Best and Worst Holiday Memories

[thecoolone]

What were your most favorite or least favorite holiday memories.

[peacebyanymeans]

Receiving my Wii approximately... three days ago.

I dunno if it's a holiday memory, but it was a good memory.

It's the week of Thanksgiving so I guess that counts for something...

[Martianinvader]

I have many. Here's one:

During Christmas 1991 my mom found a bunch of old Avon hair and makeup products and set them out for the guests in an open giftwrapped box that said "FREE! TAKE ONE." My cousins and I nabbed all the hairspray and air fresheners, ran to my room and fought the epic War of the Sprays. (I had a film camera at that time, so I have pics of us blasting each other with spray smoke.) The capper was when somebody else came in the room and said "It's dinner tim--AAH, WHAT THE HECK??? IT SMELLS IN HERE!!!" We fell on the floor laughing.

[Elven Moon]

Hmm. I can't really think of anything terrible.

For Christmas 1997 my family went to Disney World. It was very cool to wake up Christmas morning to open presents and go to one of the parks for a holiday parade, among other things :)

[Dr.Pepper]

I don't have any bad memories nor I don't have anything specific that was good

[purplehairedwonder]

Sort of a combo: Last year about a week before Thanksgiving my dad had a stroke but he was home and helping cook the turkey on Thanksgiving and he's been fine since. So it was scary when it happened, but good that he's better.

Otherwise, I don't really have anything specific. The holidays are just a glob of warm feelings for me when I think back on them.

[Michael24]

Like purplehairedwonder, most of my Christmas memories are basically a sort of general feeling of happy thoughts and such as a whole, but a few specifics jump to mind at the moment.

In the early-80s, we spent Christmas several times at my aunt and uncle's ranch up in Oregon. They always had tons of snow, and my cousin and I would run around pretending it was the surface of Hoth. Another time, my uncle tied a saucer to the back of a small dirt bike and took turns giving my cousin and me rides. To this day, if I see a picture from any of those times or even just think about it, I can still feel the coldness of being out in their yard in the snow and smell the fire in the wood stove. There was always just a certain ambience and a feeling to that house that I can still hear/feel today.

For much of the 80s, we were close with the other three neighbors who lived in our duplex. Two units sat on either side of the driveway, so each year my dad would string up lights along the edge of the roofs, running them down the length of the driveway and also along the front of the houses, and also put lights in the bushes out front. It made the whole duplex look really nice. Those are some of my favorite memories, being out there in the cold air, my dad up on the ladder, helping him string the lights up. (As those neighbors gradually moved out over the years and cranky or private ones moved in, the lights were confined just to our unit.)

In 1991, we spent Christmas morning with some good friends of our's and their kids at their house. Another great Christmas was 1992. We had Christmas dinner at my grandparent's house, and also there were my great-grandparents from my mom's side and my great-grandmother from my dad's side, an aunt and uncle, and a few cousins. It was great.

A few specific gifts even stand out. In 1983, I got a huge G.I. Joe Sky Striker, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. In 1994, my parents got me my very own leather bomber jacket, which I had wanted all year and still wear to this day. In 1996, my brother surprised me with the soundtrack to The Shadow, which I had looked everywhere for and cound not find because it was going out-of-print. (He lucked out at the one place I hadn't even bothered to check, Blockbuster Music.)

I still love Christmas and look forward to Christmas morning every year, but I think you definitely lose a certain something to the whole thing once you stop being a kid. I still remember my brother and me getting up early Christmas morning, sneaking down the hallway past our parents' room, out to the front to see what was in our stockings and play with what Santa had left out for us.

I don't think I have any bad holiday memories. Perhaps that closest would be December 1999. On my birthday (Dec. 23), my aunt and cousin stopped by on their way down from Oregon, with my great-grandfather, and it was the last time I saw him because he passed away about four months later. I guess that would be more of a best/worst combo: worst because I never got to see him again, but best because now my last memory of him is on my birthday at Christmas time.

EDIT: Oops. Just realized it was "holiday memories," but all I talked about was Christmas. No specific Thanksgivings really stand out, because we typically never do much except occasionally have my dad's parents over. There was a memorable one in the early-90s at my great-grandmother's house, but the year escapes me at the moment. Another memorable one was in 2001, when my dad's parents stayed over for a few days and drove my mom crazy because they wouldn't stop watching a marathon of The Waltons. Haha!!

[ThePeterNetwork]

The best Thanksgiving I've ever had was last year when my mother and sister went to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade for the first time in our lives. I could upload pictures to Photobucket, but that could take a while. :sweat:

Anyway, after the parade, we were trying to find some place, any place, in the city to have dinner. We wound up at a local diner in our neighborhood, just the three of us. No large group of loud relatives, no conflicts of interests, none of that crap. It was the best Thanksgiving dinner ever.

If only all holidays could be family-free like that. :sad:

[Delia]

I got a tribble for X-mas one year. You could sqeeze it and it would make the tribble sound, and it was so awesome.

It stopped tribbling long ago, but that fluffball still rocks.

