Editor’s note: We asked readers and staff to share their favorite Christmas memories. Today, “The person I’m missing the most this holiday season”: Tributes to loved ones passed.

A missing Santa

If you walked into the living room on Christmas morning, you might have seen the back side of my father emerging from under the Christmas tree. Dad was Santa and handed out all of the gifts to everyone. He’d fling them across the room making comments along the way about each gift. He would never pause to open his own gifts. He’d toss them into a box for later.

When everyone else was finished with their presents, I would sit intently watching him open his gifts from his box. He would judge every gift. He’d feel how heavy it was, squeeze and shake it then make a guess as to what it could be. He was a great guesser.

When someone passes, sometimes the tradition dies with them, as it did with Dad. It’s been six Christmases. Dad may be gone, but the memory forever lives in my heart and mind. Now the grandchildren take turns handing out the gifts. I think that he smiles down from heaven knowing that we try to carry on.

I still give Dad a gift every year. I make a charitable donation in his memory. I place the name of the recipient in a white envelope on the tree to be opened after everyone else has opened their presents.

— Sharon Dudley, Phillips

A rockin’ father

My father absolutely loved the Christmas season. He would play Johnny Cash music from his 8-track tapes and albums of the Beach Boys. He was so excited to watch people open their gifts to see their surprised faces. I will never forget the year he bought my mom diamond earrings that came in the belly of a white stuffed teddy bear.

My father was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1983 just days after Christmas. After 12 long years of this debilitating illness, he passed away on Jan. 2, 1996. Many of the events from his illness revolve around the holiday season. It is a hard time of year for me still, but I have the memories of his joy at this time of year. When I miss him, I think of him dancing and singing his favorites!

— Karen Bate-Pelletier, Lewiston

A beloved brother

Very simple: Missing my brother Raymond “Butchy” Weed, killed in his own home on Dec. 23, 2003, in Wilton. No holiday will ever be the same without him.

— Rachel Weed, Dixfield

A mother’s ode

Beautiful Angel on our Christmas tree,

Here is what you mean to me.

Sweet bundle born years ago,

Making your parents’ faces glow.

Christmases came and Christmases went,

Years with you so happily spent.

Your personality was heaven sent,

A friend to all the folks you met!

You achieved so much in your young life,

Child, woman, sister, mother, wife!

The years sped by much too fast,

Why couldn’t they last and last?

Your time on earth was much too short,

As your cancer you bravely fought.

You are gone now, but not forgotten

Beautiful Angel on my Christmas tree,

You mean the whole wide world to me!

In memory of Christina Yates Goff

April 17, 1971 – May 21, 2008

— Donna Yates, Leeds

‘Glue that held my family together’

Christmas will never again be the same for me. The glue that held my family together left us suddenly two years ago on Dec.r 21, 2008. She devoted herself to her family, especially her husband, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer 14 months earlier. She accompanied him to his chemotherapy sessions, becoming part of a new family that met three times a week, three hours at a time.

She took care of herself, had regular exams, routine cancer screenings, exercised, ate fat-free foods, drank no caffeine. She went to church, sang in the church choir, volunteered her services in the community, cherished her grandchildren and great-granddaughters.

Christmas was a happy time. It was Jesus’ birthday, and she celebrated. What was different was that Christmas wasn’t always on Dec. 25. It was the day when all family members could be together. It didn’t matter if it was the 26th or 29th. One daughter lived four hours away, a granddaughter lived out West, a son-in-law worked at a prison where holidays didn’t mean a day off.

Sylvia Gordon made my Christmas complete, and a nasty brain tumor took it away. It will never be the same. I love you, Mom.

— Deborah Heffernan, Auburn

Missing her voice

Every year, from the comfort of her well-worn recliner, Ma observed her six grandchildren and my husband, her son, gently pulling the tree ornaments out of their old recycled cardboard tombs. She made sure that the boxes were handled with great care, because every item in them mattered so much to her. Ma, with her round, aged, laugh-lined face, beamed with contentment while watching us distribute the Christmas ornaments upon the heavily burdened balsam fir tree.

As matriarch of our family, Ma spoke of her Christmases long ago, growing up during the Great Depression in rural Maine with her eight other siblings. Her stories were often funny, or at the very least full of learned or earned knowledge that comes from living so many Christmases.

None of us knew that Ma (fondly known as Nana) would not be around for last Christmas. The stories that mattered so much to her for the holiday season are not the same as when they were uttered from her lips. We have our Christmas decorations up, and our stories, but there’s an empty spot in our hearts this year that aches for her voice of Christmas.

— Teresa Nash, Lewiston

Coming tomorrow: What you’re most grateful for this Christmas and, given the chance, what you’d buy the world.