Christmas past

Christmas 1956, that’s me on the right.  I was 6 years old.

I’ve been thinking about doing a Christmas post, but as I’ve mentioned, it’s not a holiday that I celebrate now and most of my memories of those days are not happy ones, but when I was a little girl I loved Christmas as all little children do, those who are raised up in a Christian religion.  I especially loved the Christmas tree and the outdoor lights.  Back then, people used the big colored lights.  They would line their roofs, outline the windows, fashion stars, put them in the trees.  Some people would go monochromatic...all red or green or all blue  but never did you see all white because those big outdoor lights didn’t come in white.  We would put up outdoor lights and my parents always covered the front door as if it were wrapped up like a present.

My favorite Christmas activity though, back in the 50s, was buying and putting up the Christmas tree.  When I was a kid, trees were not sold at the grocery store.  Vacant lots would all of a sudden become forests, with the trees of all sizes and shapes and kinds set out in rows supported by stakes.  Other trees would be wrapped in twine and piled up.  My dad would take us kids out to help pick a tree.  We would run up and down between the rows of trees looking for the perfect one.  My dad would always buy a big tree, often taller than the ceiling so that it had to be trimmed down.

We would look at dozens of trees, we would make the attendant unwrap and shake out trees, we would look for holes, make sure it was balanced because this was before the modern tree farm where the trees are shaped into a perfect cone from sapling to maturity.  Now they are too artificial, too perfectly shaped, not a hole or errant branch to be seen, all identical twins so it doesn’t matter which tree you pick.

Finally, though, the tree would be chosen and tied to the top of the station wagon and off we would go.  We weren’t allowed to put it up right away though.  When we got it home, my father would cut several inches off the bottom of the trunk and put it in a bucket of sugar water for a week.

The next week, the rituals of hauling stuff out of the attic, the untangling of the lights, the unwrapping of the ornaments would ensue and we would decorate the tree.  Finally, my mother’s foil star and my father’s foil garland (remnants of their first tree) were put on and the ‘placing’ of the tinsel (we were not allowed to throw it onto the tree) could begin.  In the days to come, I would often sneak into the living room after everyone was in bed and turn on the lights and just sit in the dark and look at the tree.

Christmas Eve would come and that is the night we had our Christmas dinner.  It was a formal affair at our house using the china and crystal and so we dressed accordingly, my father in his tux with his red cummerbund, bow-tie and socks; my mother in her evening gown and us kids dressed in our fanciest clothes.  I always thought my mother was so beautiful then.  One year when I was about 6 or 7 I asked as we sat down to dinner if it was Jesus’ birthday, why we didn’t sing ‘Happy Birthday’.  My mother thought this was so cute, she made us all sing Happy Birthday to Jesus.  And much to my later embarrassment, she did it every year thereafter.

Those were happy days then but they only lasted about a decade.  Somewhere around my 12th year, things changed and there was no more happiness in our house.  Seems the husband half of my parents' best friends was having an affair and when his wife found out, he named my mother as the other woman.  My mother, of course, claimed innocence, said he accused her because she had already known about the affair but no other woman, as far as I know, was ever named.  After that as the years went by, my father got angrier and bitter, my mother got depressed and totally self centered.  

Christmas would come but there was less and less joy in it.  Our family dinners morphed into some unreal expectation of simpering family togetherness.  No high spirited conversations allowed, no disagreements allowed, no loud voices allowed, no fun allowed.  As we got older, we kids began to dread Christmas Eve dinner.

Christmas Day was not always a whole lot better.  Of course we loved opening all our presents, would be excited about our gifts but after all was opened and my mother would be surrounded with gifts, 2 and 3 times the amount anyone else got, the inevitable depression would set in because she never got the one gift she wanted.  She would look at all that stuff and sigh because all she had wanted was a plain white slip and no one had got it for her.  My mother could squash happiness in our house faster than light.

I tried for many years to find the perfect gift for my mother, the one that would make her happy.  We all did, and we all failed.  I finally gave up.  Us kids grew up, married, had kids of our own.  I had grown away from Christian theology by the time I was 20 and left Christmas behind.  We still gathered as a family for Christmas Eve dinner every year but eventually both my brother and sister moved out of state and my sister’s grown kids followed her.  My parents were left with the non-Christian child and that was the end of Christmas Eve dinner.  

I didn’t miss it, had long ago stopped celebrating Christmas, but it was still a little strange, that first Christmas Eve that I spent at home, my own children grown, the first time in my life that I had not spent it with at least some members of my birth family.

PS...I’ve probably made this seem a bit more grim than it actually was.  Once we grew up and my mother no longer hosted the dinner, having passed the responsibility on to my older sister, there was a whole lot more fun.  And after I left home and had my family, I made lots of good and fun memories for this time of year, but Christmas was never a part of it at our house.  

I don't usually remember all that stuff but this is the first year that I have had a blog, that I started reading blogs and all those postings about Christmas and memories sort of dredged it all up I suppose.  

It's not a happier time of year for me, in fact scrooge-like, I tend to find it a bit hypocritical.  But neither is it a sad time for me.  Mostly, all the obligations of the season just make it hard for me to get my work done.  I'm very happy for others, though, who get so much out of it.  And it is nice to know that I have family and friends who love me and want to include me in their lives and I want to have them in mine.