Christmas During The Years At Home.

I have written about Christmas at home before and of Christmas when Tommy and I came back to New York. I'm going to put that here and as I find Christmas images of which very few exist from the old days, I will add them here. Some are repeated in stories of other homes.

Stalking the Christmas Tree and Other Christmas Fables

Today is December 6, 1997.  Tomorrow is Pearl Harbor Day, but today is the day we tromp out in the woods for that annual event, stalking the Christmas tree.

When I was a kid, we'd go out in the woods and hunt one down, sometimes spending the entire day looking for just the right tree.  Now, there's just me and Sue and Tommy left here.  Dad is dead, Mother's in a nursing home and my other sisters are mostly in other states.

Sue took us to Fort Ann to the Christmas Tree Farm.  She brought a couple of friends along for the ride.  One was her new puppy who hasn't told her his name, yet.  He will when he's ready. 

Tommy and Sue went off in the woods with the saw while Karen went for a walk.  She didn't want a tree.  I sat in the car with Tuffy, (That's the name on his birth certificate.).  I can't walk for long distances and somebody had to puppy sit.

When we moved to the village, we started a new tradition.  Shopping for the perfect tree!  There were many arguments about which was the best.  In those days it mattered if the tree had a bald spot.  Now I like the ones with the bad backside, so I can fit it against the wall or in a corner of our tiny apartment, but in those days, it had to be perfect.

Of the six of us girls, there was usually about four or five of us to argue over it.  Dad usually gave up in disgust and took whichever one was handy.  When we got it home it was always the best one in the neighborhood.

We had a lot of ornaments sometimes and at other times almost nothing.  My mother always had a special star for the top.  It was glass and made in Germany.  She called it a star but it was shaped more like a fancy church spire. I remember once when we unpacked the ornaments the star was broken.  Mother pretended it didn't matter.  We'd have Christmas anyway. 

Dad went out and was gone for hours.  When he came back he gave Ma a slim white box.  She almost cried when she saw the star.  It was glass, hand painted and from Germany.  He probably paid a lot more for it than we could afford, but it was important to Mama.

We always made ornaments in school.  I think it's an elementary school tradition.  My son brought home similar ornaments when he was in grade school.  We have his hand print made into a mitten that he made in first grade. 

In school we learned to make paper chains and string cranberries and popcorn.  We tried this at home but the popcorn kept breaking and we kept eating it faster than we could string it.

They came out of the woods dragging the trees behind them.  I told Tommy to get a small one because I didn't have any place for a big one.  I was going to put it on top of the big old wooden stereo. Of course, Tommy got what he wanted, which was, I think the biggest tree in the woods, but he says, no, there were bigger ones. 

They all cost the same, ten dollars, so size doesn't matter that way.  They hoisted them on to the roof of the station wagon and tied them on to the luggage racks. 

Getting the tree to stand upright was another problem, one I didn't feel up to fighting, but it's all part of Christmas.  Tommy went to see his father for a saw.  They only live three blocks away. 

When he came back, he said his father gave him a twenty to spend on gifts but when he tried to show it to me, he'd lost it. He was pretty upset and we went back out in the dark to retrace his steps to try and find it.  Old Tom met us half way, but nobody found it.  He went back to his place and we went back to ours.

By now, Tommy was totally distraught and could think of nothing but how awful his life was.  He tried to put the tree up.  He sawed off some and got hurt on the saw.  He was feeling pretty awful and went to bed.

I went across the road to see Dave, Lucky's (a big dog) father to borrow a hammer to pound the tree stand on to the tree stump.  I was trying to get it to stand, but I couldn't lift it, when Tommy's father showed up.  He took over.  I figured I'd use him while he was here.

He gave Tommy twenty dollars. He said he found it on the bottom step to his apartment, but Tommy thinks he just gave him another one.  He gave Tommy a chewing out for losing it in the first place.  Considering how bad Tommy felt, I thought Old Tom was too harsh.  I told him to go easy. Tommy felt bad enough as it was.

The three of us heggeled the tree around until it was upright and sort of straight.  We have to use spell check on the computer because the dictionary is now holding one leg of the tree stand two inches higher.  It's also a good thing we aren't getting cable because I looped the cable around the middle of the trunk of the tree and into the kitchen where Tom and I tied it around the base of the iron table stand where the microwave sits. So the tree is up.  We fed it sugar water to keep it alive. 

Now we've got to move the computer to open the cupboard where the ornaments are stored.

I remember some Christmas mornings more than others.  Some things stick out in your mind.  I don't remember any of the really young Christmases. 

