This site is about you, but I think it’s only fair of me to share my own favorite Christmas memory before I ask you to to do the same…
My favorite Christmas memory is 1997.
The previous year, my wife and I moved to a new state. We were far away from friends and family, but there was also a sense that we were doing something exciting.
At Christmas, we came home and did the sort of whirlwind traveling that people do when they’re in from out of state. It was a busy trip and my wife was feeling especially tired. We started getting worried that perhaps she was coming down with the flu, but as it turned out she was pregnant!
I still remember the rush of excitement! We were so excited to share this news with our families!
As I write this, my wife and I are sitting in our living room. The son we found out about back in 1997 is sitting on the couch reading a book, and the son who came five years later is busy putting together lego models…
I think this year is beginning to show some promise too.
Now it’s your turn. 
Share your favorite Christmas memory in the comments!
Latest Christmas Stories, Poems, and More!
THE FIRST CHRISTMAS TREE
BY
EUGENE FIELD
Once upon a time the forest was in a great commotion. Early in the evening the wise old cedars had shaken their heads ominously and predicted strange things. They had lived in the forest many, many years; but never had they seen such marvellous sights as were to be seen now in the sky, and upon the hills, and in the distant village.
“Pray tell us what you see,” pleaded a little vine; “we who are not as tall as you can behold none of these wonderful things. Describe them to us, that we may enjoy them with you.”
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Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
"Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
"Come; see the oxen kneel,
"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
A Christmas Circular Letter
The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come again
To look for something it had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods—the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
To sell them off their feet to go in cars
And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I’d hate to have them know it if I was.
Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except
As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
Beyond the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine,
I said, “There aren’t enough to be worth while.”
“I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over.”
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From Flower-de-Luce 1867
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
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An Original Story by Nathalie Boisard-Beudin
I was so tired that I fell asleep in my plate of spaghetti con le vongole. Pity that was, for it was excellent. Pity and messy too because I ended up having vongole all over my hair. Of course, now the cats LOVE me, but would Santa Claus? I need a computer this year, so I have been trying to be extra good, even if I have figured out by now that it does not pay. Santa Claus too, being a man, must have that thing about naughty girls ( I suppose he probably has a good one at home already so would be looking forward to the alternative).
So after disgracing myself so thoroughly in the spaghetti affair, I was nursing a glass of whisky on my lap, staring disgruntled into the fire place which held no burning log but rather a gaudy mishmash of luminous optical fibres Christmas tree and a nativity scene where the new born had not yet been placed. Joseph and Mary were still kneeling in prayers – for a prompt and painless deliverance, I suppose – and the angel dangling above looking bored with his harp – he’d always wanted to play the kazoo instead but does anybody pays attention to other people’s wishes in this place? The lone plastic kangaroo figure that had been placed near the manger by a little nephew earlier on was not going to dissent. It had dreamt of a white Christmas, yes, but not one that involved artificial foam or smelt of pasta con le vongole.
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Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.
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Christmas signified the one day out of the year where my parents put their differences aside and made the holiday magical for me, my sister, and two brothers. The element of surprise was always the best part for me because I never knew what I was going to find under that tree. My mother continued her traditions well into our adulthoods, until she and my father moved halfway across the country.
Once they moved, my husband and I started our own traditions with our two children, plus his family. We could always look forward to a mountain of gifts from my mother-in-law. Then, in July of 2002, everything changed. My father-in-law suffered a massive stroke in his brain stem, which kept him hospitalized for 10 months. The doctors had given him a very poor prognosis. Despite this, he hung on. The first Christmas, all of us went to the hospital to sing carols to him. His favorite Christmas song was O Holy Night. I remember all of us standing around his bed, singing that song and him mouthing the words because he couldn’t talk.
The hospital staff of the various hospitals where he stayed neglected him to the point where he could have died. So, my husband and I searched frantically for a place where he could stay that would not only take care of him, but would give him the therapy he needed to breathe without a trachea tube and walk. We weren’t thinking that he would be able to come home yet because he was in such poor shape.
Just about the time we were about to give up, we found this place called Care Meridian. The facility was a remodeled house in the middle of the boon docks of Morgan Hill. The moment we walked through those doors, we knew that this was where we wanted him to be. They took him in and gave him excellent care, to the point where he could talk to us. He improved so much that he was able to come to my house for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The year was 2003 and our last Christmas we would have with him.
My father-in-law returned home the following spring and passed away in the summer. His illness and related struggles taught us that Christmas isn’t about getting the latest and greatest toys. It’s about love and compassion and hope for a bright future.
Deborah Woehr is a writer, designer, and blogger who lives in San Jose, California. She began writing ghost stories in 1997. Her novel, Prosperity, is available at Amazon.
O. Henry is one of my favorite authors. I remember quite clearly the red cloth covered edition of his short stories I had as a teenager. I consumed those stories with a hearty love. — Jamie
THE GIFT OF THE MAGI
BY
O. HENRY
ONE dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name “Mr. James Dillingham Young.”
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CHRISTMAS EVE
BY
WASHINGTON IRVING
It was a brilliant moonlight night, but extremely cold; our chaise whirled rapidly over the frozen ground; the post-boy smacked his whip incessantly, and a part of the time his horses were on a gallop.
“He knows where he is going,” said my companion, laughing, “and is eager to arrive in time for some of the merriment and good cheer of the servants’ hall.”
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