Christmas Memories

I was looking through some old photos of our boys back when Christmas was really exciting for them. It made me think of one of my favorite Christmas memories.

It was December 1974. I was in fourth grade and my family decided to spend our Christmas vacation in Venezuela. My parents made the decision to visit Venezuela because my sister was taking Spanish at the time and they knew a missionary couple there. They felt it would be a good opportunity for my sister to use her Spanish in a real life situation. This was one of my first memories of a "real" vacation as opposed to camping or just visiting family.

Our trip included a stop at my grandmas in South Carolina where we always got to ride her horses bareback and visit with cousins we barely knew. We also made a stop in Florida to visit Disney World. After that we flew to Venezuela. At some point in the flight, the pilot announced that we were flying over the Bermuda Triangle.

In Venezuela, we stayed at a hotel with a wonderful swimming pool. We ate at the hotel restaurant and let my sister order our meal in Spanish. We wanted to get some hot dogs, so she told the waiter. He responded, in Spanish, "Just that." She said, "Si," and he walked away looking angry. He brought us some water and a basket of bread and left. We waited and waited, but never got our food, so my dad finally waved the waiter down. He asked about our food and the waiter pointed to the table and said in very broken English, "You asked for hot bread." We ate our hot bread, now only warm, and drank our water and left a big tip.

On Christmas Eve we traveled up a mountain in a gondola to visit a famous water fall. My parent's felt that they needed to explain to us that our trip was the only Christmas gifts that we would get this year. That made me feel a little sad. I was still young enough that I wanted to get some toys at Christmas. But we enjoyed our visit to the falls and came back to our very un-Christmas looking hotel room. Later we went to visit the missionary couple for a Christmas Eve party at their home. We ate outside with many members of their church and then went caroling. We all learned to sing some of our favorite carols in Spanish.

We went back to our hotel that night and I had little hope for a happy Christmas morning. However, when we woke the next day, the first thing we saw was a very little Christmas Tree with three small presents under it. My parents bought each of us a watch at some point. It was my first watch and I was very excited about that. We wondered how they got a little Christmas tree and discovered that my dad broke off the top of a tree while we were on our trip to the falls. He hid it under his shirt and suffered for hours with it scratching him (and causing a rash) so that he could sneak it back to the hotel.

That morning we watched as the Venezuelan children rode their roller skates around the town carrying fruit. It was apparently a tradition for the children to get fruit in stockings as their Christmas gifts. And usually that was all they would get. The children would roller skate to church for the Christ Mass (which is how we got the term Christmas, just in case you did not know that). We learned a lot about being thankful that Christmas. And even though I did not get any toys, I think that was my favorite Christmas.