Anybody have a favorite Christmas or Winter memory?

So I think my favorite Christmas/Winter memory is driving up to see my Grandparents in Minnesota for Christmas of 1989.  

That year saw a very cold blast of air push well into the South.  I was a Freshman in college in Carbondale, IL, a place with typically mild winters, but that first winter in Southern Illinois was very cold for me--and I love cold!  I only brought a light windbreaker with me to college as I thought it would be more than enough for SI winters.  But I was wrong.  The temps dropped below freezing and stayed there for about a month.

From there, I traveled to see my family in Central Illinois during Christmas Break.  We left Central Illinois to travel to Minnesota a couple of days before Christmas.  The day we left the temperatures rose to about 35 f, and a miserably cold, wet rain was falling.  We were traveling in the first vehicle we ever had that had an outside thermometer.  As we headed into Northern Illinois, that rain turned to ice as the temps dropped below 32.  Eventually the ice stopped and we watched the temperatures drop to 25 in Southern Wisconsin.  By the time we made it to Minneapolis-Saint Paul, the temperatures were about 0 and it was getting to late afternoon and the sun was setting.  From there the temperatures started dropping rapidly.  -5, -10, -15.  We stopped for gas and by the time we got back in the van it was already frigid.  From there we drove another hour before stopping for for something to eat.  It took almost the whole hour to get the temperature up to something tolerable!  By the time we stopped, it was -20!  After we got in we stayed bundled up in our heavy winter coats as the car very slowly warmed up again.  And the temperatures continued to drop to -25 and finally -30 by the time we reached my grandparents house.

It was a beautiful, white and absolutely frigid Christmas that year but we all huddled in the basement by the heat of the wood stove where we played pool late into the night.

It made for a great memory.

Eric

I have probably one of the most unique memories that a kid could have that made my brother and I excited for winter.

The house we grew up in (which I now am in) is adjacent to a railroad track. This track used to be rail transportation for the local mills for product and supplies. While growing up in the 90's we would occasionally see a train every week or so. This train had to go through the village and one of the last houses it passed next to was my own! The neat thing about this was that the train in the winter had snow accumulate on the front of it that had to be cleared. Where would the train stop to do the clearing? Right next to our house!

Us young boys loved to create tunnels in the thick snow, throw snowballs at each other, and thrived in the cold climate. We devised a plan. You can only get snow crammed in your face by your brother so often until you don't want to play with him anymore... A train full of fully grown men though? THAT IS A TARGET! I think we might of been eight and six? We took our kid shovels and would make a 'blockade' on the tracks. A whole two foot pile of snow... maybe a foot? Good lord, we would have a felony these days if we did that! The train could be heard in the distance, we had to assemble our stock of snowballs. It would be a snowbath...

Wouldn't you know, that train would slow down and come to a stop where four or five men would come out or hang on the side of the train to clear snow. We struck.

Snowballs, yelps, laughs, screams! It was a frenzy! Maybe two minutes of time seemed to last hours. It might surprise you, but us brothers got CLOBBERED. Everyone was laughing and it was a good time.

They would do this a few more times with us over the younger years before the train ran less and less. I cherish the memory fondly.

This isn't a specific memory, but more of a bit of texture that Christmas always had when I was a kid. My maternal grandparents were divorced and my grandfather emigrated to Australia in the '60s. So every year we'd get an international Christmas card from the Australia family with a couple of snap-shots. The subjects were always wearing shorts under the baking sun or playing in the surf, etc. It blew my mind that Christmas was a summer holiday for them. Today, our instant exposure to imagery from every corner of the globe is taken for granted, but pre-internet, it was a rare window into how different things could be. I imagine the pictures we sent of snow-forts was even weirder for them since they never had snow and we did at least know what summer meant.

Timothy,

Snow tunnels!  Yes, Snow Tunnels!  I too made those whenever I could.  Sadly, kids in the region I live in now know nothing of the sort as deep snow is so rare.  But I loved to tunnel under the snow.  I was like a snow mole.

Eric

At Christmas 1966, one of my parent's Great Danes took a puppy's interest in the shiny ornaments on the tree and ate several. Luckily, she chewed them thoroughly so that the shards were small enough to pass through without cutting her insides. For a couple of days, her poo-piles were gloriously sparkly and easy to spot in the moonlight.

We don't have that kind of snow here anymore as well, really disappointing.

My shoveling muscles are thankful for it but it was an experience all kids should be able to enjoy at least once!

