Mary: I was in first grade and I was at the bus stop and Chrissy Urban told me that there was no Santa Claus. And my gut reaction was I punched her right in the face. And I ran home. And I told my mother, Mommy, Chrissy Urban just said there's no Santa Claus. What a liar she is. And I don't even wanna go to school cuz I'm so upset. And all I remember is getting so upset that Chrissy Urban told me that.

Christmas was huge. We had this myth that Santa Claus decorated our tree. So the older kids, anyone who knew that Santa Claus wasn't real, would stay up and decorate the tree. And we always put the tinsel on one strand at a time and we'd take a box of powdered Tide, mix enough water to just make it pasty and then just take our fingers and slide it over every branch on the tree so it looked like a snow blizzard just plopped all the snow down. And it really made the tree special.