Quote:
Originally Posted by badgoodDeb
They left the candles lit overnight?!???
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No no no no. They're meant to be extinguished, of course but...it used to be a lotta lotta candles, and it was a very old house (400 and change), flammable from one end to the other (ask my late brother, who ignited the kitchen not once but twice), and of course, we had cats and dogs and kids and clumsy, half-lit Xmas Eve adults...oy. The possibility that a wee teeny spark could catch or simmer along...
Quote:
Originally Posted by DNSB
From what I read in what Hitch wrote, the candles were supposed to be put out. OTOH, paranoia says that they may not have been.
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Exactly. I mean, like all small children, I slept fine as a child but once I hit around...12? 13? I stopped sleeping Xmas Eve worth a damn. I must have snuck downstairs IDK how many times, to make sure we weren't all going to burn to death in our beds, lol. You remember the old tune, "over the river and through the woods," at my house on Xmas eve for me it was "down through the sitting room, well past the parlor room, via the foyer we go..." to the formal living room with the cursed tree.
Of course, to be fair, nope, we never all burned to death in our beds. But I do know of at least ONE occasion when a candle came loose and we all played hell for scramble finding it, putting it out and all that. And I also know that pretty much everybody stayed up for the best part of two more hours, to ensure that it was out, out and oh, yeah...out.
My family was big on Christmas, as a family gathering time and tradition. Parties, family, gift-ies, and all that. My grandfather (I
never really appreciated this until I'd aged
into appreciating it) used to put antlers on his damn head, tied on somehow, and crawl around in the ice and snow and cold, with only the horns visible, outside the windows on the far side of the house so that my then baby sister and brother (over the years) would espy reindeer antlers. God love him, he had to be 65 if he was a day. (With really really old east coast houses, the equally-old window bottoms are close to the ground so you can do this and be "visible" as one of "eight tiny reindeer." I wish I knew who the hell ever thought that one up!) I wouldn't do that now to save my damn life.
I think it was two years after that, when we finally "bit the bullet" and went to Xmas lights like 20th-Century folks. BUT, I do remember sleeping like the dead that Xmas Eve!
Hitch