[Beat]

A Christmas where I wasn't expecting anything, I went to my aunt's house, and she gave my brother and I new iPod videos. Completely out of the blue. The scenery with the tree, the gift, the people, it was all very warm and touching.

A similar and equally warm memory was one Easter at the house we had moved into a few months before. Nothing exceptionally gaudy or excessive, just a lot of the family over a huge breakfast, talking like the old days before everyone moved away from each other. There was a synergy there that we had lacked prior.

My worst memory was a Christmas in the mid 90's. I had begged and pleaded with my parents for a Playstation 1 (prior to this, I had never owned a game console in my life, but my older cousin who lived with me had an NES that I foamed at the mouth over) and my dad got me...a learning computer. I remember crying for about half an hour.

[James Bester]

I've had the Christmas tree fall right on me twice. Once when I was three and once when I was seven. I don't see that happening now that we have a fake tree.

My best holiday memory was probably when I got the N64 for Christmas back in '99. After that it was a full day of Majora's Mask and Super Smash Bros. We also actually had Christmas at my house that year instead of going up to around Lake Lanier to see my annoying cousins. Sadly, I have a feeling this year's Christmas will be nothing like that.

[purplehairedwonder]

I thought of a couple more:

Three or four years ago my older brother was living with us and my parents went on a belated anniversary vacation in December so he took me and we bought a tree ourselves and decorated it and the house before my parents came back. It was a lot of fun and my parents loved it when they got back.

The year after my brother had moved out and my older sister was living with us and we bought a tree the day before my parents went on vacation again so the next night after they had left we struggled to put up the tree; the stand was broken so we had to go to Wal-Mart and buy a new one (which we still use) and finally got it up and decorated it and I put lights up before my parents got home again.

Bonding with my siblings at the holidays, yay :p

[J. B. Warner]

I recall Christmas 1994 particularly well (due to the fact that it's one of the few Christmases that my mom got on video before her camcorder crapped out). One of my gifts was a desk for my bedroom, with a painting of Bugs Bunny on it (done by one of my mom's friends who was quite talented with a paintbrush).

The aftermath of Christmas 1995 is worth mentioning. I was spending the holidays in Florida with my grandparents, and it was on the morning of December 31, 1995 that I was flipping through the channels on their TV and first laid eyes on "Mystery Science Theater 3000". Granted, I didn't actually start watching the show until 10 years later, but still, it's a fond memory.

Christmas 1999 was the year I got my Game Boy Color and "Pokémon Blue" (my sister got her own GBC and "Red"). For the next two months, I couldn't put that thing down. Admittedly, I made a lot of boneheaded mistakes in the game, and I ultimately Missingno-ed it to death, but at least it gave me the incentive to ask for a Game Boy Advance SP and "Pokémon FireRed" for Christmas 2004, so I could finally beat the Kanto region without cheating.

However, my least favorite holiday memory comes from Christmas 2002. This was the year in which I was absolutely tanking in my high school physics class, so I took this extra credit assignment to do over Christmas vacation. Having not learned anything from my bad experiences throughout the year, I put it off until the last day of my vacation, struggling to wrap my brain around it in the two hours before bedtime on January 5, 2003. I remember actually staying up until about 11:00 PM, in a fit of tears because I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I had never been so miserable in my life.

[ToOn~g@l]

I don't remember what year it was, it might have been 2002 but I got my first DVD player and a few dvds and man did I have a blast for the rest of the day.

And any year when my dog was with us was always fun because we would wrap him a bone or biscut and he would open it up, it was so cute and fun.

The worst Christmas was last year when I was doing the College Program at Disney world. My mom was alone all the way out in Colorado and I had to work until four in the morning at the Magic Kingdom. It didn't feel like Christmas at all even though my roommates bought a tree and we all did a secret santa but meh, I haven't talked to them since.

[LightShadow1890]

My worst holiday memory was Thanksgiving '03. It was one of the few years my whole family did not come together. While some of my extended family members came to my grandmother's house, my family had stayed at home since I was sick. We didn't really have anything for dinner; we just had a slice of turkey and rice. That was it.
The one thing that made it THE worst was that the Sunday after, my uncle had died from lung cancer.

One of my best holiday memories was Christmas '04. It was tradition for my extended family that every year, one family has to host the Christmas party. That year was when my family had to host it. I had gotten my first laptop, there actually was wrapping all over the floor, and for once I could just hop into bed when I'm tired (since I sometimes fall asleep at these parties, because we'd open presents at midnight, and then the party would still go on until the wee hours of the morning) instead of having to sleep on a couch and then see a video of the party with me sleeping.

Another was Thanksgiving last year. My whole family and some of my family friends had celebrated at one of my uncle's house Upstate, and everybody slept over. That next morning, everyone packed their bags and we all drove to Lancaster since my cousin had gotten everyone tickets to see two Biblical plays.

Another's Labor Day. I finally got to see my brother and a few of my family members living down at North Carolina. It was really great to go sightseeing with them, and talk to people I haven't talked to in a long time.

[HellCat]

Christmas Day a few years back, I fell victim to a potentially fatal flu bug that was sweeping the country. I was constantly shivering and had to lay down, as sitting up would cause me to vomit.