Good Morning. Making memories that don't involve food

Thinking back to our family holiday times, the clearest are those that involve food. Quite a few for me where of those when I was not allowed some food due to my Celiac disease...like waffles. : (   Others are sweet memories of our big wooden bowls my grandmother used for us kiddy cousins instead of stockings. Santa would come to her big old 3 story house in South Carolina. Instead of Santa filling a stocking with little gifts, he'd leave a big wooden bowl full of fruit, nuts and candy. There would be tangerines, grapes, pears, apples and a banana, nuts you had to crack for yourself, and Hershey's kisses, candy canes, gold candy coins and maybe a real silver dollar or 2.   lol  There would be one of those silver nut crackers in every bowl...I almost forgot that.

One South Carolina Christmas memory I have, that isn't totally food related, is about fireworks. You may know that South Carolinians love their fireworks...almost as much as they love their rice and grits. Anyway, my uncle would bring the fireworks and fire those bottle rockets for us. He gave us kids those little round "crackers"..I can't remember what the real name for them is. They looked like Trix cereal and we would throw them down on the front concrete walk real hard and they would POP!

What are your best holiday memories from your childhood?

--gina

What an interesting question Gina !   

In a certain sense I suppose  I was what you would call a deprived child .  My ww2 survivor and communism survivor parents proudly stated their child raising philosophy was  " against toys " .. also  against school clothes  , books , sports equipment .. car rides to extracurricular activities .. basically anything considered  " normal" and "expected " by most American kids (  that eventually also extended to paying college tuition , predictably or helping or even encouraging me in any way  to seek a scholarship though our family income was in the top 1%  ) .  So in my house , growing up , I basically served as  a pair of free extra hands .

One of the only outlets available to me for creative expression was cooking - as both my parents as electrical engineers , swam a mile together after work and came home quite late .  In the time between my returning home from school on my own , I was expected to  do all the house and grounds keeping , the laundry and make dinner  starting in the second grade .  I never knew a babysitter  lol .  On weekends we built a weekend house together  from the foundation up , living in its   wood-stove heated basement  with no  plumbing . 

What I  WAS allowed was to load  the grocery cart up with ingredients every week - and that could total two hundred dollars  even in  the eighties .   My parents liked natural , healthy food  and they were aware that it was expensive.  

I decided to make  every recipe in the JOY OF  COOKING as a result .  I remember particularly struggling with  homemade fillo dough ... and having to fold it over and over without breaking the butter through the  crust of the dough ! I accomplished such feats as  deboning a chicken  within its skin... and I was  proud of myself .  

I also had to learn to modify the rich recipes quickly as my athletic parents did not like excess fat .  

The biggest drawback for me was the fact that as an emotionally uncomforted child I  learned to turn to   the high from eating excess food as a way to cope with what was lacking .  I continued to steadily put on weight  though I excelled at athletics , probably because I  " ate the refrigerator "  every time I came home .  To this day I feel very tempted to put something extra in my mouth whenever I am tired frustrated or exhausted .

I was also punished for my cooking by being made to wash every single dish  for all three meals every day by hand ( though we had a dishwasher !)   so it truly became and endless exhausting trap ... which was probably the reason I didnt leave though looking back I absolutely SHOULD have .   Deliberately exhausting people physically  is a tactic frequently used in cults  ( and the army i suspect ) to keep em quiet and compiant and also  STUCK . You simply don't have the energy to contemplate the big picture  and actually  make a move when you're barely physically able to get through all your assigned tasks each day . 

For me the high points of my childhood were when strangers or relatives praised my cooking , my accomplishments , my intelligence and my well-readness .  Too bad  I didnt make the right choices though ... all the intelligence in the world didnt stand me a bit of good there .   Sometimes I wonder  if I'm still caught in the same trap , albeit a  slightly better version thereof . 

I honestly don't have any good childhood memories , especially around the holidays .  I remember classmates vividly discussing all the fabulous presents they recieved for Christmas and Hannukah and asking  what i got ..  which was invariably nothing .  I didnt even know WHAT they were talking about  toy wise because i literally  never set foot in a toy store but  I desperately wanted a Barbie doll for years in order to be able to play with them .  When my great aunt finally bought me one ... they ironically refused to play with me  because I had no desireable accessories  like Barbie furniture or a Barbie car ... .

