We asked you for your Christmas stories, memories, traditions and photos. Among the submissions we received were these two messages from separate email accounts but apparently coming from the same happy household:
Our Christmas Story
My wife and I were married by a reverend 12 years ago. However, we were married by Santa Claus four years before that.
My wife and I were dating at the time and decided to get a Santa picture at the mall together. After the picture, Santa held our hands and talked to us. He noted the love between the two of us. After we left Santa’s lap, we both commented on how we felt we had just been married by Old Saint Nick himself.
This shows us that Santa knows if you’re naughty, nice, or if you have a love connection!
Ryan Stubbings
My best gift ever
It was Christmas morning 1998 when I got proposed to. After everyone had opened all of the gifts under the tree, my boyfriend at the time (Ryan) asked me to go and get the video he had made for his brother (he had told me previously he was making his brother a video of family pictures).
I went to get the video and they put it in the VCR for all of us to watch. It took me a minute before I realized that the video was in fact for me. On the video was my husband-to-be talking about us as a couple, and how much we were meant for each other.
He then asked me on the video to marry him.
I then looked up completely surprised, to have him down on one knee holding my beautiful engagement ring. I cried and of course said yes.
The proposal came as a complete surprise and it will be a Christmas memory that I have forever. It was truly one of my best gifts ever – the day my best friend asked me to marry him.
We were married in 2000 in Disneyland (our favourite place to be). We have now been married for 12 years and have 5-year-old twins, who love Christmas just as much as we do!
Tammy Stubbings
[Ed note: the message contained the following p.s. – It would be great if this could be published, as I believe my husband Ryan submitted a story about him and I with Santa Claus and how we felt that we had been married two years before this by a mall Santa.
I would like my husband to know how much that Christmas and the proposal still means to me.]