I married my husband in the late 70's, we were poor grad students, and the first year we were married I was immature trying to find the presents he had bought to give to me before the holiday and it really pissed him off.

The second Christmas of our marriage, we traveled to stay with his parents (whom I had only met briefly at our wedding). After Christmas Eve Mass, we exchanged gifts. I unwrapped his gift to me - it was a large box of tampons. He said keep going - so I unwrapped it and undid the cardboard, and sitting in the middle of 24 white paper wrapped tampons was one that had writing on it that said "Open Me".

So, I picked the winner. Sandwiched in between a heavy flow tampon was a gold necklace that I had really been hoping for. His father laughed his ass off, his mother didn't even know what a tampon was, I was hysterical and ran up to their guest bedroom and couldn't make eye contact with any of them the rest of the weekend.

I'm still married to this man 43 years later...

Oh, seagrass!!! That is hilarious! Obviously, your guy was a keeper from the start.

My guy, of 57 years together so far, was sent by the Air Force to Okinawa for an 18-month unaccompanied tour, 10 years into our marriage. With two boys under the age of eight, and not being a driver, it was not the easiest time for me (luckily, I could walk to town and had my folks fairly close by). Eighteen months is a l-o-n-g time...

Christmas came exactly halfway through his tour, and he came home for two whole weeks.. One day, he asked me if I had an empty egg carton he could have. Being a craft person in those days, of course I did. NOT being a crafty person himself, I wondered what he was up to.

Christmas morning, he handed me that egg carton, gaily wrapped with his usual clumsy flair. Inside? Twelve beautiful rings he had bought half a world away for me! Star sapphire, star ruby, emerald, moonstone, regular blue sapphire, and more. I was gobsmacked, and delighted (I love rings).

I appreciated his unique presentation, and that memory still makes me smile. Guess I'll have to keep HIM!

Love these stories.

When I was in JH and my sister in HS, we were alone when our parents went out to dinner. I found the key to the closet in our dad's study (in Mom's nightstand drawer - hardly hidden!) and we carefully opened ALL of our presents. Either it was cheap tape that was easy to remove without pulling off any of the paper or we were just darn good. Mom wasn't the wiser until closer to her death when we were confessing some of our sins. She had a good laugh.

Sweet memory, LynnNM.

Lynn, what a beautiful story!

Sea, your story reminds me of what DH did in the mid-70's while in college. Our plans were to spend Christmas with his wonderful grandmother who lived on a fixed income. Christmas Eve he still hadn't bought her a gift and I about had a cow. That was his job, not mine, since I was new to the family. He comes home with a gigantic bag of dry dog food. I had another cow. I was so embarrassed.

We get to her house and he brings in the dog food, and I'll be darn, it was the best gift anyone could have given her. She talked about that dog food until the day she died.

That sweet woman helped finance DH's law school.

Allison, that reminds me of two other Christmastime tales from my youth.

There were five of us, four girls and one incorrigible boy. One year, he discovered Mum's hiding place for the Santa gifts for us all, and invited all three younger sisters (aged about 2, 4 and 6, to to sit at his feet as he distributed the presents properly to each. I, being the eldest, and cognizant of the reality of Santa, informed Mum, who was naturally beside herself with despair. There was little time to replace Santa's offerings, and even less money to do so. Somehow, she managed. My brother lived..

The other instance was the Christmas I was 13. One of my mother's sisters had sent a massive package of gifts from Philadelphia, and Mum had hidden them. I knew that my gift was to be a gorgeous watercolor-print quilted bathrobe that I craved, but on Christmas morning, it was not under the tree. I whispered to Mum and she was taken aback. She had completely forgotten to unearth the aunt's gifts -- sent me up to look under my parents' bed, and LO! there they all were. Funny even at the time.

Ah memories! Mine and everyone else's.

These stories are similar to mine! One Christmas my Aunt, Uncle, and cousins visited us from VA. Aunt and mom were twins, and the cousins a year or two younger than my brother and I. My brother was the oldest, I think 6th grade. I heard a commotion in the hallway and my cousin had climbed to the top shelf in the linen closet and was crying. Apparently my brother told him there was no Santa. My mother was furious.

