Christmas Memories

Today is Christmas Day and it is the first Christmas Day that I am living by myself. It feels a little weird that I don't have anyone here to say Merry xmas to. It was nice that my phone woke me up with my Mom wishing me a Merry xmas and then hearing my nieces talking about all the presents they got. I wish I had kept all the presents they sent me in the mail closed and open them this morning but I was too impatient. I'll have to remember that next year.

This morning I made coffee and toast and sat down to read the newspaper. That sounds so grown-up. Doesn't it? There was an article about all those xmas gifts that we had asked for when we were kids and never got. The writer said that she always asked for an Easy Bake Oven and never got one. So I started thinking about what was that present that I never got and I couldn't think of anything. My parents didn't had a lot of money but they always managed to give us what we wanted.

Christmas in my house when I was growing up was great. Every year my Mom would decorate the tree in a different way. Always around a theme. Her trees were like the trees you see in magazines. Every year, a few months before xmas we would start brainstorming about what the theme was going to be that year. We spent a lot of time collecting all the ornaments and then we would go to Old San Juan to buy the tree. As you might expect, in Puerto Rico there are no pine trees. Xmas trees have to be imported in ships so there are expensive. You can still find trees around $20 or $30 but not the kind of tree that we had been planning for for months. We always spent between $60 and $80 but the tree was perfect. We would go to buy the tree two or three times because the first time we went, we would never find the perfect tree so we had to go back. Since trees came in boats they would hold them in refrigerated trailers and when some sold then they would take out more. When we finally find the one, we would spend the whole night decorating the tree.

When I was little on xmas morning, my parents would hide mine and my sisters presents all over the house. When we woke up we had to go hunting for presents. It was a lot of fun. Every year in the summer or fall, we would find a present hiding that we had not found in xmas.