Monday Memory...Favourite Christmas Memory

With Christmas just around the corner, I thought I would post about my favourite Christmas memory as a child. I have quite a few great memories, but my most favourite was in the week before Christmas we would all snuggle into a bed and read Christmas stories.

From the time I can remember we read the story of Clarabell the Christmas Cow, by Dan Henderson. I found this link and see that it is set in Tennessee. The one we read was set in the Ottawa Valley!!

Every year we pulled out the red duo-tang, filled with lined paper and yellowing glue stained on the backs of the pages. On the front of each page was a paper clipping from the Toronto Star, probably (or the Toronto Sun...). There were 5 pages of these clippings. The first 4 were the Clarabell story, broken up. It was done as a 4 part series in the paper.

So, we would be all snuggled up in our blankets and pj's and I remember our parents taking turns reading...one section a night. When we were old enough to read, we all shared in the reading. I loved the story!

After those 4 sections were done we read another story clipped from the paper, Uncle Nutsy Comes to Call, Yuletide tales for young and old alike, by Ted Reeve (a blurb from this page-over the years, the spirit of Christmas has been captured in beautiful word pictures by the dean of Canadian sportswriter: Ted Reeve. On this day, what better than to reprint one of these fanciful flights of fantastic fandangling as told by he fabulous Uncle Nutsy Fagan). I can't find any links about this story and the only one about the author is here.

We would also read The Night Before Christmas on Christmas eve. It was from a yellow papered booklet, tied together with red yarn. The pictures were in black outline, but oh so colourful in our heads and we all had turns reading it when we were old enough.

Now that I am a parent, my parents have given me this treasured booklet. I now have these great stories to pass on to my kids and start this tradition with them. The glue is now dried and the paper has fallen off of the lined sheets, and I can read on the back of one of these pages the year, which is 1977. I think that I am going to try to make a booklet for each of my siblings with copies, or typed out for them to share with their kids and also a set to pass onto my kids when they are older.