Flashback Friday

Last year, I vowed that this year, I would make it a mall-free Christmas. I've cut down my shopping list drastically, and unless there's something that my Mother absolutely has to have for Christmas and the mall is the only place I can get it, this year will be my first mall-free Christmas. And it feels awesome. But I digress. As a kid, going to the mall during Christmas was almost as exciting as Christmas itself. In fact, it was a little bit like going to the fair -- at the mall, you would get to ride the Christmas train.

The small train would be in the middle of the mall where Santa Clause sets up shop, and the tracks would wind around the Christmas displays with fake snow and animated characters. The train conductor almost always wore a very cool train conductor hat, and he usually looked like he was so uncomfortable sitting in the under-sized engine car driving the train.

Sometimes the wait to ride the train was almost as long as the wait to see Santa, but believe me it was worth the wait. If it was available, I would always sit in the very back in caboose, and would wave at everybody as we rode around. Once in a blue moon, there would be nobody waiting to ride the train and I would get to be the only kid on the train as it went around the track. Talk about a thrill. Now at the malls during Christmas, the only thrilling thing for the kids to do is the bungee-jump trampoline thing. How sad for them.