Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories 2010 - Christmas Cards - December 4

Each year my family would send and receive a modest number of Christmas cards. The cards that we received would be displayed on whatever surface was available, usually starting with the top of the television. Now there's something I will have to explain to my children! Yes, once upon a time, back in the olden days, televisions were housed in wooden boxes that could be used as a surface for decorative items.

Along with the Christmas cards we would receive a few photocopied family newsletters packed with information about their activities for the year. We would hear about academic or sporting successes, career successes or failures, medical procedures, new relationships and breakups. We would wonder how widely they were distributing this sometimes very personal information!

There's something else I should add to my list of things to ask Dad about - do we have a stash of those old Christmas newsletters our relatives used to send? Genealogically, they're a treasure trove.

This post is part of the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories, hosted by Geneabloggers. 

Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories 2010 - Christmas Foods - December 2

In last year's advent calendar, I wrote about eating a traditional (cold climate) Christmas lunch in the midst of an Australian summer.

That completely inappropriate hot roast lunch is still a big part of what Christmas is about for me, but there is one other food that was a regular feature whenever we had a large gathering of family - Christmas and other occasions. It was my Mum's pavlova.

Any Australian or New Zealander would be very familiar with the pavlova. It's a dessert with a meringue base, topped with cream and garnished with fruit.

My Mum made her pavlovas from scratch, not from a premix "Egg". Usually she would make two. One, I thought of as the adults' pavlova. The fruit topping made it almost a health food, so far as I was concerned. The other was the kids' pavlova. Instead of fruit, my mother topped the kids pav with a smashed up Peppermint crisp.

I have my mother's recipe, but I've never made it. I really should try to some day. I think I'd like to inherit her reputation as the pavlova queen!


This post is part of the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories, hosted by Geneabloggers. 

Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories 2010 - Christmas Tree - December 1

The Christmas tree that dominates my childhood memories was tall and bushy. Although it was an artificial metallic one, it was beautiful. The silvery tinsel branches shimmered and the baubles stood out like jewels. I didn't understand it when one year my mother said that the tree's time had come, we needed something new.

Before I sat down to write this post, I dug out a few pictures of that lovely tree. 

Sadly, the photographic evidence does not do my memory justice. The tree is smaller than I recall. Not tiny, but small enough that it is almost obscured in the photos by a child standing in front of it. The silvery tinsel is duller than my memory would have it. The branches.. well, they look like they could put a running child's eye out. The baubles, although there, are not quite as plentiful as I imagined.

Looking at those old photos of myself and my siblings (who wouldn't appreciate me posting picures of them here) there is something else that strikes me about the picture of us sitting around that tree...

It's the joy, shining from our faces.

The photographic evidence confirms it - that tree was beautiful!


This post is part of the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories, hosted by Geneabloggers.