Holidays as a Child

     I am writing a book of stories from my life.  It is called "Grandma's Stories."  Following is one of the stories from that book.

Holidays as a Child

I started to write several different stories about my memories of holidays when I was a child.  I then decided to combine them all into one.  This entry is more memories than it is a story.

Why don’t we go in order?

Valentine’s Day:  This was a special day for me as a child and girl.  Of course, we always exchanged Valentines at school, putting Valentines cards and treats in each other’s’ boxes.  In one of those elementary years, a boy named Matt had a crush on me.  He gave me a very nice box of chocolates and a love note.

But the highlight was that my dad always went to Penny Wise Drug store and bought my mom a really nice box of chocolates and would get Joan and I each a heart-shaped box of Russell Stover chocolates, wrapped in red cellophane.  I always felt so loved and so special, receiving those chocolates.

Easter

Easter was celebrated traditionally at our house.  The Easter bunny came and brought a basket that included lots of candy, always including a hollow chocolate bunny.  We spent hours and hours on Easter day hiding and re-hiding the eggs we colored the day before.  We always got a new dress for Easter.  Even as a teenager, I looked forward to getting a new Easter dress.  We often took pictures in our new dresses and outfits, so I will include some of those.

Easter with our cousins:  Kay, Joan, Martha, Linda

We often had Easter dinner later with our Peterson cousins.  I think my mom made ham loaves for that usually.  We loved her ham loaves with the sweet, sticky sauce.  I know Joan still makes those for Easter dinner.  I need to learn how to make them.

Fourth of July

The fourth of July was an exciting day for us when growing up.  We usually celebrated with our neighbors, the Blackers.  We would get up in the morning and work all day preparing food.  Sometime in the afternoon, we would go to the Blacker’s pool and swim.  My mom often wore what we called her firecracker dress.  It was a big, colorful dress that looked like fireworks.  We usually would have the picnic on the Blakers big patio.   I don’t remember the entire menu, but Lily’s potato salad was always on the menu. One time, when I was a teenager, I went to Lily’s home and watched and helped her prepare the potato salad because I wanted to learn how to make it. 

After a delicious dinner, we would do a few small fireworks of our own.  I loved lighting the “snakes” and watching them grow and curl.  We would then sit out on the curb and watch the Caldwell city fireworks, exclaiming, “Oooo and Ah!”  We always had sparklers.

 

Janis Blacker, Kay, Joan

Swimming in Blacker's Pool

 As a child, I looked forward to the holidays that we would spend with our Peterson cousins.  We nearly always had Thanksgiving with them- either at our house or at theirs.  We had Christmas dinner with them, too, usually at the home we didn’t have Thanksgiving.  We also usually shared Easter with them.  Those are happy memories.  Our cousins were about our same age.  Martha was one year younger than me and Linda was Joan’s age.  They also had Scott, who was younger that Linda.

 

Thanksgiving

We had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner each year.  We often had Thanksgiving dinner with our Peterson cousins.  The little girls (Joan, Martha, Linda, and I) always had our own table where we spent most of the meal giggling.  I didn’t care for pie back then, and usually scooped the pumpkin filling out of the pie because I didn’t like the crust.   After dinner, the four of us would go downstairs and play “Peep, peep” and other fun games and giggle to our hearts delight.

 Christmas

As is true for most children, Christmas was my favorite holiday.  The Sears Wish Book would come and Joan and I would pore over its pages.   Mom would let us mark three things as I remember with ripped pieces of newspaper in the book- the things we wanted the most.  Oh, that was hard to narrow it down to three.

As a family, we usually provided Christmas for a needy family.  We all loved doing that.

When I was in 4^th grade, a girl named Barbara was in my class at school.  I could tell Barbara didn’t have much.  We were friends, so I learned that she came from a large family.  I told my parents about Barbara and we decided to provide Christmas for them.  I got a list of all of the children in their family and their ages.  I don’t think I was very discreet about this.  I can remember the day when my dad took us to Penny Wise drug store and we chose a gift for each member of the family.  I chose a Barbie doll for Barbara.  My mom got food for a big turkey Christmas dinner and all of the trimmings for the family.  We wrapped and tagged the gifts to fill one cardboard box and the food filled the other.  We were so excited.  On Christmas eve, we drove to the address and parked down the street.  I so badly wanted to be one of the ones to put the boxes on the step and run, but my parents thought I was too young.  I was so sad.  My brother, John did the doorbell ditching.  I can still remember watching him knock and run and hide behind a big bush.  We watched as the mom and dad came out and pulled in the boxes.  It was such a joyful feeling.

After Christmas break, Barbara brought her new Barbie to school with her.  That made me happy, too. 

Other Christmas memories include having two Christmas trees: a silver, metal tree in the living room which had a revolving color light shining on it.  It looked so beautiful in the front room window.  The other tree was a fresh, green tree that we would buy each year at a Christmas tree lot.  It was so fun to go with dad to pick out the perfect tree.  We then worked together to decorate it.  My dad taught us to carefully hang silver icicles on it- separating the icicles so that there were no clumps.  It had multi-colored lights on it and a variety of ornaments.  We had a beautiful Christmas tree skirt made by my mom’s friend, Rosie Simpson.  Gradually, as we got our gifts wrapped, the floor around the tree filled with beautiful gifts, increasing the anticipation day by day.  We always got a book of lifesavers from Santa Claus.

One of my favorite memories was getting to go with Dad to choose mom’s Christmas gift.  He often went to Marge’s who owned a boutique clothing shop.  Marge helped us pick out the perfect outfit for mom.  She knew her sizes.  Dad spared no expense and would buy whatever Marge suggested.  His joy in giving to her was a delight.

We always had a program on Christmas eve which included reading the Christmas story from the book of Luke.  Christmas eve was a long night.  We had a hard time getting to sleep, then always woke extremely early on Christmas morning.  Joan and I would sit on the heat vent in the kitchen, waiting and waiting for morning to arrive so we could go into the family room and see what Santa brought.

Christmas day was such a special day.  Often our Peterson cousins would come for Christmas dinner.  Mom always served pudding with “hard sauce” which was a delicious, sweet sauce.  We had such fun sharing with cousins our Christmas gifts.

New Year’s Eve

As a child, I have vivid memories of getting my mom’s pots and pans and banging on them at midnight.  One year, I put a dent in one of the pots with my banging.  I felt so bad about it.  But my mom never said anything about it.

As a teenager, New Year’s Eve was a very special night.  The stake put on a big celebration for the youth.  We usually had a fireside, a dance that lasted until midnight, and then a breakfast.  If New Year’s Eve was on a Saturday night, the order would be reversed.  It was a much-anticipated event.  The youth leaders really put on a party for us.  I had my first kiss after one of these special parties!

I looked forward to and loved holidays as a child.  I continue to love the holidays as an adult.