The meaning of Christmas may change for us as we get older, but our memories don’t. What makes our favorite Christmas memories so profound is not so much the material things, it’s that they involved time spent together with family and friends. These readers have shared their fondest Christmas memories from opening a home to those who can’t go home, creating a Christmas wonder, and hunting for mistletoe, to carrying on a mother’s tradition, and welcoming a stepmother in the first blended Christmas.

An International Christmas

Tripp Wright

New Iberia

In 2017, I was a student on the swim team at Wingate University in North Carolina. Just before Christmas, I had two teammates – one from South Africa and the other from Sweden – who couldn’t go home for Christmas. I asked my parents if I could bring them to our house for two weeks, and they loved the idea. (Since freshman year, I had been bringing teammates home for Thanksgiving, but not for Christmas.)

Sebastian and SJ were slightly hesitant to come because they didn’t want to intrude; I assured them they would be honored guests. My parents even cooked Swedish meatballs and baked a South African milk tart to remind them of home. They seemed surprised to receive the hospitality they were given at my home and from the people who welcomed them within the community. We shared our traditions and stories of our upbringings, played games outside, and I showed them the town.

Before we left for school, they told my family that there would always be a spot at their table in their home country waiting for us. That meant a lot.

Each Christmas since then, we have sought out someone unable to share the holidays with loved ones and welcomed them to our table.

Christmas Amplified in Ohio

Alex Worstell Conrad

TV 15 Anchor

My mom decorates for Christmas with a full-blown décor, back home in Ohio. There’s always a full-size Christmas tree in every room downstairs – at least six trees – each with a different theme, and three smaller ones upstairs. (She starts decorating mid- November.)

After Christmas Eve mass, we’ve always gone to my dad’s parents’ house. And for 35 years, my grandpa has dressed as Santa that night. After dinner he disappears and goes to the garage to change into the costume and then goes outside and knocks on the front door. A family member’s name is called to go over and take a picture with Santa. His great grandpa started that tradition. My grandpa is 81 and still dresses up! In fact, it might be the same Santa suit! My mom and aunts would order different sets of Christmas pajamas for the five different families and Santa delivered them to us to wear that night. The Christmas Eve meal always includes two kinds of pasta, ham, turkey and potatoes. The next day, the exact same meal is remade by my parents for Christmas at their house.

On Christmas morning, at my parent’s house, everyone waits at the top of the stairs so that we can all go down together. Every single Christmas, for as long as I can remember, both sets of grandparents are waiting in the living room. For breakfast, we have French toast casserole and quiche. Each child has their own themed wrapping paper. Every year, since I was born, my grandma has given me the same silver bell ornament; I have 29 so far.

My dad has always said, “If you don’t believe, you don’t receive.”

Hunting for Mistletoe

Betsie Davis

Lafayette

Before the family Christmas Eve party, my mom had my brother and me get some live mistletoe to hang around the house. We would get up really early and go scouting in the many oak trees in grandma Dugas’s backyard and pasture. There was always one with mistletoe and my brother, Tim, could always spot it. It took me a couple of years to actually see it when he would point it out because it grows way up there. And, because it was so high up, he’d shoot it down with his .410 shotgun. Just before he’d pull the trigger, I’d close my eyes then open them up and watch the berry cluster fall to the ground. We would take the mistletoe to the house where my sister Bennie would make little mistletoe ornaments to hang above the doorways for the family party.

A Nod From Heaven

Dr. Brytt Eldredge

Lafayette

Our mother was the consummate entertainer who delighted in lavishing friends and family with over-the-top festivities. Our Christmas tradition growing up was going to Christmas Eve mass at 4:30 p.m, followed by dinner at our house.

The house was decorated to the hilt with a crackling fire and a warm spiced wine called Wassel. The meal was her famous corn and crab bisque and tenderloin on potato rolls.

After her death, we tried to keep the tradition going and had many failures. Once I got married and had kids of my own, I started doing the dinner at my house. There were years of trials- and errors.

Today I have perfected the evening from the decorations to the place setting. We always start with a welcoming toast and remember those in our family who are no longer with us but whose traditions and spirits we honor and cherish. We all wear the tissue paper crowns from the Christmas popper place settings. The menu includes my mother, Charlene’s, corn and crab bisque w/ jumbo lump crabmeat, chopped salad, hot buttered French rolls, beef tenderloin, shrimp and eggplant dressing and my husband’s family tradition of steamed King Crab legs.

The Christmas music is always going (my Christmas mix of Harry Connick Jr, Leslie Odom Jr., and Kermit Ruffins) and the fire is lit – regardless of the temperature. I always try to get family members to sing carols on the karaoke machine. Our 16-foot flocked tree, next to my live tree, is the centerpiece and star of the evening.

It’s really a special night enjoyed by all. I think my mother and grandmother Esther are proud.

Commingling Ornaments

Madeline Whipple

Broussard

I was 36 years old in 1974 when I married my husband, someone I had worked with for years, who had lost his wife. (I was friends with he and his wife.) He had five children ages 10 to 17 when we married.

A month after we married, we moved from Broussard to Spring, Texas. The children had to get used to a different school, different friends…everything. It was a bigger house, and that first Christmas, they had a tree upstairs, in a sitting room off the bedrooms, with ornaments they had growing up, from their mother.

Downstairs, in the family room, we had another tree with ornaments that I had collected over the years – and some new ones that the children helped me pick out.

At one point, I noticed a few ornaments missing on the tree downstairs and I’d replace them. Finally, I thought to go upstairs and check, and I saw on the children’s tree that they were mixing my ornaments with theirs. I took that as their way of telling me that I would blend well with the family.