Disclaimer: The proceeding article is a collection of Holiday memories. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Advanced Media Network.
The year was 1994, and I was ten years old. It had been a rough year, but all of that seems to go away around December. I was drowning in my own snot thanks to the blessed yearly event we all know as flu season, so my mom, sister, and cousin who was living with us at the time had gone out to get us a Christmas tree for the house. It was a tad late in the season for us to be finally taking care of the tree, which we usually have up within the week after Thanksgiving. You see, the street I lived on had a habit of not doing hardly anything for the holidays. Our neighbor would put up a tree on Christmas Eve, and then she would rip it down the following afternoon once her grandkids had left, always with a look of discontent on her face showing that she wished she didn’t have to deal with the whole mess as she was dragging the tree out to the curb. Everybody else on the street was either extremely modest with their decorations, or didn’t bother with it at all. They treated it like one giant hassle. It was like the Grinch decided Whoville wasn’t worth the effort, moved to my street, and had a lot of kids. Since we lived on a hill where many people could see our house, and were the only ones bothering, we decided to deck out our house every year with enough lights to blow the transformer. Unfortunately, that year had been long, hard, and busy, so we hadn’t gotten around to any of it until a couple of weeks before the big day. Still, with all of that behind us, we decided to get our tails in gear and deck the halls with all of our junk.
They didn’t want to leave me home alone sick while they went tree shopping, but I convinced them I would be fine. I stayed home playing Super Mario All-Star’s “World 9 Challenge†while my kitten kept crawling in my lap to sleep. We lived in this house with a huge roof, even though the house was rather small in area. It was a strange looking thing to be sure. Anyway, I stayed like that for about three hours, and by the time I had reached World C-4, I realized that they had been gone for a rather long time. Finally, I heard the “clunk” of our old van’s transmission kicking into reverse and looked out the window. I couldn’t see the van at all. All I saw in its place was a giant tree backing into the driveway. Totally confused, I went downstairs to see what was going on, and found that they had bought this gigantic 20+ foot monster tree that was hanging off both sides of the van. I really don’t remember its exact height, but I remember it was gigantic. It was the only one left in town. There wasn’t a chance that it would fit in the living room, but since the living room connected with the dining room, they decided to get it anyway just for the fun of it.
We moved the kitchen table into the living room, and once unfurled, it filled the entire eating area to the walls. Thanks to the house’s upward sloping roof, we could just barely squeeze it into place. The moment we got it upright and stable (and it took all five of us), the cat ran over and jumped into the tree. She stayed up there almost the entire time it was up except when she was hungry, then “sch-woopâ€. She would vanish again. We hauled out all of our decorations, but we couldn’t cover the tree entirely, so we ran to the store to get more. It was utterly shocking that we had this monster in our house, but we were having so much fun dealing with it, nobody cared what a hassle it was. It was just so much fun.
Our neighbors all came over to visit when they saw the tree’s tip poking the ceiling through the skylight windows. Some thought we were nuts, others were in disbelief. For the most part, though, everybody loved it, and just wanted to come see what that was sticking up glowing in the skylight window as they drove by. It seemed to have a chain reaction effect through the neighborhood. As more and more of our neighbors saw the giant tree, they began putting up lights of their own. Some did a little, some did a lot, but either way, seeing that giant tree seemed to instill the sprit of the season in them. In one week’s time, our street had gone from post-apocalyptic Whoville to a glowing miniature Disneyland. Almost every house was glowing beautifully in the cold winter night air.
Our relatives weren’t known for being the friendliest or most outgoing people around, but we decided to ask a lot of them (that we liked) to come and visit. It also just so happened that was the year my uncle from Alaska decided to bring his family all the way down to see everyone that December. They came to spend Christmas with us. This was the guy who would come and pick me up from school on his leather-clad Harley when I was younger, thus making me the most badass kid on the playground. We hadn’t seen him or his family in ages. That was also the year, and the only year in which both of my grandmothers came to see us on Christmas. They were really set in their ways and never went anywhere during the second half of December, but that year, they both came to visit. Perhaps them both coming explains why they didn’t do it again. Ah, relatives….gotta’ love it. Nonetheless, it was great while it lasted. Several others came to visit, and we would all go out to eat, or just hang around and talk while I showed little cousins what an awesome “Street Fighter†I was. The amazing thing was, none of these people ever came around, but when that tree went up, suddenly everyone showed up in succession. It was just great to see everyone during such a happy time. That tree was like a family magnet.
It was a Christmas morning with family, friends, a huge beautiful tree, lots of good food, and me playing my new copies of Donkey Kong Country and Mario Paint in the living room while my cat had the time of its life playing in the biggest pine needle playground any pet could possibly ask for. In all my years, that was the shortest time we ever left the tree up in our house, but it was also the most meaningful. We moved away from that house and that town many years ago, but I’ll tell you one thing: when we drug that giant tree out of our three foot-wide front door, pine needles flew everywhere like greenish-brown bullets. I guarantee you whoever lives there now probably still finds pine needles coming out from under the carpet from time to time. They’ll never know. That was a Christmas I’ll never forget.
So, what was the point of all this? Honestly, there is no point. I just thought is would be nice to share some happy holiday memories with you on this special day. If you’ve got some happy memories you would like to share with everyone, why not pop into the forums and tell your tale for all to hear on this happiest of happy days? Maybe you might just pop by to wish everyone a Merry Christmas? It just might make someone’s day just a little bit brighter. You can never have too many good feelings in the world.
Next year, we’ve got one of the best all-around video game lineups in recent memory for all consoles. The heavy hitters are on the horizon. It’s going to be a busy year for us at AMN and most certainly for you as well. On behalf of the AMN staff, I would like to thank all of you loyal readers for being here with us and assure you that we’ll most certainly be there for you as the next, or should I say, “new†generation of gaming officially kicks into overdrive. It’s going to be a good time.
Now, stop reading this and go back to spending time with your family and playing all those new games you hopefully unwrapped this morning.
Merry Christmas to you, and all my fellow gamers.
Lucas DeWoody is Assistant Editorial Content Director for AMN, as well as one of the most in-depth industry historians in online journalism. Mr. DeWoody regular column A Look N-Side takes a look at the various facets of our always colorful, and often twisted industry through the eyes of a professional journalist with a gamer’s passion. Look for his insights regularly on AMN Wii and AMN DS.
