Christmas
Memories
Outstanding in my memory are the remembrances of
Christmases gone by.
The sights, sounds, smells and feelings associated with
this special
holiday fill the senses and stir
the soul to a level of joy like no other.
When I was a child, the season was summed up in one word,
“anticipation”.
In our house, the Christmas season officially began when my
mother brought out the manger
scene from the little walk in
attic room just off my
bedroom.
I would begin to nag her unmercifully as soon as the first
snow flake
fell (which was usually in
late October in
By the time Thanksgiving dinner was over, if she hadn’t
already
relented and
brought out the box containing the stable and the figures
carefully wrapped
in aging yellow tissue; she would do it
then.
“We don’t want to rush the season.” was her statement each
year
as I begged for the decorations.
Not long after the manger scene made it’s
annual debut, would
come the tiny artificial
trees, the musical church with the stained
glass windows and the shiny
ornaments.
Opening the box of ornaments was almost as much fun as
opening
the presents themselves
because there were always a few ornaments
we had all but forgotten over the
course of the year.
Putting up the tree was the most difficult task of the
season.
My mother loved big trees.
She always picked them out according
to their height and girth, so it
was sometimes tough just to get
them through the front door.
Tree stands back then were not as “user friendly” as they
are today,
so getting a 7 foot pine to stand
in place and to stand “straight” was
a chore.
Sometimes, my dad (or an uncle nearby) would secure the
tree into a corner of our
large living room by stretching
fish line around the trunk
and fastening it to the wall.
Mom was allergic to the pine so when the decorating was
over,
her arms were red and bumpy
she would stand back while
Dad lit the lights for the first time and smile while she
scratched.
The lights always emerged from their box in a tangle that
resembled a
colorful ball of
barbed wire. The bulbs then were big and
made of glass, so the
unraveling process was tedious. Each
year
Mom would promise Dad that they would be put away more
carefully “this
year”. (They never were).
We had an artificial fireplace made of heavy corrugated
cardboard
with a pretend fire lit by a
small bulb. Mom had always wanted
a real fireplace (she has one
now) but for then, the “pretend” one
at least gave us somewhere to take
pictures and to hang our
stockings.
In my Halloween memories, that cardboard fireplace makes
another
appearance as
well, so if you like my memory pages, you will love
the Halloween story.
We would always have a Christmas Eve gathering at the home
of my
great grandmother fondly
nicknamed, “Grandma Ace.” My
Dad’s side of the family lived in the same town we did, so
that
evening was spent with his
aunts, uncle, parents and grandmother.
We exchanged our gifts and took lots of pictures.
Hot spiced tomato juice in little crystal cups was always
served
and the grownups talked and
laughed until it was time for
us to go home in anticipation of
the arrival of Santa.
After Grandma Ace was gone, the Christmas Eve celebration
fell to my grandmother then
to my mother and then to me,
but to this day, Christmas
Eve is the time our family celebrates
together.
One Christmas Eve, as I peaked in anticipation of Santa, we
heard bells outside. Shortly after, something hit our storm door.
Running to the door, sure it was St. Nick, I found to my
delight
a chocolate Santa wrapped in
colorful foil! It seems my mother’s
sister who lived across the
street had decided to heighten the excitement
by convincing the kids in the
neighborhood to get to bed because he
was in our town. We knew that Santa wouldn’t come until we
were asleep.
Once, I
spotted a lovely bride doll in a department store
on a summer day while I was on a
shopping trip with my mother.
She was dressed in a gown of satin and lace.
She had blonde hair and big blue eyes, She wore a veil of
silk illusion and chantilly
lace. When I
saw her, I had stars in my
eyes.
She was on a high shelf in the store and seemed so far
out of my reach. On tip-toes, I stood looking at her in sheer
ecstasy!
(My love for dolls has never faded, if anything it has
grown with me).
If it had not been for my dad standing at the bottom of
the stairs the Christmas
morning that Santa brought that
doll, no one on earth would
have been able to believe the look
on my five year old face. I don’t think I was able to close my
mouth for an hour. She was even more breathtaking at my
eye level than she had been
on that high shelf in the store.
Years later, I would realize that she was a designer doll,
(Madame Alexander) and that Santa had really gone
over board to present me with
this doll of my dreams.
I believe that Christmas was one of the most outstanding in
my
memory because I just could not
believe that Santa had
somehow known I wanted her. I was, still am, a true
believer! You see, back then, Santa “made” all the toys
and dolls in his workshop at
the North Pole, so how he
would know about that bride
doll was beyond my
comprehension. For him to have been able to make one for
me just like the one in the store….well
that was simply
magic!
I am an only child and a girl, so the year the little train
set
came, my dad and I spent
hours together playing with “my”
toy.
My own girls were fortunate to have a mother and
grandparents
who loved Christmas. Our house looked like an explosion on
Christmas morning. There were packages and wrappings
literally
everywhere. When my younger daughter was
on the
verge of discovering the
secret of Santa, we were trying so hard
to preserve the fantasy for
another year. A friend shared an
idea with me to help secure
her belief for at least that Christmas
so with some help from her, we
rigged the best Christmas trick
I have ever seen.
We took a pair of men’s work boots and a cookie sheet
containing
a healthy dose of flour and make
foot prints from our fire place
to the tree and back. It looked as though the prints were made
from the ashes in the
fireplace and the look on her face when
she saw them that Christmas
morning was priceless.
We had a believer for another year! It almost made a believer of
her father too, because we
hadn’t told him what we were doing.
My very most memorable Christmas was one where my
grandfather
took me shopping. He told me I could buy anything I
wanted.
There was no set limit to the amount
I could purchase or to the amount I could spend.
I
went crazy in the stores that year. We almost couldn’t fit
everything into
his long Oldsmobile, but when we had finally
crammed all the purchases into
the car and were seated inside
he turned to me and said, “You
made quite a haul but there
is a catch to this.” The “catch” was that I was not allowed to
keep any of the things I
bought that day, instead, we took all
the packages to the local
fire department to be distributed to
children less
fortunate than I. Now you might think I
would
have been very disappointed
and upset, but I wasn’t. Instead,
I was the happiest kid in town. I don’t think my feet touched
the ground all that season
because I knew what a wonderful
thing he had done. When the tears started to flow that
day as we left the fire
station, I think
for a moment that my
grandfather thought I was upset that
I couldn’t keep the toys and games for myself, but when I
told him how happy I felt and
how much it touched me
he gave me a hug so tight I
couldn’t breathe.
My aunt Ann always made the Christmas cookies. She spared
nothing in making them
either. They were real award winners and
some of the recipes will be
available on my cookbook page this
year.
I have grandchildren of my own now. Our very small family has
grown into a rather large
one. Where it was once just my
grandparents,
my parents and myself, it is now
my parents, myself and my husband,
my daughters and their husbands
and six grandchildren.
We continue to celebrate our Christmas Eve tradition, sans
the
hot tomato juice, but we do it on the Saturday before
so
all the children can be home on Christmas Eve to await
Santa, but the tradition is rich and we always look forward
to it.
Christmas Day though has come back to me with the same
excitement and
anticipation that it once held, because now
with everyone living a
distance apart, my husband and I have
Christmas morning to ourselves. That is when we exchange
our gifts and have our own
little Christmas. Though I will
always miss the family all
being together for the entire
holiday, Santa visits me every
year and I still have trouble
closing my mouth for an hour
because my “Santa” always
finds a way to surprise and
delight me now, just like he did
so many years ago when he brought
a special bride doll like the
one on the high shelf in a
department store that seemed so far out
of
the reach of a little girl
with stars in her eyes. I t is simply…
Magic!
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