What I remember about Christmas is that when I was a small child, I wanted a doll of my own - one that would have hair that I could comb and style, but when I asked for a doll, my parents would ask me what else I wanted, and then I got the what else and no doll. However, by the time I was four, I was on to this and told them that I wanted a doll and nothing else. They really pressured me to give them an alternative, but when I refused, they ended up giving me a doll that was as big as I was and that had plastic plastered hair that I could not comb or style.

After that year, I made a deal with my sister, who is a year and a half older. As it turned out, she wanted the presents that I was getting, and I wanted the dolls that she was getting. Therefore, I told her which dolls to ask for, and she told me what model trains etc that she wanted, and after we got our presents, we traded them. This was still annoying because my parents did not want me to play with dolls or make clothes for them or wash and set their hair. I was also forbidden to use the sewing machine, and so I had to sew all the doll clothes by hand and cut up old clothes for fabric, since they would not buy fabric for me either.

Even today, I feel that I was born in the wrong time and place. I would have been so happy if I had been encouraged to sew and make clothes when I was a child.

I realize that this is not a funny story, but it is what I most remember.

I recently saw an episode of Project Runway in which one of the contestants said that when he was a little boy and started making clothes, his parents bought him a sewing machine and encouraged him. I wished that my childhood could have been like that. My parents wasted a lot of time and energy trying to discourage me from making clothes, and in the end, they failed anyway.

I’m so incredibly sorry, Lars. I sincerely wish that all parents, then and now, could/would encourage and support their children’s real needs as individual human beings!

Lars, I thought of you when I was watching that episode of PR, as I remembered your story. Ditto what Lynn said so well.

Thinking about you Lars, that much have been hard. I loved your story!!

Our son, wanted a Easy Bake Oven for Christmas. We gave it to him and he loved playing with his sister's dolls. It's funny when he finally came out at 16......my husband had NO IDEA. I just wondered where he had been all these years not to know. I guess a Mother always knows. Thank goodness times have changed and he and his partner are happily married!

I'm sorry too Lars. I'm sure they did what they thought was best. That doesn't make it right though.

If it helps at all, I have similar stories. I've made peace with that by acknowledging my parents did the best they knew how. It was a different time, that's for sure.

Im sorry too, Lars. My middle son asked for a doll for Christmas when he was about 3. We were surprised, as he was mostly into cars and trucks and soccer balls. But we got him a doll that looked kinda like a cabbage patch doll, and a stroller. He played happily with that doll, walking him up and down the street in the stroller. I am sure some neighbors rolled their eyes (or worse) but whatever. He’s 26 now and we sometimes tease him a bit about Baby Big Ears, which is what we called him, actually can’t remember if we made it up or if it was the brand!

BTW I always always snooped when I was a kid — my mom hid the gifts under her bed. She made it too easy.

I have a DH similar to seagrass’s.

To set the scene: I come from a very poor background but earned an education and got a good job. DH also got a good job and we were working our way toward a solid middleclass life.

One Christmastime early in our marriage we were at the grocery store, buying what we needed to host some friends at our house. The store was full and our cart was overflowing. We started piling our stuff on the checkout belt and the checker lady was obviously tired and close to the end of her shift. DH, in a loud and carrying voice, said to me, ”did you bring enough food stamps to pay for all this?” The checker lady’s head snapped up and she nearly shouted, ”Food stamps!! You’re supposed to separate out your items if you are using FOOD STAMPS!”

We were not using food stamps obviously, and I was proud to NOT be. Everybody turned to look. DH was nearly collapsing on the floor laughing and he’s lucky I didn’t walk out of the store on the spot.

It’s his most precious Christmas memory. We’ve been married 47 years and I’m not laughing about the story yet.

I grew up with lots of boys in the extended family and enjoyed their toys as well as my own. When I was 14 or 15, we all got a wrapped cylinder for a stocking stuffer. As the boys opened theirs, one roll of quarters after another, I was so excited! Unwrapped mine, and it was a lipstick. I had no interest in makeup till years later (and even then not much of an interest). I'd much rather have had a roll of quarters!

