Whats your fave Christmas memory as a child?

[MandyBOO]

Mine was just all being holed up in our house for the day, playing games, tv off, open fire, homemade mince pies, the biggest roast ever and then the biggest biffet ever for tea!! Oh, and all the pressies!!

Getting a doll from my granny called Carol, watching Wizard of Oz, sending letter to Father Christmas up the chimney.

I can remember sleeping on a campbed in my M & D's room on christmas eve as my Gran and Grandad were staying and my brother (who is 5 years older) kept shouting through the wall he could hear sleigh bells! Sooo exciting!

Worst memory was when I was about 11 or 12 I ransacked my mums wardrobe and found all my presents. Completely ruined christmas as there obviously was no surprises whatsoever. Never did that again.

Sorry mine are real cliches...

Carol singing Christmas Eve and falling asleep in someone else's house aftewards and being carried home by dad. The sound of wrapping paper rubbing against the inside of the hideous woollen stockings that we used every year as I woke up on Christmas morning. And the weight of it on my legs. When I was old enough, laying the table for lunch and choosing the table cloth and the china.

Getting my Sindy house, bearing in mind I was about 6, it was taller than me, it had four floors, with a lift that went up and down, it had real mahogany furniture, tiny little silver knives and forks, and a washing up brush LOL I loved it It was the only Christmas where I hadn't opened any pressies when everyone else had finished opening theirs, I was way too busy with my Sindy house

It is now up in my mums attic, where it is waiting for a grandaughter to have it, 4 grandsons down the line and another grandson on the way, my mum has just about given up hope of passing it to someone else in the family!

oh, just everything about it, but mostly the morning. stocking at end of bed (only found out later that not everyone's mum used a pop sock ), and jumping all over the place with db in excitement but not being allowed to open pressies til afetr breakfast

Being about 6yrs old and getting a big wooden dollhouse made by my grandad it electic lights and everything.

being alowed to chocolates all day.

Opening my bedroom door on christmas morning to find a double dolls pram on the landing with a little white doll one end and a little black doll the other.

The day I came downstairs to see if Santa had been and right in the middle of the floor was this enormous sweetshop. The shelves were full of miniture bottles stuffed with all sorts of sweets, and on the counter there were scales and a cash register. Under the counter there were mini paper sweetie bags, and cellophane pokes.

Dear me, was I in heaven. I was 5 and my baby sister was just 6 months old and she kept crawling in under the counter of the shop and I kept having to drag her out before she wrecked the display.

That shop provided many many hours of delight, and when we had all outgrown it, we gave it away to the local primary school, where it went in the home corner of the reception class and was used for many mroe years there.

My neighbours (then teenage) son putting rudolph tracks in the snow on his flat roof and garden so that I could see them from my bedroom window. I would have been 3 or 4. Totally magic.

It was always my dream to go to Lapland to see the real Santa Clause, but with a brother and sister we could never afford it. When my daughter was seven I saw an advert in the paper for one day trips to Lapland. I told my daughter we were going shopping and she suspected nothing. The only problem was the winds were too high and the flight was cancelled. I was driving home in tears through a blizzard and told her that we weren't going shopping but that we were really going to see Santa in his home. She patted me on the arm and said it's ok, it's really doesn't matter. It meant I had to keep her believing for another year. I kept it a secret and took her the following year. The air hostesses told the children when the plane was coming in to land they had to sing Jingle bells so that Santa could hear them coming. It got dark at about 2.15 and they switched on the fairy lights, it was magical. All the paths were lined with brass buckets and each one had a candle burning. Whenever I smell candles it reminds me of Lapland. We posted our cards from the post office and were served by santas little helpers. My dd met Santa and he knew all about our home town which really impressed her. We went on a Husky ride through the trees in the dark which was the most exciting thing I have ever done. We bought one or two things which she and my son got for Christmas presents, but I bought a wooden tree decoration which we put on the tree every year and it also is a reminder. We had a great day that we will never forget. My daughter said that was her best christmas ever.

without a doubt it was when I questioned the existence of FC. My Dad told me that whilst I had rightly sussed that he wasn;t a flesh and blood person, he was something called make-believe. and as long as we believed, he was real in our hearts and minds. I desperately wish I could remember his exact words, because they were perfect. I could revert to the childishness of believing something I wanted to believe without being a fool.

Getting a bike and going out on it all day in the ice and snow

Getting to sleep in my brothers' room on Christmas Eve and setting all sorts of traps (cutlery dangling on lengths of cotton strung across the room etc!) for my mum to encounter when leaving our presents.

All 3 of us waking up at 5am and playing games as quietly as poss until 7am when we were allowed to go and wake mum and dad with a cup of tea, to open our pressies on their bed.

me and my brother and sister all piled on mum and dads bed opening these gigantic stacks of presents! and it would be about 4 in the morning and looking out of the window and it was dark outside and looking to see which houses had lightson yet!

We rode to midnight mass one year because the snow was too deep to get the car out. It was SO Victorian!