What have you done for holidays past, that you will have fond memories of this holiday season?

This Thanksgiving picture, from 2009. I told a little, blue story about Chris from when he was 2 or 3, and the whole table erupted. I had my 35 mm on hand, and got the picture. I have a wider angle pic showing everyone, but I’m not putting my hands on it at the moment. I think I lost 3 family members due to choking that day!

Board games, Dominoes, etc.., wine and several days immersed in family fun and love.

I’m coming to your house Know!

OK so here’s the story behind the picture. I thought I had told every Chris story that ever was but apparently I had never told this one.
When Chris was 2 or 3 I had some gala event at the house that included assorted balloons.
After everyone had gone home, little Chris came upon one of those really long, elongated ballons. It was longer than he was tall!
He held it right up on his groin area and proclaimed, in disbelief “Look! This is bigger than my penis!” Like he couldn’t believe anything could be bigger than his penis!
Apparently that story was a new one because the table just exploded, from the little kids on up!! Mashed potatoes and stuffing went everywhere!

When I was young I set up the tree and strung the lights. Then everyone else pitched in to decorate.
We always had these old lights that were hand-me-downs and every year they became fewer and fewer due to failures. Then one year, we had a single string left with five working lights, just enough to run the string inside the tree next to the trunk from top to bottom.
The next year Mom bought 2–30 light strings, and I got 2 more strings for a total of 120 lights! But that year of 5 lights was pathetic!

The second year after my divorce I didn’t have $20 for a Christmas tree, so I hung lights on my 7 foot ficus. The kids loved it. The ficus, not so much.

I probably shouldn’t answer. Most of my memories are boredom, stress, or exhaustion when it comes to the Christmas holiday season.

I do love the trees and lights and holiday music.

Very recently I have had fun where I live. We dress up with holiday lights around our neck for zumba and dancing in the square. Every recreation center has a differently themed tree or trees (we have around 35 rec centers I think that have indoor facilities). I don’t trade gifts with anyone here. It’s just fun and no stress here unless there is some small bring a $10 gift thing.

Visiting family.

I always try to buy one of those little toy trains that are battery operated, to run around the tree.
Reminds me of my favorite Christmas, when I got a Lionel electric train form “Santa”. A few months later my damn sister burned out the transformer jacking with it when I was at a friends house for an overnight. So I tore the head off of her goofy Barbie doll in revenge. Of course I got a spanking for that, sis came out smelling like a rose. No justice in this world.

My dad did that for us one year @Nomore_lockout. Well it turned into a decades long hobby for him. Over the years he must have invested thousands of dollars in the project. It took up half the basement!

@Dutchess_III Cool, it is a great hobby. Got into it myself for awhile, but not quite that elaborate. I’d still like to set my stuff up again, but when my grand daughter was little she wrecked it, and now we have another toddler in the family. I’ll have to put it off a few more years I guess. Don’t want another “Wreck of the Old ‘97”.

LOL! The things we kids did when Dad wasn’t around. We ran into cars and cows and pedestrians. The carnage was outrageous!
And then the cat jumped up on it, picking his way through tiny towns and farms.. Dad actually tolerated it. He called it a Twighlight episode!

LOL Your poor daddy I feel his pain, all the time and effort to set that up, only to have it wrecked by the Jolly Green Giant girls. Bad Dutchy! He must have been a very patient man!

Cloudy in the west and looked like rain, round the bend came a passenger train. Northbound train on a south bound cat, it was all right a leavin’ but it wont be back.

Well….we hid the deed. I mean those HO scale engines were freaking expensive. So, knowing that, we backed off the wrecks. But the ones we had were EPIC!!

I’ll have to share the pics. It went far beyond just “setting it “up.”

Cool can ya post them on here? I love stuff like that!

This is all I have. My dad was taking 35 mm pics for as long as I can remember. They usually turned out really, really good.. But not the train set pics.
Anyway, all the buildings were meticulously built from scratch, by hand. The cows were store bought, but hand painted. My dad made EVERYTHING himself. He built model A cars from kits (which we smashed into with the train, once or twice before we decided that just wasn’t smart!}
As I said it was a years long project.

That’s an amazing set up.

Now I have all these ear worm train songs stuck in my head dammit. Wabash Cannonball, Train Called City New Orleans, etc.

Those pics really don’t do it justice. He built a mountain with a tunnel and the track traveled up the mountain and through the tunnel.

There was a coal station. Dad painted bird seed black. He loaded this chute with the “coal”. You’d park the coal train under the chute, toggle a switch that would open the chute. Everything was controlled from a master switch station that Dad wired himself (he was an electrical engineer.) We switched tracks from there, everything…. And so from the master switch station we slammed the train into cows and humans and other trains!

Total carnage! No way treat a bad ass train set up! : )

It finally occurred to us that the engines were about $80 (70s money) so we should probably stop!

@Dutchess_III I imagine! Surprised yall’s daddy didn’t wear your little butts out lol

Well he didn’t catch us! He didn’t spank or hit us anyway, unless Mom told him to after work. His heart was never in it.

You dad sounds like a really cool guy @ Dutchess_III

I’d give my right arm and a leg for a set up like that, and I wouldn’t have the patience to allow kids within a mile of it.

We were old enough to know better! Plus we helped build it here and there. We painted cows and horses and spray painted peat moss for tree leaves.

There are three sets:

- At the grandparents as a child
– At the parents as a young adult
– At my partner’s as an adult

In each of these scenarios, it was virtually the same every year they existed, down to the hour. As a child, this was comforting; we knew what to expect.

In hindsight, it’s the one-offs that truly stand out.