It’s Friday Five over at RevGagBlogPals and today’s prompt is about the 11th day of Christmas. Not having any natural ‘elevens’ in my life, I offer 11 Christmas memories!

1. The year I was six, I think my mother had been in the hospital due to some complications related to pregnancy, and so the tree wasn’t up. She came home for Christmas and when we woke up Christmas Day, the tree was up and decorated and there were gifts! (I am going to check with my mother to see if this is what actually happened. )
2. The Christmas nine of us squeezed into a Datsun to drive the 200 miles to my grandparents home for Christmas… in the middle of the night.
3. The first Christmas back in Nova Scotia after being ordained and settled in a community in Ontario, when I put up a tree for the first time in 4 years and unpacked my tree ornaments and all the memories that they contained.
4. That was also the first Christmas after I met my now husband, and we decorated TWO trees, one at my place, one at his, without arguing.
5. The Christmas that I spent hours waiting on a plane on the ground in Toronto as the airline waited for more flight attendants and when they couldn’t find any, they started offering financial incentives for people to get off and take another flight. Nobody did… of course not, it was CHRISTMAS DAY! They finally bumped some people off who were not going to make their connecting flight due to the delay. I was not one of those people.
6. The first Christmas Eve when I, along with the rest of the Confirmation Class led worship and I watched the candlelight catch and spread throughout the sanctuary.
7. The second Christmas in my first pastoral charge when I woke up alone, because I had decided not to go ‘home’ for Christmas that year.
8. The first Christmas in our new home when we hosted our extended family for dinner, twenty five + people, after I had led three services the night before… have never made that offer again!
9. The first Christmas in Goose Bay, Labrador, an isolated Air Force Base, where most things came in boat and the ice came in early that year, the boat couldn’t get in, and the Christmas presents my parents had ordered from Eaton’s and Simpsons, were on it.
10. The Christmas I peeked in the closet where my parents hid the gifts and knew everything I was getting, the lack of surprise was disappointing, plus I had to fake surprise.
11. Apparently it was a family tradition to take a picture of all us children in front of the tree after we had open our gifts. I don’t remember this picture being taken; I think I must have been about 8.