For me the holidays were about cooking  multi- course dinners for visiting relatives  who did praise my cooking  , doing all the clean up  and trying to decorate a tree i cut from the backyard with strings of popcorn and home baked cookies tied on with thread anctipating their visit ..  I also used to wrap pieces of gift  candy in tissue paper and aluminum foil, use scissors to make fringe of the ends  and tie them  with thread to the branches to have  something shiny  on the tree .  

It was actually quite pretty.  I always felt mortified by my hand me down clothes and chunky frame though .  That profound embarassment colored all my days , especially schooldays where my classmates pretty much considered me retarded and a pariah because of my clown like clothes and horrible homedone haircuts . They were VERY  surprised when i scored in the 99th percentile on my SSATS and got into two of the best pre schools in  the US . 

Unfortunately  even there I carried my disordered eating and tendency to make bad choices for myself  with me . 

Wow.  We never know how good we have it until we look at others situations.

I'm so sorry. They messed you up royally, and for what? {smdh}

--gina

I do remember holiday meals but not for any special items really.  Acutally, although Mother was a good cook, southern, not fancy, our maid did most of the cooking and Daddy did all the fish and game.  More than the food, I remember the family being together.  The guys going hunting.  The year I asked for a gun so I could go with them and got a 4.10 shotgun.  Never did hunt with them but did get up to eat a pre-hunt breakfast with them. I remember Lena, our maid, being in the kitchen on Christmas morning cooking breakfast for us before we got up.  We weren't wealthy, but in the south in the 50's that was life. 

And we got fruit and whole nuts in our stockings too.  no candy or toys.

Similar 1950's experience here too. My mother was a teacher and then a research analyst for the university, so we were brought up with someone else doing the meals and grocery shopping and taking care of us kids. My mom said she paid the lady who kept me in South Carolina more than anyone else and some of the town ladies came to her and tried to get her to cut my nanny's wages. I really hated the prejudice there and I was only 4 or 5 but realized it was wrong. We later moved to a university town in NC and it was much different.

Ollie and Lena were part of my family as far as I was concerned.  They were black and I am not but that never even came into my mind.  I was very surprised when I went to college and the young black men (Memphis, the year after Martin Luther King was killed there) were racist.  Took me a long time to understand all that.

Totally understand, Price...we had Carrie...who joined us when my sister was born (my Mother wanted to work). Carrie was the one who taught me to cook. She was also my "mother" most of the time. When my parents divorced and she had to leave I was devastated. We did keep in touch and make sure she had rides at least once a week to the grocery store she wanted to go to, not the one closest to her.

But she said she was "colored" not black, but taught us to use the word black as she said that only blacks could call themselves "colored". I considered her family. It wasn't until many years later, I realized what it meant to her to be a part of our lives and for us to have her as a part of ours. She made us the people we are...tolerant loving humans.

My memories of childhood Christmas' are very fond.  On Christmas eve we were allowed to open 1 present...it was always a new soft flannel nightgown for me and my sisters and my brothers all got flannel PJ's.  We sang Christmas songs and sat and watched the Christmas in the dark with only the fire burning.  We were always so excited to go to bed we never put up a fight.  Left Santa his milk and cookies and off we went. 

On Christmas morning we were not allowed to get up until Mom and Dad were up...thank goodness they were early risers...try keeping 6 children from stampeding to the living room to see the BAZILLION presents that covered the entire area around the tree...beautiful memories....

Dinner was always festive...with lots of local relatives over...but I barely remember sitting at the "big table".  I was way to excited to go ride my new bike, or skate with my new skates...or something else in the warm California December air...

I gave all those traditions to my own two children...who now are 25 and 16 and still look forward to Christmas morning to see all the presents.  My parents now live with me...so it is quite amazing to see all the faces light up...I can't wait for that.

Here in Virginia...it is cold out and we have just put up our Christmas lights on the porch...this weekend we will decorate our outside Christmas Tree and finish up the outside lights and other decorations.  Maybe I will post a pic when we are all done. 

Merry Christmas everyone...I am so in the spirit now...lol