photo by: Ruth Garrison

Shown here are my older brothers, Jim and Bill Garrison, visiting with Santa Claus sometime in the 1980s to tell him what they want for Christmas.

What I remember from Christmas as a kid is not so much the presents I received, but all the little things that made the season happy and warm and fun.

We loved our little tree. Though my mom used to think it was old and ratty looking, once you put on all the ornaments and lights, it was quite beautiful, I think.

We used to have those cool lights that would bubble inside. They were neat, but would get very hot to the touch.

Another neat, but hot, decoration was this rotating angel decoration. It had lighted candles underneath that somehow caused it to rotate. It was fascinating, but another thing we were only allowed to observe and not touch.

And, of course, I can’t forget our string of outdoor Christmas lights put up by my dad each season.

He used the big colorful C9 sized lights on our front porch. Those lights coupled with a heavy blanket of snow made our little home on Brockton Road in Steubenville look like a gingerbread house.

Speaking of gingerbread, my mom always made wonderful Christmas cookies. I think the Toll House chocolate chip cookies were our favorite. I can picture the faces of my brothers Billy and Jimmy covered in chocolate while eating them. I’m sure my face was covered, too.

My mom liked to put out a bowl of walnuts for people to eat, too. I think this was one of my dad’s favorite things. It included a silver nutcracker and pick to get the meat out of the shell.

I remember my little hands struggling to make the nutcracker work, it slipping from my tiny grip.

And when the big morning finally arrived, I was usually the last one to wake.

It was usually my brothers who would tell me to wake up.

We would tear through our packages as quickly as possible to see what Santa had brought us. After it was done, our living room floor was a sea of wrapping paper. We would have fun rolling around in it afterward.

As far as presents go, the one I remember most was a handmade Cabbage Patch doll that my mom purchased from a lady making them in town.

People were scrambling to get those dolls that year; they were the hot toy in the 1980s. There were none left in the stores.

My handmade doll had brown hair just like me and I loved her.

She didn’t last too long, however, as my rambunctious brothers decided it would be funny to rip her head off. It never would go back on correctly after that.

Perhaps she went to live on the Island of Misfit toys.