Holiday Musings

Everywhere you look you see holiday decorations and advertising, so I'm trying to remember how it used to be at this time of year, when I was much, much younger...

Up on the rooftop, click-click-click...

My brother and I were usually pretty excited about Christmas when we were kids. Back then, in the '50s, '60s and '70s, Christmas Eve was just another night of watching television, having dinner and trying to stay up all night to catch Santa Claus coming in through the back door - none of our houses in Florida had a fireplace - I always wondered if he was able to shimmy down through the little twirling roof vents, since we had no chimney. When we'd go to visit Meme and Poppie (my mother's parents) they had a small gas fireplace with fake logs. There was always a small plate of cookies and a little glass of milk that they left out on the mantel for Santa. I'm sure I wanted to put out a treat for the reindeer to nibble on.

Not our tree, but could be its twin!

I think we always got a real tree for our living room, but at my grandparents' house there was a lovely, shimmery aluminum tree that was about four feet tall with a floodlight that had a spinning color wheel attached to it with four colors: red, blue, green and yellow (um, I mean gold).  My mother still has the tree - the light stopped working years ago - very retro and collectible these days: I read that one recently sold for $3,600! Here's some info:

http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/museum/artifacts/archives/001924.asp

My grandmother was a wonderful cook so there are food smells I associate with being at their place at holiday time. She would cook and bake and we all sat down at the table at the same time. My brother and I were "latchkey kids" and we rarely all sat down to dinner together at home. My mom was usually in charge of dinner but sometimes my dad would make something exotic, like chili or beef stroganoff or crabs. This is before I became mostly vegetarian.

Fond Christmas Greetings

 Sometimes we got the presents we wanted, like a certain toy, but usually we got what our parents and grandparents thought we needed, such as clothes or a purse or a belt. One year I got a small portable reel-to-reel tape recorder (this was just before cassette tapes came out and way before CDs and all things digital). I wore that thing out!

Over the years, I've become more and more disenchanted with holidays like Thanksgiving, Easter and Christmas (birthdays also fall into this category). But I remember how the spirit of those festive times used to make me feel and, for that, I'll be forever grateful. 

I'll have more to say about Santa and trees and other holiday trivia in another posting... there's so much lore to explore!

More to come...