Lars, I like the way you and your sister collaborated!

I have missed two Christmases. When I lived in Dallas, my roommate and I were going to head back to Illinois but ice kept us in Dallas. We had already done our own little Christmas exchange, but Christmas morning when I woke up there were stockings by the fireplace for me and our pets. So sweet! She had cousins in town so we went there for Christmas dinner, it was nice.

When I was in school in Switzerland, I was planning on going to cousins in Denmark for Christmas. My first stop was at “unrelated relatives” (through marriage; we spent an evening mapping out the family tree), when a blizzard stranded me there. It was the most snow they’d had since the war; trains weren’t running, borders were closed, we couldn’t get off the island! (we were near Odense on Fyn, so it isn’t even like it was some little island with only a ferry boat!). Anyway, it was a real Danish-Dutch Christmas, in their traditional farmhouse, complete with the kids (all teens/college) rolling their eyes when their mom wanted us to circle the tree and sing carols. (Meanwhile, back in Switzerland, they had the LEAST snow they’d had since the war. Go figure.)

My part of the story is relatively brief, but I think I need some of the context.

My mother had some pretty rigid ideas of what constituted "value" in work and pastimes. She worked outside the house when lots of women where I lived did not. She also volunteered. She served on committees. She organized things. She delegated. Although she had some envy of women who did creative things needlepoint, or knit, or made afghans, her attempts were half-hearted at best, because I think she thought being creative that way was a waste of time somehow. Actually I still struggle with my creative drive as something that does not have real value as "work" This probably stemmed in part in her own childhood, because her own mother was highly educated, groomed to work, not marry, and gave up a promising career in law and city government to get married--like there was actually stuff in the newspapers about it. Her mother had 8 children in 7 years and because she had no idea of what she was doing, my mother as the eldest girl had a lot of responsibilities with the 4 baby girls from a very young age.

For various complex reasons associated with my birth, while everyone else had a personalized handmade Christmas stocking (made by her, believe it or not) and I had one of those red acrylic fuzzy ones that came from the 5 and 10. In the seat of the sewing machine and later in her cedar chest was the kit for a knitted stocking with an angora beard for Santa, and I was told that this was "my" stocking.

One summer I came home and the stocking, with a little more completed, was sitting on the dining room table, and I apparently had ruined a surprise that the stocking was supposed to be finished in time for my 21st Christmas. It was in fact finished by my 21st Christmas, but later I found out that she still hadn't finished it herself, she had given up on it and one of her friends finished it for her because it would have not been finished on time otherwise--she still couldn't quite get there. So on the one hand my Christmas stocking is a kind of funny story that it took 21 years to finish, and on another hand it's kind of an emblem of the sorts of flaws or complexities we have as people.

I think it was sweet that she wanted to finish it for you, even if someone else did the finishing. My mother gave me my finished baby book on my 50th birthday. There really was no good excuse. She didn't work outside of the home, had help at home, my sister and I were four years apart.

Don't feel bad Allison. I have my baby book, but out of three children, mine was the only one kept up. I like to think my sister and brother gave her too much trouble to work on theirs. LOL

Such wonderful stories. Thank you, everyone.

Oh, I don't feel bad - she had admitted there was no good excuse. But I do tihnk it helped me keep up to date on the baby books for our three. She probably did me a favor. LOL

Again owing to a series of events related to my birth, I don't have a baby book at all, I might be the one in 5 generations of my part of the family to not wear the same christening gown, and there is not a single picture of me until I am almost exactly a year old, on Christmas morning, a snippet of a silent movie which then jumps an entire year and shows me on Christmas a year later at age two. There is a set of formal portraits by myself between the ages of one and two, but there is not a single snapshot of me in the same photo with anyone else probably until I was three. For whatever reason, my visual documentation is roughly that of Victorian age.

