it off of the roof so I would believe.

Another great memory is the years that my mother was healthy enough to decorate outside. She painted all the Disney characters with Christmas apparel on wooden boards, and decorated PVC pipes with lights and frosted garland. She then made them into an arched walkway that was absolutely dazzling. The wooden boards with paintings on them were placed at specific parts in the path and were accompanied by a story that she painstakingly wrote on yet more wood. The whole affair was amazing, as all you could see were these decorated arches of light, the story and paintings, and she played Christmas jingles from a boombox set on our windowsill. There were those Christmas Disney Mickey and Minnie statues you could buy that would move if you plugged them in, and they were at the entrance and exit as if to say "Hi" and "Goodbye". All of the neighborhood kids and their parents came over to experience the little adventure that was our front and back yard.

I got really shit presents until my teenage years though. My parents didn't think I liked video games and kept shoving things like "My Size Barbie" and "Easy Bake Oven"s at me until I was about eleven or twelve. But there was this one time I remember when my dad came back from Iraq and we all went to the BX (a military store) and he told us "Go and pick out what you want. Anything." And I ended up with so much anime that it blew my mind. I also acquired a few video games, such as the Inuyasha fighting game for the PS1. I think he spent over 2000 USD that night on us. I was thrilled with my gigantic collection of probably very inappropriate anime for my age (my dad didn't think to check any of it and just assumed anime was for children... LOLOLOLOLOL).

Quote from Aphelion

Another great memory is the years that my mother was healthy enough to decorate outside. She painted all the Disney characters with Christmas apparel on wooden boards, and decorated PVC pipes with lights and frosted garland. She then made them into an arched walkway that was absolutely dazzling. The wooden boards with paintings on them were placed at specific parts in the path and were accompanied by a story that she painstakingly wrote on yet more wood. The whole affair was amazing, as all you could see were these decorated arches of light, the story and paintings, and she played Christmas jingles from a boombox set on our windowsill. There were those Christmas Disney Mickey and Minnie statues you could buy that would move if you plugged them in, and they were at the entrance and exit as if to say "Hi" and "Goodbye". All of the neighborhood kids and their parents came over to experience the little adventure that was our front and back yard.

That's awesome, we never went that crazy with decorations outside.