Christmas, because Jesus is My Lord and Saviour and this is the celebration of the first time He came to this earth to teach us and to sacrifice Himself out of His great love for us. Because of His first coming I am looking forward to His second coming!
Christmas was also a big family time. We would spend Christmas Eve at Dad’s parents’ home. The aunts, uncles, and cousins would all be there. On this side of the family I had two sets of aunts & uncles (same for Mom’s side of the family) and the total number of children was 18. My grandmother cooked up a big dinner and every family also brought food; but Grandma made lefsa and krumkake. Usually, there was also lutefisk for those who wanted it. Grandparents’ house had this really neat basement with a stairwell landing that had a door to the outside where we loved to play. We would play while the preparations were being made for us us to eat. Then we would have the blessing and eat dinner. After dinner we would sing songs. Then all the children had to perform for the adults. Then the devotional and finally the Christmas presents. Dessert was after the gifts. For the kids we drew names each year to exchange gifts.
When we got home there were brand new pajamas, gift-wrapped and under our pillows. I tried to do that for my daughters but they didn’t like it. I have seen, via the commercials, this tradition is in other families as well.
On Christmas morning we opened our stockings, then had breakfast. The mini-cereal boxes would be gift-wrapped, and we had to eat the one we picked; that was part of the fun, hoping to get the cereal I wanted. When I was little, and most of my growing up years, this was the only time when we got to eat cold cereal. The rest of the year was hot oatmeal and Saturday mornings the leftovers were fried and eaten with butter and syrup. (Saturday nights was pancakes or waffles.) But, I think we had cold cereal on Sundays (treat); mini-boxes were only for Christmas morning.
After breakfast then we would open the gifts under our tree. Since there were 8 children this would take awhile. After opening our gifts either we would go to Mom’s parents’ or her brother’s home, or my Grandparents, Mom’s sister, and her brother’s family came to ours. If we stayed home then Dad’s parents would come over sometime during the day as they visited each of their sons’ homes.
This is what I remember about Christmas.
