WOW! The 'Black Friday' crowd beat me there!

I went to the Prime Outlets for the 'Black Friday' kickoff at midnight because they were giving away gift bags to the first 500 people. You would not believe how many people were there when I got there at 11:20p.m.!!! I must've easily been the 2000th person in line! When I got close to being inside the building, they told us that they are out of the gift bags, but if you were in your pajamas, you could still enter the $1000.00 shopping spree contest and get a lousy coupon book. How disappointing.

I stood in line for almost an hour. People were still pouring in the place! Cars were parking off the curbs, police were there directing traffic. Even an ambulance was there on stand-by. I stood waiting in my jammies and slippers for nothing.....I bought nothing. It took me 10 minutes to get out of the parking lot. WOW! I wonder how things will be at the mall at 3:30. I better get my snow globe from JCPenneys!!!

I'll update later....

http://www.primeoutlets.com/locations/hagerstown/events/successful-holiday-shopping.aspx

My Christmas Story

Here it is, the holiday season once again. Mike and I had our mini Thanksgiving feast with all the trimmings. I am trying to get myself in the mood for the "Black Friday" shopping that begins at midnight when I am wearing my pajamas to get a gift bag. Insane? Maybe so. But I need excitement in my life!

So, to further my shopping mood, I put on "A Christmas Story". It reminds me so much of the Christmases that my parents gave to me and my brother. How absolutely magical it was to wake up Christmas morning and wander out to the family room where the most perfect tree (and a live one at that) proudly stands before me with a plethera of gifts underneath it.

My family did Christmas right! The first week in December, my Daddy would climb up into the attic to get down our Christmas decorations (and my beloved snowman box, which although it is falling apart, I will always get a gift in it every year until I die). Mom would send my brother and I to cut some fresh pine boughs from the woods across the street, which she would hang on the chandelier with some ornaments and yarn tassels to give a holiday scent throughout the house. Candoliers with orange bulbs went into the windows. As Christmas cards came in, they would be hung around the door frame.

Mom ALWAYS baked Christmas cookies. My favorite were Butter (Spritz) cookies and Chocolate Pixies. (Hmmm, now Mom and I are diabetic...). Daddy and I decorated sugar cookies with red and green sprinkles. She would store the cookies in old Charles Chips metal containers covered with wrapping paper. Over the years, we accumulated a 'kitchen tree' and hung cookie cutters, mini kitchen tools and trinkets on it. My brother and I each had a mini Christmas tree in our rooms that we would decorate ourselves. My tree belonged to my Nana, which I still have.

We would plan a trip the day after Thanksgiving to go to Williamsburg, Va to shop....way back when 'Black Friday" was just "grey". We had purchased our tree there a few times and cart it back to Edgewater. Most of my shopping was done at the Pottery Place in Lightfoot, Va. I remember, (clearly Chris, if you ever read this), that I had proudly purchased a marble seal for my mother. I was trying to figure out how to wrap it, saying "how am I going to wrap this thing?", when Chris said "What, that marble seal?" within hearing distance from my mother, who was in the kitchen. I was so upset. She claims that she didn't hear a thing, but I know she did. She acted so surprised when she opened it she could have won an academy award.

On Christmas morning we (my brother Chris and I) would wake up Mom and Dad to exclaim "SANTA CAME!!!!!". We would then gather in the family room and open our gifts. The scene in a Christmas Story is so much like our morning, with a lot of "hey, that's mine" and throwing socks over our shoulders. Almost always we would get socks, gloves and underwear! I remember a lot of the gifts I have gotten through my childhood; a pink oven, small yellow table and chairs with amish people painted on it, Fresh n' Fancy makeup kit....and one I asked Santa for and never got, a walking Mickey Mouse where you would squeeze his hands and he would walk. I asked the Santa a Parole Plaza for that one. I knew he wasn't the real Santa because he had very bad breath....Santa's breath smells like cookies, right?

Watching my parents at Christmas was just like watching the Old Man in the Christmas story (Darren McGavin) as Ralphie opened his Red Ryder BB Gun. I tear whenever I see that part. Being childless at Christmastime is very hard for me, as I want to give a child every bit of joy that my parents gave my brother and I. Christmas was always very memorable.

After we played with our toys for awhile, we went to my Nana and Grandaddy's house for a turkey dinner. Nana cooked 'southern' so her meal couldn't be beat unless she had teamed up with my Mama! We almost always got some sort of savings bond (when we were a 'responsible age'). The savings bonds helped me to purchase my house. Nana got little 'junky' gifts from the 'Purchasing Exchange' and wrapped them, such as rubber jar openers, magnets, measuring spoons and spatulas. It didn't matter what they were because it was so fun just to open all these little gifts! We always made sure that somebody got Nana some chocolate covered cherries.

We would leave Nana and Grandaddy's and go to Grandmom's in Eastport for another Turkey dinner. Nana and Grandmom cooked differently, so although it was another turkey dinner, it was different and enjoyable. Grandmom was an Avon Representative, so every year we would get some kind of Avon gift (everyone got Lip Dew, yuck, I can still taste that stuff). My ungrateful cousins would come over and snub their noses at whatever we gave them, whether heartfeltingly chosen or not. But my family was all there and I appreciated their company. Sometimes my Aunt Carol would come, or my Great Aunt Barbara.

Now things have changed and we are all grown up now. My home is no longer there to go back to as my parents and brother (and his family) have moved out of state. My Nana has left this world and my Grandmom is in an assisted living home. I miss my Christmases and I hold those memories very dear to my heart.