Thursday, December 15, 2005
Christmas Creepin' Closer
Here are a couple photos that must have been taken very close to my first Christmas. I was born late in April of 1934, so I would have been eight months old on my first Christmas and Mom would have been three months pregnant with brother Neil. The first one was probably taken around Thanksgiving and that is my parents home in the background. The second one has snow on the ground, so may be closer to Christmas ... we've pivoted 180 degrees and that is my paternal grandparent's home in the background. We lived within spitting distance of each other ... till Dad moved us 22 miles west to Smyrna in April of 1941.
For all my grade school years, there were never presents under the tree on Christmas Eve. Sometimes we knew where they were hidden and sometimes not -- like when the folks left them over in the grocery/postoffice building. The Christmas morning rule was that we had to stay in bed till Dad got up and got the fires going in the cookstove and the heater stove and things began to warm up a little (it was often well below zero at that time of year and we didn't have heating fires that burned all night) .... then he would call us and we'd come storming down the stairs to have a go at the gifts that had appeared so un-mysteriously under the tree overnight. Why, Santa must have stopped by! One Xmas when I was baout eleven, I tried hurtling down the stairs (they were very steep) with my baby brother David in my arms. I tripped at the first step down and threw Dave out into the air. He sailed all the way down without touching the stairs and landed in a box of old toys at the bottom. Neither of us were mortally wounded.
And then the drill was to bolt down breakfast, bail into the car, and drive the twenty-two miles to my grandparents in Othello where we would attend church services and have Christmas dinner with Grandma and Grandpa. Long about late afternoon we'd head home with a stop at the Chadbourne ranch to see what presents LouAnn and Harriet had received. And it would be well dark by the time we got home to our own gifts.
# posted by Clear Creek Girl : 12:31 PM
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How Christmas has changed in the past seventy years! Although I, at sixty, am one generation away from when kids really DID get tanjerines (sp) or oranges in their socks - AND FELT LUCKY FOR IT! Coal was often put in the foot of the sock. I don't really the buying frenzies - I don't remember where we bought our gifts - maybe the Montgomery wards or Sears catalogues? I just don't know. Grandpa always got Almond Roca or ties, because that's always what he said he wanted. I felt sorry for him every year, that he should want such easy, paltry things. Although he did wear each and every tie given to him.
We'd go for a ride, spot a tree - and cut it down. I remember that. It was hell for my dad to "set up" the tree. He cursed a lot. A LOT. Mama wanted the silver tinsel PLACED on the tree limbs - my dad and I wanted to throw it. We felt the tangle of thrown tinsel was a magnificent looking sight. SHe said we were impossible. That if we just threw it on, anybody could tell that we were "rubes from the old country." One year my Uncle Art was helping making CHristmas Dinner and he said to my mom, "Dont you mean 'rubes from the old cunt?" Everybody laughed but me. I didn't know what a cunt was. I thought maybe it was a very small country. Anyway. So here we are, buying and sending packages and sending CHristmas cards (which we make ourselfes) and turning up our noses at real ornaments - putting up leaves and berries and blossoms instead - and getting ready for everyone's idiocyncracies and buying enough wine and enough non-alcoholic drinks and enough of everything. And trying to work fulltime at the same time. I envy you your Christmases in Smyrna and Othello. They sound sweet and fairly simple and SANE.
We'd go for a ride, spot a tree - and cut it down. I remember that. It was hell for my dad to "set up" the tree. He cursed a lot. A LOT. Mama wanted the silver tinsel PLACED on the tree limbs - my dad and I wanted to throw it. We felt the tangle of thrown tinsel was a magnificent looking sight. SHe said we were impossible. That if we just threw it on, anybody could tell that we were "rubes from the old country." One year my Uncle Art was helping making CHristmas Dinner and he said to my mom, "Dont you mean 'rubes from the old cunt?" Everybody laughed but me. I didn't know what a cunt was. I thought maybe it was a very small country. Anyway. So here we are, buying and sending packages and sending CHristmas cards (which we make ourselfes) and turning up our noses at real ornaments - putting up leaves and berries and blossoms instead - and getting ready for everyone's idiocyncracies and buying enough wine and enough non-alcoholic drinks and enough of everything. And trying to work fulltime at the same time. I envy you your Christmases in Smyrna and Othello. They sound sweet and fairly simple and SANE.
I've never seen pictures of your Mom. She looked a little bohemian and Erin looks like her! Love the story of flinging Neil! Me, I loved going in the car to see the lights during the week before Christmas. They were NOTHING like they are now, but still special--and I loved the old Tracyton Tallest Living Christmas Tree, decorated by my Uncle Ernie. I was very proud that it was MY uncle decorating it.
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