The Best Parts Of Christmas In The 80’s In Western New York

Christmas is always a great time.  But Christmas in the 80's in Western New York just felt different.  There was something special about it.

The lead up to Christmas

Remember how it felt when you were a kid and December finally hit?  As soon as the page was turned on the calendar the world had a different feel to it.  Suddenly when you'd wake up and see snow outside of your window, it wasn't just an inconvenient thing you had to deal with.  Sure, you might have to shovel it off of the porch or you'd have to clean it out of the walkway, but before Christmas, the snow was magical.  Every day you'd look at the snow and picture Santa and his reindeer flying through the sky.  If you were lucky, you'd get enough of it to get a snow day!

But school the days before Christmas was actually fun.  We would play games and do Secret Santa.  Remember those Christmas countdown chains made from construction paper?  Then, of course, there was the Christmas concert where we would all sing Christmas songs as our parents held ridiculously large video cameras to record the whole thing.  Well, there was always a kid or two that refused to sing.  Does anyone still have those video tapes anywhere?

Things to do before Christmas

We had so many opportunities to do "Christmas stuff" before the big day.  I'll never forget going to Niagara Falls for the Festival of Lights that they held there.  We would sit in the back of my grandparents' station wagon as we took the long drive there from Springville.  They would let us eat peppermint patties on the ride.

Before heading home we would make sure to take a drive to AM&A's just to check out the display in the window.  We never actually shopped there, but we almost always stopped by their display.

We were lucky in my family.  My dad worked at Fisher-Price while we were growing up and he always had a hand in the creation of their Christmas display at the factory in East Aurora.  So we always took a drive by that too.

There were cookies to bake and holiday movies to watch.  We didn't have streaming so we couldn't just watch any movie whenever we wanted.  We had to check the TV Guide and find out when our favorite would be on.  Don't miss it either.  If you forgot to record it on the VCR, or you weren't able to be in front of the TV to see it when it was on, you'd have to wait another whole year before you could watch it again unless you bought it on VHS.

Doing things outside

When we were kids in the 80's, we took every chance we could get to go outside and play.  It was engrained in us.  Once we were done with chores, we had to "get out of the house and go play."

And we did.

We would suit up early and stay out all day.  We would build forts in the snow or head over to the sledding hill.  You could either do the sledding hill by your house, or if your parents were feeling extra nice, they would take you to Chestnut Ridge for the sledding hill there. A lot of people had one of those little plastic sleds with the pull brakes on the side or the little metal flying saucers.  We would sled all day.  There wasn't anything to pull us to the top of the hill either.  Once you went down, you had to make the treacherous trek to the top.  You better stay on the path too!  You weren't supposed to walk down the sledding path.  You only walk on the walking path.

Then someone would throw a snowball from the top of the hill to the bottom of the hill and it was on.  Before you knew it you had a mountain of snowballs in front of you ready to be hurled at everyone in the neighborhood.  You just had to really hope that you were on the big kids' team when it started.  Everyone always said they weren't aiming for your face, but let's be honest, everyone was aiming for your face.

Shopping was much different in the 80's

When we went Christmas shopping in the 80's, we actually had to shop.  We only had a very limited budget and we had to stay within it.  You had to buy something for everyone so that no one went without a gift on Christmas.  We had to actually leave the house too.  There was no Amazon to count on. There wasn't even an internet that we could use.  We actually had to walk into stores, find something on the shelf, and take it to the register to pay for it.  So when someone was going shopping, you went.  You only had so many chances to buy gifts before Christmas.

The Mall was the ultimate shopping experience

There were  a couple of ways to shop for Christmas.  You could go into town and try out some of the shops, or you could try to get someone to take you to the mall and hit up all the big stores there.  If you were really lucky, and you were old enough, you could get your parents to drive you and your friends there to shop on your own.  Just you and your friends and the world of possibilities at the mall.  Santa was there, but by the time you were old enough to go on your own, you weren't sitting on Santa's lap anymore.  Plus, back then the lines to see him were so long!  People would wait for hours for that picture.  It was always a temptation though to spend all your money at the arcade instead of buying presents.

Getting A Tree

In the 80's, it felt like almost everyone still went and got a real tree.  We would all suit up (we did that a lot in the winter, it was a whole process) and pile into the car to pick one out as a family.  We'd go to the local tree farm and cut it down ourselves after walking through waist high snow.  But the selection process seemed to take forever.  We were convinced that mom and dad would bring all of us kids so that they could plant one of us next to each tree that they "might" buy.  That way when another family would come through they would know that tree was taken and wouldn't buy it before we could get back to it.

Once we found our tree and dad cut it down we'd strap it to the top of the car or throw it in the truck to take home and decorate.  After rearranging the living room so the tree would fit, we'd begin the decorating process.  We all had our own ornaments that we needed on the tree every year.  It never felt like Christmas until our ornament made it up there.

The lights almost never worked and it would take hours to find a string that did.  We never threw them out though because they were expensive.

Then mom would cover the whole thing in tinsel.  You don't see much of that anymore, but tinsel was just like metallic strings or ribbons that you would hang from the branches to replicate snow.

Christmas Eve

For Christmas Eve we would always go out for dinner.  It became a tradition after visiting my grandparents that we would go to a little Chinese restaurant in Yorkshire on the way home.  Then it got fancier and fancier as we got older.  It was always a tradition that we looked forward to.

We would make it home for a couple of hours to watch Christmas movies or wrap any last minute gifts and then we'd go to midnight mass at church.  The excitement would build as we got closer to the end of the mass but when we got home it was straight to bed.

Christmas morning

We were not allowed to wake my parents before 7 am.  Under no circumstances were we to be nosing around the tree that early.  But, there was no restriction about finding our stockings.  Santa used to hide our stockings on Christmas morning and there were some days that we thought he just took them back to the North pole with him.  Eventually though, we'd find them and we would dig right in.  There was always an orange in the toe of the stocking.  I was convinced that was how we could tell that we had gotten to the bottom of it.

Once we finally dragged dad out of bed and they made what seemed like the slowest pot of coffee, it was present time.  We were a "one at a time" family.  By that I mean that only one person could open a present at a time.  It wasn't a crazy free for all of people opening presents.  We would sit and watch each other enjoy the gifts that we had all taken time to buy or make.  We were really blessed.

The rest of Christmas day

The hours that followed included a lot of eating and a lot of naps (We got up early, after all).  We would play with the toys that Santa had brought and just enjoy each other's company.  Later we would play a board game or watch a movie as a family.  There were no phones to distract us.  It seemed simple.  It was hectic.  But it was simple.  It was just people enjoying each other's company.

I hope your memories of Christmas were as good as mine and I hope that the ones that you haven't made yet are even better.

Merry Christmas.