https://youtu.be/ow5bPIeVTzU

The Horrors That Hide by Julianna Rowe (coming Soon)

Saturday, November 24, 2018

Merry Christmas from the Past by Diane Ogden



Black and White and check out that tinsel.  My brother and I wanted to "THROW" it onto the special green tree personally cut by father...but let me tell you that was not any where near acceptable. Each tiny strand of glistening silver had to be expertly hung only on the farthest extended branches as to lay properly with no kinks whatsoever.  Wouldn't life be grand without any kinks?   Believe me we had the kinks in our family..... In this black and white sit my brother and I, Nana and Grandad.  They had ample amounts of money and we did  not. As you can see by the cheap perms am displaying.  Dad would cut down a tree from the REAL WOODS out back of our house, then saw the base, drill holes in the trunk of the tree and insert extra branches where necessary for fullness.  Ever heard of that now days? Nope!  Now its off to the corner for the perfect-est tree which costs minimum of $75 plus.  Mother would pop the popcorn and bring in the huge bowl of little red berries to be strung on heavy string for the tree.  My brother and I got to use a needle and thread for this treat we were not always happy about.  We favored cutting out colored paper strips and gluing the circles one end to the other, inserting each strip into the next making a long paper chain of many colores for more tree foo foo.  Ooh how could I forget the ham metal squigglies.  In the olden days canned Ham came with a "key" to open it.  You hooked the key onto the tiny aluminum tab and twisted backwards all the way around the can.  If you miscalculated your screw and slipped, well, mis-perfection wasn't so cool in our household.  A n y w a y...after the can is opened you hold the key and pull down the section you wound out to create a long spiral shiny ornament!  They were rather sharp so we had to be very careful. After all it was aluminum. Mother made homemade gingerbread men. We tied ribbons thru a hole she made with a terrifying ice pic, and hung the little people on the tree.  Candy canes present also.  There was always a bowl of "ribbon candy" sitting on the coffee table.  And some of the tiny sugar candies, peppermints, green mints, yellow ones.  They would crunch quickly between your teeth because they were so little.  Mother would bake home-made yeast breads filled with cinnamon and all sorts of other fancy cookies.  Dad would go out back of the house on Christmas Eve and change into his Santa suit in the chicken coup, then we would suddenly hear bells and know Santa was outside.  He would come to the door and Mother would let him in so he could sit in the big chair and talk to us. We would tell him what we wanted for Christmas and he would do the Ho-Ho-Ho then he would leave, but only after asking us to leave him some cookies and milk and his reindeer some carrots. My God we really bought it!!  To this day I swear I saw him ride out of site in his sleigh with eight tiny reindeer far into the night with a full moon for me to view him ahead of the huge night clouds far above the rooftops.  Indeed Christmas was always a fun time with good memories for me.  Even though the family had and has "kinks."

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