Retro Christmas 1975

I haven't done a retro Friday in a while, and I found this little gem in my photo box. Lots of memories come to mind when I look at this photo. I remember loving that top I was wearing, paired with my cool 501 Levis, and the leather snap bracelet that was all the rage back in 1975. My sister was 5 in this picture and I was 13. From here on out if I do a retro post, they will most likely be of awkward teen years, like this one.

How many of you remember how cool it was to spray the tree with a can of white fake snow, to get that flocking effect, or when angel hair was popular? Angel hair being fiberglass basically!! I remember a neighbor always putting that on their tree, and it looked so dreamy, but can you imagine how dangerous that really was?! I do remember people having to wear gloves to put it on. I also remember strands of silver tinsel, that my mom would always save, which wasn't a good idea since they looked all crumpled and shabby, but we would always carefully lay all those little strands on each limb so we could achieve that magical tinsel effect.

Did you open your gifts on Christmas eve or Christmas day? We opened our gifts on Christmas eve. I think mainly because, Santa was ruined for us by a neighbor kid down the street when I was very young. I remember I was five or six, when he told us that Santa was really your parents. I came running home to ask my mom if this was true, and she point blank said he was right. She must have been in a bad mood that day, because I can't understand why she didn't try and deny it to make the season still magical for us.  It wasn't until my sister was born, that we were able to play Santa and open gifts on Christmas day.  In my memory, the only true Santa memory I have was in the other photos that I posted on here a while back. I must have been 3 or 4.  I was remembering just the other day that, as we got older, after attending midnight mass, we would go home and open gifts. Crazy, since by the time we got home it was past midnight! Most of the time we would be at church thinking about the gifts that we were going to open up, and not what was going on in the mass.

When our girls were little I made sure to carry on Santa for as long as possible, and gifts were always opened up on Christmas day. Santa's gifts were never wrapped either, and  I have so many photos of the girls being so impressed to see all the gifts Santa laid out. Afterwards we opened all the family gifts in an orderly manner, so we could all appreciate each gift, instead of letting them tear into it all. I hope that they have better memories of Christmas as young ones than I do.
Next Friday, I will do a few of my girls through the years.

I can't believe that we only have a handful of days before Christmas, yikes! I better go and get some things done.