I guess I've got to make a contribution to this thread since I started it.
Smile.

I've got a lot of strange memories, hurtful and happy, as most of you do.
But the most memorable Christmas I have had was 10 years ago today.  I had
just met a woman long-distance through circumstances that seemed they had to
be from the LORD and through mutual friends.  I was in New Jersey and she
was here in South Carolina where I was due to move with my job.  We traveled
back and forth for a few months since being introduced over the phone and
her parents invited me to come down for Christmas and spend it with them and
her in their home here in Columbia, so we'd be chaperoned.  As well as you
can chaperone a lion and a redhead, anyway.

It was memorable for many reasons.  We were both already crazy about each
other (and in general as we would find out).  Not only was she a Christian,
her father a chaplain with many mutual friends, but she was also the most
beautiful woman I have ever seen.  It was also memorable for learning the
different culture here from up in Yankee Land which was an education in
itself.

Even just being able to get away from the unhealthy family atmosphere I
couldn't escape from in New Jersey would have been enough, being empowered
to say "I have a life elsewhere, someone who really wants to be with me, and
I with them." alone would have made it memorable.  And everything else just
made it more special.  I finally felt as if I had the family I had always
wanted, the parental figures, both mother and father, and was falling in
love not only with my sweetie but with her parents and her extended family
(brother and his wife and little son).  There was the trip to a Christmas
play in a church which seemed almost blasphemous with it's "Holly the Holy
Spirit" and a mannequin that peeked out of the balcony like a wooden Indian
and was supposed to be JESUS.  An Italian guy and his girlfriend kept
laughing and carrying on so much that the whole congregation seemed ready to
kill them.  But they couldn't touch us because we were in church.  Smile.
And there was the Riverbanks Zoo here in Columbia where they form Christmas
lights into the shape of animals.  Life-size elephants, lions, etc. all done
in colorful 3D Christmas lights.  Strange but fascinating.  I didn't have my
car so her parents were driving us around as our chauffeurs, all of us
singing Christmas carols at the tops of our lungs, which made it all the
more bizarre with more much-needed chaperoning since the girl couldn't keep
her hands off of me.  Smile.

I even brought snow down with me (which my sweetie's mother didn't seem to
appreciate), the first time it snowed down here in years I think.  There
were rough moments that should have warned me, and the relationship
eventually fell apart a few months later.  But for those few days at
Christmas I experienced every joy a man could experience at Christmas, with
other Christians, in love, and I'll always be grateful for it.

Paul