The Pub Discussion Board

I was going to make this about Christmas, then I realized, not everyone celebrates Christmas so we'll do our greatest winter holiday memory.

What is your best memory of a winter holiday, whether Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah or whatever holiday you celebrate.

Mine personally, is from WAY back. I remember I was four or five years old (going back close to 35 years here). My father was career military so we were over in Germany at the time. We were living in this, well, I thought it was a great three bedroom apartment on the military base.

I remember my sister and I (my sister is only eleven months older than me, I'm the baby) were so excited the night before that neither one of us could sleep. My mother put us both to bed in HER bed and I remember both of us getting up on our knees, at the head of the bed and staring out the window looking for Santa's sleigh or, better yet, Rudolph's red nose to glow in the sky. Our parent's kept coming in giving us updates on Santa's ride

"He's in Nuremberg!" Mom told us and we were both tickled because Nuremberg was only an hour or so away. "You better get to sleep. If you're still awake when he gets here, he'll skip us."

I have no idea what it was, probably a US military jet, but my sister and I both saw a blinking red light in the sky and we scrambled under the covers and pretended to be asleep, scared to death that Santa would know we were awake and skip us for that Christmas.

I don't remember much else from that night. Most likely we were both so tired at the time that while pretending to be asleep, we actually fell asleep.

The next morning we woke up in our beds. Both of us up at some horribly ridiculous time of the morning, 5AM, 6AM somewhere in there. I remember Shelly, my sister, coming into mine and my brothers room and shaking me awake and telling me it was Christmas. I scrambled out of bed and the pair of us tore down the hallway to our parents room, one on each side of the bed, we shook both parents awake screaming that it was Christmas and we wanted to open presents. There was a door that closed off the hallway where the bedrooms were from the rest of the house so we couldn't see the tree or the presents or anything.

My mother took us to wake up my older brother while my father went out, started the coffee pot and turned on the tree lights.

FINALLY we were allowed out into the living room where the presents were. The living room looked half full of presents. Wrapped boxes were stacked under the tree, a baby doll table was set up in front of the tree with two chairs and a baby doll for my sister was sitting in one of the chairs. Off to one side, sat a Green Machine (a really cool trike that was out at the time) already assembled and with my name all over it. I don't remember much else after that. Just ripping open presents. It's the only Christmas I've had so far that has stuck with me. Maybe because it's the first one I actually remember but, no matter what I got for Christmas through the years, NOTHING has ever tickled me as much as that Christmas and that Green Machine.


The Green Machine http://www.retroland.com/pages/retroped … item/2617/

-Jeff