Christmas memories of my dad

 

 Today, July 8, is my dad's birthday.  He would be 101 years old if he was still in this life, but he passed away a few years back at 94.  In the photo above, he is the handsome gent at far right.  I have mentioned him many times in my Christmas memories, for he played a large part in all that went on in that jolly season.  But I thought I would do another short post about him, since this is his birthday.

My kids remember my dad at Christmas sitting in his recliner, and reading a newspaper, or a new book he'd received as a Christmas gift.  He didn't seem to enter into the excitement of gifts given and received, but was just a little removed from it.  

The above photo is from 1979 and he has obviously just laid aside his reading material (I think I can see a book in the chair beside him).  He wore glasses only for reading, so it's pretty clear that's what he had just been doing.

In my younger years, though, my dad took a pretty active part at Christmas.  He and my mother often worked on handmade gifts together, and one of the best-loved, and most-used gifts of my childhood was a little plywood room made especially for Barbie or Jill dolls.  They covered the walls with floral contact paper, put a carpet scrap on the floor, added trim pieces to the windows, and so on.   

I also remember how he used to cheerfully make rounds on Christmas Eve in the family station wagon, usually with one or two children in tow, to deliver homemade goodies to our neighbors.  I've shared countless times about my mother's fabulous kitchen gifts for neighbors and friends: Christmas cookies, cinnamon swirl bread, maple fudge, and more.  Of course I'm sure that my dad came into his fair share of samples of all these goodies!

For many years he patiently waited while my mother examined the Christmas trees he and my brother cut from our family's wooded property.  Often they didn't make the grade and it was back to the woods to try again!

I've written an entire post concerning my dad's red Christmas vest.   I'm sort of surprised he's not wearing it in the 1979 photo, but maybe it didn't fit at that point.  But that was always a festive touch that he usually made sure to add.  In the photo below he added another festive touch by placing a just-opened gift -- a handmade tea cozy -- on his head.  I promise he had had nothing stronger than coffee to drink when he did this!

And of course there was my dad's famed appetite for Christmas dinner at my grandmother's house.  All of my uncles (these would be my mother's brothers and brothers-in-law, most of whom shared my dad's sense of humor) teased him a good bit about how much he could eat.  It was a running joke that resulted one year in the Thanksgiving turkey being placed in front of him, not to carve, but as if it was just for him to eat.

Just a few Christmas memories of my wonderful dad.