My favorite Christmas memories

I was driving the other day and for some odd reason, I got to thinking about Christmas and my favorite Christmases and memories from Christmas. I thought I would post those and whoever reads this, I challenge you to think about it and write your favorite Christmas and/or memory.

My favorite Christmas was when I was about 5 or 6 years old. My parents work for the power company so we lived in company housing. We were at a babysitter's house but she lived close by too. We had some people working on our house, doing some electrical work and they had gone on a lunch break. My mom decided to go home for some reason on her lunch break. She came home to a house fire. She had gone in to get the animals out. I remember Mom coming over to the babysitter's house covered in black from the smoke. We lost most of our Christmas decorations and presents in the fire and didn't have a place to stay for Christmas. The power company has a place they call the Training Center which is a place people stay at for meetings. It has bedrooms, a kitchen, conference room, offices, etc. We ended up staying there for Christmas. I remember being so worried that Santa wouldn't know to stop there instead of our house for Christmas. That year we made our own ornaments which included stringing popcorn for garland. We also did a paper chain, etc. We had so much fun! We woke up to a bunch of presents and had a normal Christmas even though we didn't get a whole lot for Christmas. Our community banded together and gave us what they could which included presents and other stuff (I don't remember because it was so long ago). But the thing is that I don't really remember what I got that year for Christmas. I just remember that people did their best to help us have a Christmas and we had so much fun just making the ornaments and stuff.

Another favorite Christmas of mine was just after I had seperated from my first husband. It was kind of a rough time of year. I was alone with my daughter and I didn't have a lot of money to buy her presents. One night we were just sitting around when we heard a knock at the door. I opened the door but no one was there. I looked around and saw nothing but looked down and there was something (I can't remember for sure what it was but I think it was a plate of cookies or something). It had a cute little saying on it. I thought "Wow that was nice but I don't know who did this so I don't know who to thank." The next night, I came home and there was already something on our step. I didn't realize that this was going to be a nightly thing. I started getting excited for that knock every night. Pretty soon, I started getting a different little figurine from the nativity scene every night. There was always a cute little gift for Rohbi to open up too. She loved it! For the first few nights, I tried to catch whoever was knocking on my door but after a few times, I decided that I didn't want to ruin it for whoever was doing this. They were obviously having fun and wanted to keep it all anonymous. I started waiting about 30 seconds before I would answer the door. In the end, I ended up having a full nativity scene and something to look forward to on those lonely nights. I was so greatful for that. I have a few suspicions as to who it was but I don't know for sure. I had another experience that year that was neat but I won't go into detail on that. That year ended up being a great Christmas and it made the blow of a divorce not as bad.