Favorite Christmas Memories Meme

Paula tagged me so I have given it some thought and I came up with a few special memories:

One memory that is not attached to a particular year, was the first thing that popped into my head. I grew up on a farm and my dad would always give the animals extra hay and feed on Christmas Eve. Nothing particularly symbolic about it, just that as we were celebrating Jesus' birth, it was my dad's way of sharing the celebration so to speak.

Another memory is something that we do on my side of the family. Every year for quite some time now, we exchange names and set a dollar limit for gifts. Then as soon as we had eaten, Christmas Eve, we would all gather in my grandparent's livingroom and open our presents one at a time. Rather than a free for all, we take turns starting with the youngest first and going all the way to the oldest. Sure it takes longer, but everyone gets to share what a thoughtful or perfect gift it was. It has generally been pretty easy to figure out who is next in age, that was until all my sisters married within a 5 year period. My 3 brother-in-laws and one of my sisters have birthdays pretty close to one another so we always have to stop and figure it out. Of course with all these marriages, there are now more children being added, which is always such a blessing.

Another memory was the night we were sitting in our livingroom and there was a knock at the door. I went to answer it and was surprised to see that Santa was at our door. Our kids were 2-4 years of age I think and boy were they ever surprised. He came in and talked to them and gave them a candy cane while we took some pictures for their scrapbooks.