Christmas Memories
Here you will find a collection of Christmas memories written by members of the Robbins Family Society. Feel free to submit your own Robbins memories to robbinsfamilysociety@gmail.com.
2014
Christmas Memories
Growing up on the rural Eastern Shore of Maryland, my family of six lived miles away from PA, VA, and WV relatives, but my parents were newlywed when they followed a teaching position for my father, and a small community turn out to be just the right place to raise their family.
Christmas for me as a child was always special and magical. The Advent season leading up to Christmas day was just as special. The Christmas carols on the record player, decorating the house and the tree, and baking cookies. The Chancel choir at church includes the Hallelujah Chorus every Christmas Eve during midnight communion. Over the years, the sound of seasonal music in my church evokes warm, familiar memories, just like aromas from the kitchen.
My parents made Christmas fun for us. My father, Thomas Arthur Robbins (1926-1981) told us that Santa Claus has many ‘helpers’, and one year we found out, when he covered the inside basement windows with rags (his old boxer shorts, as I recall) and posted a sign at the bottom basement door: Santa’s workshop, do not enter. That year he assembled three bicycles, one for each of my older brothers. Another workshop tradition was Christmas stockings. They always had Cracker Jacks, an orange, an apple, a small box of raisins, chocolates, and sundry surprises. Eventually, over the years, he would fill stockings for our playmates down the street, as well.
The coolest Christmas memory however, was not my own, it belonged to my father. Dad told me that it happened during the 30’s, when he was a kid living on the main street in Masontown, PA. One Christmas, Santa Claus was sooo rushed making deliveries, that he didn’t have time to come into the house, and so ‘little Tommy’s’ new sled “landed” on the porch roof, outside his 2nd floor window.
Christmas memories are about family and friends, and church family. Parents who raised us in the church and added the element of fun during the holidays. When I think back, the decorations, the trimmings, they weren’t expensive, and yet very sentimental. Pulled out from year to year; some ornaments are handmade, some were gifts. As the years past, I learned that an important of part Christmas magic was when I became one of Santa’s helpers found out first hand that it is a lot more fun to give that it is to receive.
2013
My Most Memorable Christmas
I will never forget one special Christmas in 1942. I was nine years old and living in a Children’s Home in New Jersey. My parents had split up when I was quite young, and when I was five years old, the family doctor suggested that my mother put me in the Home for various reasons, one being that I should be with children my own age.
I would often walk through town on my way home from school and look longingly into the store windows at toys I knew I would never have. Around Christmas time that year, all the stores were decorated for the holidays, and I remember a Santa Claus in one store who would give us candy canes after we sat in his lap and told him what we wanted for Christmas. There was also a microphone beside him that was connected to a loudspeaker that could be heard outside by people passing by on the street. We were encouraged to sing Christmas carols over the mike and we loved that.
Then one night just before Christmas, there was a knock on the door of the Children’s Home. When my housemother answered it, there stood my father. He had received a Christmas bonus of $50 from work and wanted to take me shopping for Christmas, so the housemother took us downtown in the Home’s car to do some last minute Christmas shopping.
When we reached the toy store, my father told me I could have anything I wanted. It was any child’s dream come true and I was in Seventh Heaven! After picking out quite a few toys, the housemother suggested I should be more practical and get some clothes as well as toys. So we went to a clothing store and got some clothes, too. Fifty dollars went a long ways in those days.
That was one Christmas that really stands out in my memory, and for many years after that, my dad and I would relive that night in our memories together. It never failed to bring a warm glow and a smile to our faces.