This is a Christmas story with me as the grinch: the year my daughter was born in October my FIL had heart surgery a few weeks later followed by a stroke. He was gravely ill for months and we weren't sure he was going to make it.

Since he was still in the hospital ICU, I volunteered to host our family Christmas Eve party at our house. This gathering was the substitute for my MIL's cherished Christmas Eve famiy party which was her pride and joy activity, planned carefully by her for months and hosted by her. At <2 months postpartum and with an older toddler in the house (my son was turning 3 in January) I shouldn't have been anywhere near hosting a major dinner/party event much less doing it with the heaviest of emotional overtones. Boy howdy, what could possibly go wrong.

The family gathered-about 10 of us-and I tried my best but somewhere mid evening my spirits, my will and my energy just gave out. The baby was fussing, the toddler was cranked up to 11 on the manic energy scale, the dinner debris for 10 was piled in the kitchen and once the gifts had been unwrapped and the living room was covered in wrapping debris...I snapped.

I told everyone the evening was over, time to go home, goodnight and get out. Looking back I can't even summon up much regret because everything was such a blur.

What makes it hilarious is that we had one of those huge early edition video cameras and my BIL was filming the evening. The very last sequence shows the silent foyer with our front door ajar, dark night outside while his voice intones 'and then we all left'.

My SIL told me I was definitely the scandalous talk of the family for quite awhile after that holiday gathering. Happily after a long convalescence my FIL recovered and we had several more happy Xmas Eve gatherings with my MIL hosting.

That is a golden story, runningplace. Kudos to you for volunteering, and shame on SIL not helping to clear the kitchen after everyone ate. No matter where we were celebrating, people chip in to put up leftovers and clean up.

Pal, we have only a few photos of DH and had to guess on a couple if it were him or his younger brother (they are 18 months apart and looked very similar the first year). We had to order certified birth certificates for him before we could get our marriage license. I don't know if they just never took any, they got lost along the way (lots of moving) or she threw away (mentally ill).

Our mother enjoyed needlecrafts, and made all our stockings.

For my older brother’s stocking on the left, she found a really nice design kit, sewed everything from the quality felt stocking to the appliques and sequins, embroidered his name on the door-plate (whited out in the picture. It must have taken ages! Isn’t it a cute stocking?

I always loved my stocking. Again from a kit, the stocking is velvet with a pink satin lining, and the decorating is a mix of glued and sewn on. My name has sequins! I show one letter to compare with ...

Our younger brother’s. It is a plush stocking from the store, and Mom made the design and decorations, cutting them out from felt, tacked on at the edges along with the sequins. The bow near the toe has not held up well, it’s kind of stiff; the stripes on the candy cane are, I think, gold and red, hard to tell now, and the letter in his name has no sequins. He’s a natural performer and really should have had sequins!. He does, however, have the largest stocking, and don’t think that Big Brother and I ever forgot that!

The important thing is, they all hold plenty of candy and small toys, true evidence that it’s what on the inside that counts! (Though I do love my stocking lol)

(Sorry the image is blurry, not sure why.)

Wow- I'm so sorry I had to keep re-reading Pal's story - though I'm sure painful, especially to a child - I felt sad but at the same time could not stop laughing at the idea of the video and photos and the colorful description of the stocking...then bpath offers a visual!

Lars, thank you for sharing. It reminds me of a tag sale I held many years ago. A little boy wanted a toy that was my daughter's and the mother made such a negative comment it just broke my heart.

Now in my mid 70’s, much of my upbringing is totally foreign even to my contemporaries. My formative years were on a farm in rural Iowa. Ours was not a poor family though my parents grew up during the depression and were self-sufficient and thrifty. Neighbors lives were the same - no electricity, running water or central heat. Telephone was a party line. School was a 1-room with grades K-8 taught by one teacher.

I share the above in order to describe our Christmas Tree. Scrub cedars grew along the fences and my Dad would keep ones shaped to become Christmas Trees. But they were flat on one side and that side would go against a wall. Not long ago while visiting a holiday shop, an artificial ”apartment” flat sided model was displayed. I could only smile and reflect.