Christmas memories from childhood creep into my awareness and I swear right now I can smell the aroma of a mince pie cooking despite an empty oven. I relive the agonizing anticipation that built in me during that last half hour on Christmas morning before the household started stirring and we could inspect the goodies in our bulging Christmas stockings. Magically, during the night while we slept, they were tucked next to our beds so that they would be the first thing we saw when we awoke in the morning.
The stocking experience is the quintessential spirit of Christmas for me. Our family is large (10 of us kids), so the production of the elf squad was severely taxed to meet the Christmas Eve deadline. The stocking contents varied each year, but as the years rolled along, a collection of essentials became mandatory. Especially memorable are the wind-up toys: drum-beating marching musicians, dinosaurs stomping, race cars clattering, every creative incarnation imaginable.
Nuts, fruits and sweets filled the smaller spaces, with a Clementine in each toe. Exotica included tinned smoked oysters, clams and mussels. A yearly set of jacks or paddle balls were expected. All the edibles were consumed willy-nilly before breakfast: smoked oysters on top of marzipan on top of freshly cracked walnuts.
The stocking tradition has become one of our most treasured family memories. All year long we remained on shopping alert collecting oddities, squirreling them away for the Christmas Eve wrapping and stocking stuffing marathon. One year two of my sisters in adjacent beds shared real stockings: ready-to-be-discarded panty hose; they each got one stuffed leg.
Michael and I wish each of you a warm Christmas season filled with treasured memories: those of the past as well as those yet to be generated.
Copyright 2008
www.lindalater.blogspot.com
Posted December 26, 2008
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