The calendar for 2025 is a difficult one for a blog that publishes on Friday mornings. Today is almost a full week until Christmas day, which seems a little soon for Christmas content. However, next week’s publication will come the day after Christmas, when the mood for such things has passed. Oh well, we will roll with the calendar we have been given. For reasons I will get into, this year has me thinking of some memorable Christmas celebrations in my family.

Three years ago I wrote about the year that my parents came back together for one day – Christmas of 1966 – which came about halfway between the start of their separation and the conclusion of a divorce. As I wrote then, it was a strange day but a memorable one (thanks, in part, to the Kodak Instamatic camera I unwrapped and with which I documented the day). Thankfully, most of my more memorable holidays were memorable for better reasons.

The following year began our “two Christmas” system, with Christmas morning spent with our mother and Christmas with Dad following, either later that day or soon after. The photo above shows the aftermath of the “Mom half” of Christmas that year. But my most vivid memories from that year are of the only Christmas gathering at my father’s apartment, and where we were joined by my future step-mom and part of her large family. In this case it was our future Uncle Mervin (who was himself a recent divorced dad) and his two kids. Dad and Mervin were always close and I remember that day as a lot of fun and the beginnings of a relationship with a new part of my family.

I also remember what I think of as my first real “adult” Christmas. I was home from college and was working a night job at a funeral home (an experience I wrote about here). That year (possibly 1979 or 1980) my mother was working nights as a nurse at one of our local hospitals. It was an experience that completely up-ended our usual “let’s wake up Christmas morning and open presents” routine. I came in the door wearing my suit and Mom arrived shortly after in her white nursing uniform (that was still a thing then). Somewhere I have a picture of the two of us in our non-traditional Christmas morning outfits. It may have been a better time for us than for my sister, who we rousted out of bed earlier than she might have preferred.

After I married and had kids, we did our best to provide our youngsters with the kind of Christmas mornings they would remember. My favorite memories of those years include the morning our 2 year old woke us up Christmas morning. I was halfway dressed and ready to begin the day’s festivities when I looked at my watch and realized that it was something like 1 a.m. It’s funny that I remember nothing about the day after we got up the second time. There was also the year when our two boys (probably something like 6 and 4 years old) followed their normal morning routine and ran full speed from their bedroom to the basement family room to watch “Extreme Dinosaurs” on television. The funny part was that they ran right past a Christmas tree surrounded with presents and didn’t even see them. Marianne and I had to chase after them to let them know that Santa had come.

I am thinking about these memorable Christmases past because this is one I am really looking forward to. I have not written about it, but as we finished the end of our holiday season last year things at JP Manor took a dire turn when Marianne got as sick as I have ever seen her on New Year’s Eve. The following morning, our son in law (who is qualified in such things) recommended that we go to the ER. Our concern had been about Marianne’s state of hydration because of an inability to keep any fluids down. But then we learned that her symptoms were actually secondary to a stroke.

The first six weeks of 2025 saw Marianne in a hospital and then in a rehab hospital before she could come home. We were extremely fortunate in how well she came through the experience, without most of the nasty problems strokes often cause. The rest of the year has seen us settling into new routines to accommodate her situation, and we have both come through the experience reasonably well.

So for me, Christmas of 2025 will be one I plan to remember, if only because it could have been so much worse. We are, of course, supposed to be thankful at Thanksgiving. But I think that thankfulness is a good thing to keep in mind at Christmas too. There is a lot of work to be done around here between now and Christmas day, but I will try to keep my attitude of thankfulness in mind as that work gets done.

With that, allow me to wish you a merry, peaceful and blessed Christmas. And may your holiday celebrations be memorable for all the best reasons.