My favorite was, oddly enough, also probably the hardest winter I experienced, as a kid. We woke up, one morning, in December '77, to find we couldn't see out the windows, for the snow. Thankfully, the back door opened in, because otherwise we'd have had to break a window, to get out*.  My dad, brothers, & I started tunneling, in shifts, to get around to the front, where the grain for the (6) horses & milk cow was (temporarily) stored. Much of what had encapsulated the house - maybe 30% - was drift, but the rest was just how it landed. The big old station wagon was barely a bump in the snow, and we didn't even bother with that, because the driveway and roads were hip-deep, in the low parts - even in the Lower Peninsula of MI, there wouldn't be school for more than 2 weeks. Thankfully, it wasn't horribly cold, so we were able to keep going with minimal breaks to warm up & eat.

Halfway to getting onto the front porch, for the feed, we split into pairs- my dad & the older brother, John, and my younger brother Jim was with me, and we began full-out shoveling, for all we were worth, because the day was already half over, and the animals hadn't been fed, and poor Judy could be heard from her stall in the barn, bellowing in pain, from needing to be milked. Finally, when my dad was just at the porch door and Jim and I were less than halfway to the barn, an idea hit me, and I hollered up to my dad, "Aren't the sleds on the front porch, too?" He caught on right away, put the feed bags on sleds, and pushed them down the hill, toward us. We had to jump out of our path, to catch them, but that was the most fun we'd had all day - and made it go faster, for not having to climb the hill and carry the feed. We needed an extra bucket for the milking, by the time we got down to the barn, because it was very nearly time for the evening milking.

Over the next couple days, we tweaked the paths, widening them, making it easier to get the sleds up and down the hill, which was good, because at about day 4 the temps dropped, the (very small) pond froze solid, and we had to start hauling water from the house to the animals. That was a LOT of water, so we were super glad for the sleds. There was truly accidental sloshing (after all, the more we sloshed, the more trips we had to make), and the paths got icy and hazardous - but even more fun, for sledding!

We always sold our extra milk (even a family of 8 has extra milk, when the cow gives 5 - 6gallons/day!), but the family we sold it to had no means to come and get it, in that snow, so the horses started earning their keep. Every few days, 1 parent and 1 of us 3 older kids would make the 6 mile round trip, around the local lake, to take milk to them. The first trip out, my dad and brother discovered that someone had been on the road with snowmobiles, so there was already a beaten path that made it safe for the horses.

It really was hard work, and the house required a lot of firewood, too - but we played just as hard! We made snow cream, built snow families, including snow livestock, dug tunnels & snow forts, had snowball fights - even the horses were targets, and got us back, by kicking snow at us. We baked cookies, drank gallons of hot chocolate and homemade eggnog (duck eggs and fresh, whole milk! I still make it, like that! YUM!!), played board games and card games, told stories, and snuggled up in our bean bag chairs. We listened to music and danced, played the old electric organ (badly) and sang (mostly off key) and just got very silly - all 8 of us. My littlest sister was only 2, and my older brother and I were only 13. It was one of the hardest winters of my life - but definitely the best one I had, growing up.

*Edited to add: the 'house' was a pair of ancient single-wide trailers, that my dad put side by side, and cut holes to make a big archway to connect them. The windows were high, small ones with louvered glass panes, and the storm windows were bolted on from the outside.

Christopher Weeks wrote: It blew my mind that Christmas was a summer holiday for them.

This will be my 16th antipode Christmas, where we grill and eat icy stone fruit and have plenty of icy drinks to cool off (turkey and stuffing would put you in the hospital, lol. Also most typical Christmas treats like cookies and yule logs and etc don't hold together in this heat!).
I love it, and I sure don't miss winter depression, but I'm still not really used to it.

Probably my favorite Christmas memory is one when I got snowed in in Japan. A Canadian friend of mine was house-sitting and threw a huge party, the snow just kept on going and we all got stranded there the entire weekend til the buses and trains started running again. It was only maybe 4-5 feet but they typically didn't plow in that area of the state and they were just overwhelmed.
The house was well stocked (and we had laid in more supplies) and we spent a lot of time playing cards, playing pictionary, sharing the weird drinking games from where we all came from, singing, cooking and eating. Nothing traditional whatsoever, but a grand time with people from all over just having fun in a way that isn't so common anymore.

Oh man, I have so many!

We would drive down to my Grandma's house and celebrate Christmas with all my cousins and aunts and uncles. It was so good to be together. We'd all cram into the living room and sing Christmas carols together and then open presents (youngest to oldest). Afterward, we'd play games (when we were little, it was just running around the house or playing video games. As we got older, we'd join in playing Rummy with the older generation). All us cousins also ate together at the kitchen table while the adults all ate in the living rooms. We had so many fun discussion at our "kids table."

