Christmas Decorations and Family Traditions
 

My parents, like most young couples during the war years, didn’t have a lot of cash to go out and buy fancy Christmas decorations. My mother made items to hang on their early trees. My father was working for Oshawa Engineering at the time. He thought that the long, spiral swarf, (turnings) coming off metal being turned on the lathes would reflect the light and sort of resembled ice cycles. So these were his contribution and we proudly hung them every year. These were very sharp and every Christmas some of us would be cut handling them. But, they did look nice and are part of my families Christmas traditions. Over the decades many were damaged or lost but I still have a few. Now that it’s just the wife and I we no longer put up a big tree. However we do hang a couple of these old gems somewhere in the house.
I have included a couple of photos of the alloy, brass and copper Christmas swarf plus one of my family’s home at Christmas in the early sixties. The tree isn’t finished being decorated in this photo but you can see a couple of these hanging on branches.
Another Christmas tradition was doing puzzles. Of note are the drop leaf table the puzzle is on and the games table to the left of the fireplace. These were both hand carved and assembled by my Grandfather.

While we don't have any interesting decorations, we do have a few traditions. Usually we drive around and look at Christmas lights which has always been a favorite. Then Christmas Eve we open 1 gift and enjoy tamales. Simple traditions but it's something we've done my entire life and I have no intentions to change them!

Neat story -

We open 1 gift Christmas Eve here as well. We always watch "A Christmas Story" on Christmas Day.

We really don't do much out of the ordinary stuff. My wife puts up the tree, usually on black Friday. We open presents Christmas morning. The wife usually takes the tree down the day after Christmas.

This year our 20 year old fake tree is going in the garbage. It has lost so many needles over the years it is just pipe cleaners at this point. I'm going Christmas tree shopping tomorrow.

Merry Christmas everyone.

We always watched a Christmas movie of the girls choosing. My wife hates "A Christmas Story" and One Magic Christmas" so it would be a cartoon or Muppet movie. After the girls were tucked into bed we'd watch one of the the originals like "A Christmas Carol", Miracle on 34th Street" or "White Christmas." Our two girls would beg to open presents on Christmas Eve. We always said no right up to about an hour before bedtime. That’s when we would recant and allow them to each open just one of our choosing. It was always clothing like PJ’s, bath robes, slippers etc. that they would start wearing that night and Christmas morning. In all the years we did this they never clued in.
One year we really did a number on them. For the week leading up to Christmas Eve there was just one present for each under the tree. They opened those on Christmas Eve and then speculated on what they’d get Christmas morning. They thought bicycles or some other items that could not be wrapped. Christmas morning there were two large boxes, one for each. They ripped the paper off to reveal night stands to put beside their beds. The look of shear disappointment was indescribable. They bitched and complained for about ten minutes before one of them opened the single door and realized it was full of wrapped packages.
We have adopted as well as made up some of our own traditions. When the girls were young we’d make them wait to see what Santa had brought until the wife and I had fixed coffees for ourselves. After Santa’s presents we’d sit down to have peppermint grapefruit. The night before we as a family would half grapefruits, set the halves in bowels sprinkle them with sugar and crushed candy canes. (That was my part, placing the candy canes in between sheets of waxed paper and taking a ballpeen hammer to them.) Then pour a little cherry syrup over them and top ‘em off with a maraschino cherry and let sit in the fridge overnight.
Then we’d open our gifts to each other followed by a typical Sunday morning breakfast of bacon & eggs with fruit pancakes.