I remember the Christmas on the farm when we had nothing.  I was only about five, but I remember Ma and Dad talking in the night when we were supposed to be asleep.  They had no money and no gifts for us. 

On Christmas Eve a lot of people showed up.  Some were Girl Scouts.  They had a lot of of mysterious packages.  Ma made sure we were asleep and locked the door on us because she was never sure about me.

In the morning she told us Santa had come in the night.  I knew it was all those other people, but I still think Santa sent them.  We had a lot of toys and more candy and nuts than I had ever seen in my life!  We had real fruit that didn't come out of a can.  Year's later we would still remember that Christmas morning as the year we discovered that miracles really do happen.

Yesterday, I bought a can of old fashioned assorted hard candies.  At least, that's what it said on the label.  The picture showed candy that looked familiar but what was inside was cheap hard candy that while it had nice flavor, didn't bring back memories. 

I remember filled hard candies.  I remember chocolate straws, candies about two inches long, pink and white and a center of sweet milk chocolate.  I remember hard candies with gooey, fruity fillings.  I remember raspberry shaped, dark red hard candies with soft raspberry centers.  I remember soft mint filled pillows with a waffle texture hard shell. 

Then there was the Arabian nights mixture of tiny pillows of hard candies, solid not filled, but oh so delicate.  Do you remember the cut hard candies with the picture in the center?  They looked like they were extruded with the flower in the center of a tube and a bright outer shell. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how they made them.

Besides the hard candies, during the feast years my mother always got each of us girls a box of Linette chocolates, one pound each.  It was wrapped and under the tree on Christmas morning, but we couldn't open any candy until after breakfast.

Breakfast Christmas morning was always hot oatmeal.  I now refuse to eat oatmeal.

On a table in the dining room, if we were lucky enough to have one, other wise it was the kitchen table, we would always find the remains of the stocking stuffings.  There would be apples and oranges, Sophie Mae peanut brittle, Capital ribbon candy and piles of nuts and candies that didn't make it into the stockings. 

We usually had chocolate covered cherries, as well. One Christmas Eve, I dreamed of a huge box of chocolates.  This was a famine year for us. We knew we weren't getting much.  I had to dream of chocolate to make up for not having any.

 This box was so big, it was at least two feet by four feet.  It had two layers of every kind of chocolate I could imagine.  For a kid my imagination was working over time.  It was wrapped in red and green plaid paper with a gold ribbon and a huge red bow.  Tacky, right?  I had not developed a sense of style.

I tore open the box and began to eat, one chocolate after another, cherries, toffees, caramels, coconuts, nuts of all kinds and several different colored crème filled ones.  It must have been an all night dream because in the morning the imaginary box was empty and I was so sick I had to vomit.  I didn't miss candy that year.

My mother made fruitcakes.  These were nothing like the kind you buy in a tin that taste like they've been passed from one unsuspecting person after another for the last twenty years.  My mother made real fruit cakes.  She used lots of nuts and candied fruits like pineapple, cherries and citron.  She never used raisins but she did use dates.

She had what I always thought was a secret recipe.  Later, she told me she found it in the Farm Journal magazine which was also the source of her doughnut recipe that we loved so much.

Sometimes Ma made tiny cakes in Nancy's toy loaf pans.  These she gave away to people who were nice to her.  Since then, I have found only one person who can make a fruitcake as good as my mother's, and that person is Ruby Mast of Conneaut, Ohio.

 Two poems I wrote about Christmas

Christmas

The Christmas season is now here

the lights, the noise, the cheer

Some folk are drinking wine tonight

while others sip their beer.

Somewhere on the corner

some Santa rings his bell.

He asks for coins for all the poor

to make their Christmas well.

Oh, how I love the ice and snow

this winter season brings,

The lights, the tinsel on the tree,

and especially Angel's wings.

The little children smile with joy

and hide and peek to see,

What wonder will be waiting there

beneath their Christmas tree.

Darkness falls, it's Christmas Eve

and somewhere on this night,

A church bell rings out crisp and clear

to make the darkness light.

We celebrate the birth of him

who was born so long ago

By joining all together now

no matter friend or foe.

Christmas Eve 1978

An angel stands and sprinkles snow

On all the creatures here below.

The blue white fields are stark and bare

With diamond sparkles everywhere.

The world is dressed up clean and white

Upon this saintly, holy night.

A church bell rings out somewhere near.

It is the only sound we hear.

The full moon sits up in the sky.

It's beauty makes me want to cry.

The luster of this special sight,

Brings forth the wonder of this night.

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