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Christmas time is near

Twinkling lights on a tall Fraser fir. The sweet smell of gingerbread wafting through the house. Well-behaved children in their green and red finery patiently awaiting Santa’s arrival ...

STOP! It’s time for a reality check.

If my suspicions are right, your family’s Christmas celebrations are more like the Griswolds of “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” than a Currier & Ives lithograph.

In fact, a few readers offered their holiday memories as proof.

Time for toys and time for cheer

After years of scrimping, Grace and Tim Terrell were finally seeing the fruits of their labor. Grace had graduated from medical school and had a salary (if you can call an intern’s pay a salary), and Tim had his first computer job. Their daughter Katy was 2 1/2 and finally, they could afford to have a real Christmas for her.

“We had a big Christmas morning for her at our house with Santa, then went to Siler City to visit my parents,” recalls Grace, who practices internal medicine in High Point. “As the first grandchild and the first niece, Katy was lavished with presents to open. Then we landed at the Terrells’ for Christmas dinner, which was not just Gene and Eldora (retired High Point physicians) and Tim and his five brothers and sisters and their families, but also the ENTIRE HAWORTH CLAN. That is about 50 people.”

Needless to say, little Katy was confronted with yet another sleigh of gifts.

“When we brought them to her, she took one look, turned around and ran into my arms, sobbing 'Mommy, Mommy, please don’t make me open any more presents!’”

We’ve been good, but we can’t last

Grace Terrell should be grateful that Katy didn’t take after her father.
“My sister Jane is five years younger than me, and as a child, she would awaken very early on Christmas morning and race upstairs to wake my brother and me,” says Tim, who savors this memory from when he was 12.

“One year, in anticipation of this, my brother Richard and I stayed up all night rigging an elaborate booby trap for her. We ran a rope diagonally downward from across the room to our bedroom door. At the top of the rope was a white shirt on a clothes hanger with a balloon head. In the mouth of the balloon was a referee’s whistle. When she opened our door that morning, that released the balloon and shirt. The shirt flew down from across the room, whistling loudly.”

The plan came off without a hitch – except that Tim and Richard were nearly too exhausted to enjoy Christmas.

We can hardly stand the wait

Who among us hasn’t been tempted to sneak an early peek at that special gift under the tree?

Andrea Morris learned the hard way not to ruin the surprise.

“When I was about 10 my mom and dad left me alone at the house to deliver some Christmas presents around the neighborhood,” says Morris, a native of High Point, as she recalls the one and only time she let her curiosity get the best of her.

“I was snooping under the tree and peeling back tape to see presents. Of course with all the movement, the real tree — with its water and all — went crashing over. About 15 minutes later, one of mom and dad’s friends stopped by to deliver their gift.”

Morris thinks Gay Tester was the well-wisher who caught her red-handed. “She walked back to the den with me to put the present under the tree, and upon seeing it in the floor said 'Andrea, oh my, do you want me to help you stand the tree back up?’

“Not wanting to get into trouble and disclose that I had done the deed I replied 'Oh, no, that’s OK. It’s been like that for a few days.’ [Mrs. Tester] later told Mom and Dad that she just pretended to believe that they would let a tree stay in the floor for a few days!”

Please Christmas, don’t be late.

As the parents of seven children, Caryol and Jack Forsyth of High Point are bound to have some entertaining memories of Christmases past.

“Our family tradition was to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve, always the biggest tree we could find,” explains Caryol Forsyth.
“That year the best bough would have to be cut off to make the tree fit in the stand. I said 'Absolutely not!’ It would ruin the look of the tree. So Jack improvised and placed an extra block of wood on the base. The block gave way right after we had finished decorating ... an hour before we were to go to Christmas Mass…

“The only thing to do was to saw off the bottom bough. Jack tried a hand saw as I was holding the tree sort of steady, standing atop a wooden kitchen stool. The hand saw was taking too long,” Forsyth recalls. After all, their Christmas Eve Mass was in just an hour!
So the Forsyths decided to switch to an electric jigsaw. “Jack was scrunched under the tree, trying not to cut any electric light wires. It made quite a racket, decorations rattling and saw buzzing.”
Enter the young children.

“Mac and Steve came running ... Steve was about 3 and was crying and screaming, 'Daddy’s cutting down our Christmas tree.’ Which I am sure Jack really wished he truly was doing,” Caryol Forsyth said with a laugh.

“Mac was offering what comfort a 5-year-old could to his younger brother. I got a case of the giggles thinking about the whole situation which irritated Jack even more. We made it to Mass on time. Talk about a Christmas miracle!”

Yes, Caryol, it is a miracle that we survive the season. God bless us everyone! Heaven knows, we need it.

With inspiration from “The Chipmunk Song.” Contact Cathy Weaver at CWeaverNR @gmail.com.