Christmas and Memories

I started to write about Christmas 4 days ago. Actually, I finished writing about Christmas. But I could not post what I wrote. It was about the wonder of the holiday as a child, and then growing up. About how it changed over the years, as you became a teenager, a young adult, married, had children, and those children followed the pattern in turn. Then you spend some Christmas’s mostly alone, you lose a parent, and your family disburses over many miles. But it ended up being just a little dark.

So, I started all over and a couple hours later, started again. This is the third try. The first 2 were about me, and how I feel now. Then it hit me. This year it really needs to be written for my mother. I hope she likes it.

My sisters and I grew up in one of those 1960s families. There were 4 of us children, my 3 sisters and I. Most families now would average 1.8. I believe that is the statistic. Back then, my mother was a homemaker or to use a now politically incorrect term, a housewife. My father worked in a factory. I remember them sitting together at the kitchen table after my father got his paycheck, “making ends meet”. I believe I remember hearing $25 as the budget for the week’s groceries for a family of six. I don’t remember ever thinking that money was tight, but later I realized it was. Yet, every Christmas was a wondrous occasion.

It started with trimming the tree at Thanksgiving. I said tree, not twisted wire and plastic with fake needles. It was a real tree. It was decorated with lights, tinsel, and that weird “spray on” concoction meant to look like snow. As young children, we loved to turn the lights on, and shut off the overhead in the living room. It created an excellent ambiance, especially later when gifts started to appear at the base, all wrapped and circled by ribbon and bows, with little name tags that were most often taped down so you did not know which was for whom.

About that time, the Sears and Roebuck and JC Penney winter catalogs would show up, and my sisters and I would fight over turns at scanning the pages of the toy section. We had to make our lists for Christmas. I don’t recall ever getting what was on those lists. But what we did get was close enough or was possibly even a welcome surprise. Our dreams of the toys from the catalogs were quickly forgotten on Christmas day, supplanted by a reality every bit as excellent.

My father worked long hours of overtime, including half days on Saturday and I am sure gifts for 4 children were a strain. I knew my mother was just as instrumental in the outcome. She kept our house spic and span, took care of 4 children, cooked, and managed to contribute dollars as a part time seamstress. But memories were mostly created out of toil. From Thanksgiving to Christmas, she made homemade toffee, peanut brittle, chocolate covered cherries rolled in coconut, and fudge, as well as every imaginable type of cookie and bar. We never got these most of the year, but the holidays were an extravaganza of delicious treats.

These things were traditions and among them was the begging that occurred on Christmas Eve. My sisters all tried to talk her into letting us open one small gift early. Sometimes it worked, but mostly not. We tried year after year.

We repeated this year after year. Age changed, but the basic pattern and traditions did not. Even years later, I took my own two sons to visit “grandpa and grandma” for Christmas in Illinois. Interestingly, If you were to ask them now, in their 20s, what they remember from their early years, they would not be able to list the gifts they received. But they would be able to tell you about the Lasagna, and the Christmas candy that grandma made (Connie and Dawn too). But mostly, they remember the card games with their grandparents and aunts and cousins. They remember their grandpa and how he would seem to be losing for a while and would say “ok, now I’m playing for blood”. They knew he never “let them win”. If they beat him it was because they had gathered the skill to do so.

Of such were memories made and my mother was their chief architect. Now all these years later and for the first time in many, many years, she will have a different kind of Christmas. My father has passed, and Covid-19 will keep everybody at home. There will be no raucous noise of visiting children and grandchildren for the holidays. My mother and Connie will do their best alone.

But you won’t be alone mom. The memories and traditions you provided will be in all our heads and we will relive all those wonderful years.

So, for all the memories, thanks Myrle, and Frederick, mom, Karen, Connie, and Dawn, as well as Peter and Dave.

And thanks dad. We wish you were here.