Remembering Christmases past.....

I'm sure many of you, like myself, often use events in your life to try to remember where you were living or what you were doing or where your family was or just plain trying to think of days gone by with using Christmas as the baseline.

This morning, Pattye and I, were thinking of those past Christmases and after about an hour into it, I pretty much had clogged head-brain trying to connect so many dots together. Let's face it, after almost 70 years of events, that's a lot of brain matter to try and organize.

My early days growing up in Dayton, Ohio first come to mind as I turn the clock back to so many years ago.

As far back as I can remember we pretty much celebrated Christmas, at least the opening of presents, always on Christmas Eve followed by my brothers and I heading to Midnight Mass at Our Lady of Mercy Church.. I'm not sure how that particular tradition began, but I'm guessing it had something to do with having two older brothers who had found out about the "secret" of Santa and were anxious to dig into the treasures early.

I do know one year, I'm guessing I was around 7 or 8 years old, and Dad had arranged, or heck who knows, maybe it was the real guy himself, showed up at the door at around 7:30 in the evening on Christmas Eve and he scared the bejeebers out of me. I was just at that age when I started to have some doubts and Holy Crap...there he was.

Another neat Christmas was the year Dad had found someway to get a train set up in the basement. Although I wasn't allowed to use the controls I can remember the wonderful excitement of watching the Lionel train engine pull its cars past the little depot with the plastic man standing outside holding a lantern.

Another year, Dad used the basement for the "special" surprise and he had somehow arranged to get a pool table down there and yet even another year a ping-pong table.

As the years went by the settings changed. The locations changed. The family members changed. But the one thing that remained the same and still remains ...are the memories. The smiles on the children's faces, the smiles on everyone's faces. And always the glistening in the older folks eyes as they too remember Christmases past.

Merry Christmas