There are a lot of ghosts mentioned in my blog posts. Be assured that I am
not obsessed with the ethereal, but more with the memories of things from the
past, those of years gone by. The ghosts of Christmases past are by far my favorites.
I must say that the holidays are my favorite time of the
year. As soon as the Halloween festivities end, I am ready for Thanksgiving. I
am also ready for Christmas music. I play Christmas tunes on the piano as soon
as November 1 rolls around. The outdoor Christmas decorations go up the first nice
day in November, though they are not powered up until Thanksgiving night. Hey,
I don’t want to rush the season. Well, actually, I do!
The holidays have changed a lot for my wife and I over the
years. Christmas has been less about us and more about others. Our Lions Club
rings the bell for the Salvation Army. I absolutely love this annual activity.
We have done this in weather so nice that we didn’t even need a jacket. Other
years, it was so cold you couldn’t wait for your volunteer shift to end! THOSE days
certainly drove home the plight of the homeless. Our Lions Club also
distributes a bunch of food to four needy families in our tiny town each year.
Taking a Christmas feast PLUS a month or two’s worth of groceries to a
struggling family is an experience you will not forget! The look of genuine
gratitude on a mother’s face and the excitement of the kids looking at all the
goodies (we always throw in a bunch of candy) really makes our holiday
season!
My wife and I did not have children. Due to medical issues,
it was a risk to attempt to have our own kids. At the time we were looking to
start a family, adoption had become a major news item as courts took children
away from loving adoptive couples and gave them to the fathers that had
abandoned them at birth – that is, until the “fathers” realized that their offspring were a source of
government-funded income. My wife and I decided the pain of losing an adopted
child was a risk we were not willing to take. Hindsight being 20/20, we would
have adopted a couple and ran that risk.
Anyway, each year we spend what we would have on our own children
purchasing toys for kids that wouldn’t have a very nice Christmas otherwise.
This is a lot of fun for us, and makes us feel great about the holidays.
Now to visit the ghosts of Christmas past. Being musically
inclined, Christmas tunes have a strong connection to my childhood. The school
I attended for grades K-9 had a custom of gathering in the main hall each
morning and singing Christmas songs. While I did not carry that on into my
teaching career, I did print out lyric sheets and subjected my students to the
pain and embarrassment of singing Christmas carols with their peers. Don’t get
me wrong. Some grade levels just loved this activity. Regardless, I loved this
activity! I would accompany the singing on piano, but more often than not, I
would play along on guitar. The kids thought that was cool.
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| My sister and me, 1960 |
We had five pine trees in the yard of my childhood home. My
dad bought live trees, complete with root ball, to create a living memorial to
landmark Christmases. One tree marked my parents’ first Christmas together in
the home they purchased following my dad’s discharge form the US Navy at the
end of WWII. Another marked my sister’s first Christmas. There were two others
in our side yard that were simply from Christmases they decided to buy a
planting-ready evergreen.
The smallest pine was in the back yard. That was my first
Christmas tree, though of course I don’t remember that Christmas. At this time
of year, I think about those trees, in another state, and wonder if they still
stand. I’m sure that if they are still stand, the current homeowner has no
knowledge of the significance they were to our family.
Many baby boomers remember Christmastime fondly. Count me among that crowd! At our house, dad would get the tree the Saturday before Christmas. I got to go along for the ride, but had no say in which lucky tree would fill our home with the scent of pine, at least for one week each year. When I was a kid, we did not put the tree up until Christmas Eve day. The tree came down January 2.
Mounting the tree and decorating it was a hallowed tradition in our home. My dad had constructed a wooden platform that lived under the side porch the other 355 days of the year. This platform was constructed to perfectly fit in the corner of our living room. There was plenty of space for the cut pine tree on this platform, and the tree sat in a watertight sheet metal stand that my father had made. He was a sheet metal worker by trade.
The tree stand had attached braces that were nailed to the
wooden platform. Then the tree was decorated with those big old C7 bulbs, and
the smaller C5 lights. We had some
bubble lights that I loved to watch as they “boiled” on the tree. The ornaments
had a lot of significance for my parents, but some of them I just liked because
of their color. We had a box of what I called bird houses, but have since
discovered to be Holiday Twinklers made by the Tinkle Toy Company of Youngstown , Ohio 
After the tree was lit, ornamented, strung with garland and
weighed down by multiple boxes of icicles, it was time for dad to decorate
under the tree. He carefully put two layers of white crepe paper on the
platform to represent snow. Then he trimmed the front of the platform with
green crepe paper, and then nailed on a 4” metal fence around the top of the
platform. I wondered if it was to keep the sheep, cars, tiny houses and
presumably whoever lived in those tiny homes from escaping onto the living room
floor. It was more likely to keep our dachshund from invading the under tree
village, sort of like a yuletide canine Godzilla.
The village has a special meaning for me today, and I will
never know why it was the way it was. Dad died of cancer in 1975, and mom has
been gone for 26 years. My dad was agnostic, yet always placed a handmade
stable under the tree. In the stable were
Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus in an appropriate manger. A woolly sheep looked on,
so old his fleece was no longer white but sort of gray. A plaster cow provided
the sheep some company. Dad sometimes put an old Marx electric train set on the
platform under the tree. I remember giving Jesus a ride in a hopper car,
thinking He would enjoy riding on it as much as I did running it!
Dad also made a sheet metal church. It was green and had a
2D steeple. He purchased stained glass window decals somewhere to place on the
outside of the church he had made with his own two hands. This church, like the
nativity scene, was always under the tree. A small, square mirror served as a
pond with several plastic swans swimming on it.
Small cardboard and mica houses of post-war Japanese origin
completed the village under our tree. To me, the village under the tree was as
significant as the Christmas tree itself. 
We always had shoebox full of nuts in the shell, along with a nutcracker and pick, which is a
traditional my wife and I carry on today. We have some of those cardboard
houses, but they sit on a bookcase shelf rather than under the tree. We have a
nativity, too, but it is on top of an entertainment center, safe from gargantuan feline
invaders.
Ribbon candy was another holiday tradition when I was a kid. While
it is challenging to find it today, the taste of it still brings a tear to my
eye. Time travel really is possible. Visiting fifty years in the past through something as
simple as the taste and smell and feel of a piece of candy is nothing short of a Christmas miracle.
To me, these memories are bittersweet. For me, there is
nothing at all wrong with that. My Christmas wish for you? May all of your memories be sweet, and may your holidays
be wonderful!
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