Merry Christmas! Our series of stories featuring local businesspeople’s favorite holiday memories concludes this week with a look at several Christmases past. No humbugs here, just fond and cherished recollections. To read our previous installments in this series, click on the following links:
Beer for Santa, Grandpa’s toy chests, and more
Waiting for Santa, German potatoes, and more
Visiting Macy’s, Fantasy in Lights, and more
Chasing Santa, Door County Christmas, and more
Becky Backhaus, The Business Forum, Inc.
I think that each year as my kids get older, I say this is “the best Christmas ever”! With an imaginative 4-year-old boy and a high-energy 3-year-old girl, it is a blessing to relive the magic of Christmas in their eyes … and I get to be a kid again.
In our house, it already started the weekend before Thanksgiving. Dad was gone deer hunting and the kids and I were … well, a little bored! While I am the one who always says, “You have to at least wait until the turkey has been carved before decking the halls,” this year I took advantage of the warm weather and decided we would do all the lights outside. It has always been one of my favorite things to do around the holidays, but I never let anyone help before. Time for a change, time to teach my children well!
So with my two little helpers in tow, we headed to the hardware store and loaded the cart with lighted candy canes, garland, scented pinecones, and more lights and extension cords to add to our already decent-sized collection at home. My son asked, “Mom, why are we putting up all these lights?” I responded, “So Santa can find our house, of course!” His eyes lit up, huge smile, followed by the laughter that I hope I always remember, and it was game on!
The kids had so much fun helping untangle lights, putting candy canes in the ground, and watching the inflatable polar bear come to life once again. When they got tired, I set up sleeping bags and snacks on the front porch, and they watched Polar Express on their portable DVD player while mommy, aka Griswold, finished the house. The result? You can see our house about a mile away, I got to be my kids’ tree-lighting superhero, and a new tradition has just begun in our family!
Kimberly Hazen, Wisconsin Better Business Bureau
For me, the holidays are about family, friends, and a full house of craziness. In fact, our definition of “family” has broadened each year and now includes everyone who doesn’t have plans. We call it “Ludacris-mas,” and I wouldn’t have it any other way. And, although the holidays for me are more about people than presents, I do subscribe to one hard rule when it comes to Christmas Eve: “Everything with a heartbeat has a stocking.”
So on any given year, you’ll find a dozen or so stockings hung in our family room. They’re awaiting gifts for the kids, the cousins, the dog, the cousin’s dog, the cat, the aquatic frog, and – even one year – the sea monkeys. Have you ever tried shopping for a stocking stuffer for a sea monkey? I tell you, it’s not easy, but it’s something you won’t soon forget.
Major Loren Carter, Dane County Corps, Salvation Army
When I was a boy – I would say probably around 11 or 12 – I remember my mother saying to me and my two brothers that Christmas was going to be very sparse. Our family had just moved back to my hometown because my dad had been unemployed and looking for work for many months. We had gone into a store, and I suspect that my brothers and I were very quick to indicate to Mom what we wanted for Christmas. Again, she reminded us that we did not have any money for those things. We walked out of the store and right in front of our feet were three $20 bills folded together lying on the ground. I do not have any difficulty believing that God sent that money to us that Christmas.
Tom Breuer, IB blogger
I have numerous fond Christmas memories from my childhood: helping Mom frost Christmas cookies; picking out a tree with Dad; listening to our favorite German Christmas album (vinyl, of course) the day before Christmas; stringing popcorn and cranberries to make tree decorations; discovering – pretty much every year up until the age of 9 – that raw cranberries are not edible.
I also remember many great surprise gifts. The one that stands out the most is an ant farm, which I opened with a previously untapped nerdly ecstasy one Christmas morning around the age of 8. It was a thrill that was only slightly muted by the notable absence of live ants under (or on) the tree.
This being December in Wisconsin, there were no ants to be found anywhere, but a helpful slip of paper informed me that ants could be procured via mail for no charge, and so I quickly filled out the form, mailed it posthaste, and waited.
Weeks later, the ants showed up. Excited, I opened the envelope and removed a small plastic canister of oddly lethargic – lethargic to the point of being dead – ants. The enclosed instructions said to wait for the ants to wake up from their cold weather-induced slumber, but these ants clearly were no more. Bereft of life, they rested in peace. They’d run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.
I learned a valuable lesson that Christmas that has stuck with me forever and, more than any other, has made me the man that I am today. That lesson is this: Whatever you do, never, ever mail ants in January.
I learned one other thing. I was a huge nerd, and my parents not only respected – but actually celebrated – that fact. And that, my friends, is a gift that keeps on giving.
Ruth Ann Schoer, Sedona Associates
One year our family didn’t have any money so my mom purchased three Charlie Brown trees for 50 cents, cut off the branches of the worst two, and drilled the branches into the good one. My fondest memories come from how we figured out how to get by.
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