MORE Christmas Memories

Ceramic Christmas Tree

I have been on such a nostalgia kick lately! Here’s one I know you all will remember and you probably had (still have!) one of these bad boys. My mom had one that she made in a ceramics class. As a matter of fact, I think I might have made one somewhere along the way. I seem to remember painting on the glaze that puffed up like snow and gluing the little ornaments in the holes. Wow…that’s like opening the top of your head and reaching WAY back in the memory banks!

Mom got to the point where this was the extent of her holiday decorating. When Christmas was over, she dusted off the “tree”, put a dry cleaning bag over it, and took it back upstairs to the attic till the next year. I found it up there after she died. It’s one of the things I saved when I cleared out her house. And, unfortunately, it’s one of the only things that broke during one of my many moves over the years. It made me so sad.

I was rummaging around in the upstairs of the cellar house the other day and ran across one of these in a box up there. I need to get it out and set it up on the dining room table. My aunt used to put it out when she lived there.

I was wandering around the mall yesterday and was thinking of more things we used to get at Christmas. Remember those round bath oil beads? They were jewel-toned, came in about four or five scents, and often were in a tube with a plastic crook on the end to look like a candy cane. You put on in your bath and the hot water would melt the gelatin bead and the oil would come out into the water. Only, who could resist picking it up and playing with it till it completely dissolved???

How about the Easy Bake Oven??? OMGosh! Do you remember how horrible that stuff tasted??? Yet, we ate it! There was Chatty Cathy, Betsy Wetsy, Tiny Tears. I always wanted one but never got one. I did get the bride doll that was as tall as me! And I had a Barbie. My Aunt Marge once traded eggs for a Barbie Doll dress that the neighbor made. I knew that was a big deal for her to do that and I took extra special care of that dress.

How about the socks with the toes in them? Or games like Operation or Chutes and Ladders or Candyland. I remember getting a set of Old Maid cards once.

One year, money must have been really tight. Mom ordered our Christmas presents from a catalog and they didn’t come in time for Christmas. So on Christmas morning, mom gave us each an envelope with the pictures of what we were going to get when the box arrived. But then, when the box did come, Dad found out Mom had charged the items so he made her send them all back. We were so disappointed and to this day, it makes my heart ache for her. She had to have felt horrible that we didn’t get a Christmas.

We moved into the house we grew up in over Christmas break when I was in second grade. The house and furnishings were our Christmas that year. I remember my Grandmother bought me a bedroom set. It was grey, very modern. It had a twin bed and a dresser that had a drop
Front that turned into a desk. Grandmother made curtains out of pink fabric with grey poodles on them. There was an old TV console in my bedroom and for some reason, she made a cover for that as well. I even had a black metal trash can with a poodle on it! My brothers room was decorated with a Cincinnati Reds theme. That was a grand Christmas!

I remember when I got old enough to babysit, I would go downtown to Kresge’s and buy Mom a little bottle of Evening in Paris perfume or a chiffon scarf. She always acted as though that was the finest gift a mother could have wished for and it made me so proud. I loved wrapping the presents. As a matter of fact…when we got old enough, she would put our gifts in boxes and I’d wrap my own presents! I wrapped everyone’s presents. It took all day on a Saturday. I’d sit on the floor in front of the TV and use up all the bows and the stickers and the gift tags and have a big time. Then I’d pile everything under the tree. We didn’t have a lot. But we had enough. ❤️

““Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”
‭‭Exodus‬ ‭20:12‬ ‭NIV‬‬

14 thoughts on “MORE Christmas Memories

  1. Great memories again! Thanks for the trip down memory lane! I’m still decorating and this tree reminded me to get mine out! I painted mine on a company trip for employees and families back in ’93 or ’94, before our son was born in ’95…it was a ranch place, with barrel racing, rodeo, ride horses, and there was this little ceramics shop on premises.. strange, but a lot of fun!

  2. Oh the memories of the beautifully elegant deep blue bottle of ‘Evening in Paris’. Now that I look back I wonder if it stunk. I just loved the bottle. I wonder how many girls our age bought this gift for their moms at Christmas. I had $10.00 to go downtown and wander in and out of the festive stores on Market Street and do my Christmas shopping. I had to buy for everyone with the ten dollars. Great memories!

  3. I was the youngest if 4 kids and we were all raised together by our paternal grandparents. My oldest sister skated every weekend at the local roller skating rink. She met her future husband there. They are still married..Sister is 74 now. I remember getting a Tiny Tears doll one year for Christmas. It was the only thing I wanted. My sister got a new case for her skates so I was given her old skate case and I used it for my Tiny Tears doll and the clothes my grandmother hand made for her. ❤

  4. Our first family Christmas tree was a 1950’s bottlebrush! Mom laid cotton across the branch tops for snow and a single ornament hung from the tip! We got more modern in the 60’s with an all-silver foil tree…remember those? I want one now…that would be fun!

  5. Oh….such memories! ❤️I have one of those trees in my outside shed that I inherited from my sister. I’ve never used it. She loved Christmas & decorated her entire house. She was fortunate to have the funds to buy & decorate. We didn’t have much growing up so I guess she made up for not having all that as a child. I remember wrapping what few gifts my Mama could buy also. I still enjoy wrapping & giving gifts but I don’t get excited over decorations. I do love seeing Christmas lights. I used to drive my Mama around at night to see the lights. Oh my gosh…I could go on & on with with those memories. We had so little but I don’t remember feeling that we were so poor. Why can’t we do without now?!!!??

  6. I have my mother’s ceramic tree, but I keep it out from December to March. After the holidays I remove the multi color lights and add red birds.

  7. My Christmas memories, like yours, are bittersweet. I grew up in a large family with little money. One Christmas times were particularly tight. Dad waited until Christmas Eve to buy our tree because the tree would be cheaper. We each got one small gift that year. The biggest gift was we all were together. Christmas has gotten to be about things and many have missed the true meaning. We received the greatest of all gifts that first Christmas Day..eternal life.

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