My Most Impactful Christmas

We wish everyone a Merry Christmas today and I review my most impactful Christmas.

Photo by Tijana Drndarski on Unsplash

First, we want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas today. We hope everyone gets to spend time with family and not watch too much football and basketball.

I am the oldest of three kids (my brother is 10 months to the day younger than me and we were born in the same year). The year I turned 8, Christmas fell on a Wednesday, and I remember that my brother and I got a toy Jeep that you could sit in and drive. We had about a foot and a half of snow on the ground, so we drove that Jeep all around the house and probably drove my mom and dad a little crazy.

That Sunday, instead of going to church like normal, we were all home sick with a cold. We had just turned on the TV to watch football when my mother said she smelled smoke. The rest of us could not smell anything and I remember going upstairs and downstairs with my dad but could not find anything. My dad then went and opened the front door and suddenly a wisp of smoke came out of our bookcase and headed to the door. My dad pulled out books and you could see the wood was turning red already.

Mom and dad grabbed us, went into the bedroom, got some clothes and hustled us out of the house. My last memory of my home was seeing flames rolling across the ceiling of our living room. We ended up staying at our neighbor’s house and watch our house burn down. In less than two hours it was completely gone.

The night before it got down to 29 below zero and since this house was over 100 years old, we think some type of electrical short caused the fire. The local fire department almost lost a fire truck since they got is stuck next to the house and could not get it away.

The silver lining for us kids is that we got two Christmas that year. One before the fire and one after. My father was also a good carpenter, and they took a couple of years to build a new house and he did almost all of the work including plumbing, electrical and the cabinets.

I still consider this to be my most impactful Christmas and am very glad we only lost a house. My parents also got their photo slides out and we continue to look at those old photos. My favorite one is me on the Massey Harris 92H combine with my dad when I was either 2 or 3.

Again, Merry Christmas to everyone and we look forward to a Happy New Year.