Timothy Norton wrote:We don't have that kind of snow here anymore as well, really disappointing.

My shoveling muscles are thankful for it but it was an experience all kids should be able to enjoy at least once!

I still want to experience it, and I'm 38! The deepest snow we've had here was just under 2 feet...and it took 20 from the last time we got over 1 foot. Snow here is usually just 1-3 inches deep.

Below are some pictures from the month of eternal snow. Snow in our area usually only lasts a day or two. You're lucky if you get a week. But, in February of 2019, we had a full month of snow on the ground! It would melt a little, turn to slush, and then freeze and snow again. The kids and I had fun making a ton of memories, from tapping their maple tree to making a giant snow fort, to pulling the kids down our road in their sled, to sledding down our hills, to power outages with our food buried in insulated grocery bags in the snow. I love the snow!

Nicole, that is an awesome picture of nice, deep snow!  I love it!  I love that your kids are having a blast playing in it.

And by the way, I have a number of Christmas memories in Minnesota that involve lots of cold, snowy fun with my cousins!

Eric

I don't have a favorite memory though I have lots of memories.

When I first married, I married into a family that celebrated Christmas with a party at a family member's home.  I remember the parties that I gave rather than the others.

I have fond memories of baking cookies and making candy with my kids.  Then we filled the boxes of cookies and candy with popped popcorn so the cookies would not break while being shipped to another state.

I loved to pick up pecans to shell and give as gifts of whole pecans or candied pecans. I still remember watching those trees for when the tree would drop its pecans.

While I was out of town in college, my roommate got a limb off a cedar tree and decorated it by cutting up my pie pan and using all my cotton balls as decorations. I thought the tree was so pretty.

A favorite Christmas was here in rural North Georgia.  Me, my sister, mom and stepdad decided we were going to cut down our own tree in the woods behind our house.  We came home with a 10 foot tall white pine that took up 1/3 of the entire living room.  

It was absurdly huge, and being a white pine, the branches were far apart and it looked like a giant version of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree.  The whole thing was decorated with homemade ornaments, I still have some of these 30+ years later.

When we moved onto our property, we said to ourselves, "Now we don't need to buy Christmas trees! We can just use the trees on our property, and plant some noble firs for future years!"

The first year went fine, because there was a blue spruce where we wanted our garden. That made a nice Christmas tree, albeit a bit pokey.

The second year, we tried with a Western Hemlock. My friends, do not try using Western Hemlocks as Christmas trees. They will stop dropping their needles within a week! Every time you brush the Christmas tree, more needles will fall. By Christmas, most of the needles will be gone! I've never been in such a hurry to get rid of a Christmas tree as I was that year. The amount of mess that tree generated was huge, especially with a toddler waddling around!

Our first Christmas together, we were unemployed and broke.  Both unemployment and inflation were high in the mid 70s. Anyway we chopped a Christmas tree down along a backroad.  Made popcorn chains and colored paper chains.   Made a few ornaments out of scrounged aluminum foil.

My parents were divorced when I was very young, which meant a Christmas at each house, two Christmasses! Two meals (one Christmas eve, one Christmas day), two trees, two rounds of gift-giving, of course double the family drama...

My parents had planted some blue spruce trees at the house I grew up in with Mom, and then Dad planted more at his new house. One year, I think I was in high school, there had been a storm two weeks before Christmas that snapped the top off of one of my dad's blue spruce trees. He called and asked Mom if we wanted it for our Christmas tree. Mom had gotten an artificial tree a few years prior, but we took the spruce and used it instead. It was perfectly shaped, and without a doubt the most beautiful tree we ever had. Mom had silver, white, and glass ornaments for her tree, and white lights; all of which looked amazing on this tree in her blue and white living room. The tree dropped hardly any needles, and boy those needles were Sharp! Decorating was painful, after struggling with the first string of lights, we put fewer lights on it than usual.

A few years later, again just before Christmas, one of Mom's trees broke in an ice storm, depositing its top in the middle of the driveway. Nostalgic for that first spruce from Dad, we took it in, prickly needles and all. What this one lacked in shape, was made up by the memories of the first, and our amazement of how they both came to be in the living room.

Even in Georgia, we used to have cold weather at Christmas. But one year, it was in the 70s, and we were ecstatic! My 5 siblings and I all got new bicycles for Christmas that year. My mom gave our old bikes to the neighbors with 8 children. We rode up and down the street all day, probably all month, on those bikes, old and new. What a blast!

That was the year I learned to ride with no hands. I'm not brave enough anymore, but what a thrill it was to coast down the hill with arms in the air, eyes closed, not a care in the world.