THE CHRISTMAS MACHINE……I MEAN HOLIDAY MACHINE

I assume Christmas and the Holiday Season in general is upon us.  I say assume because it is more difficult to tell since the retailers have been playing holiday music and had decorations since July.  The biggest indicator is the 110-degree weather has been replaced with gloomy overcast cold days, and the trees have lost their leaves.  I remember as a kid the holidays would creep up on us.  Fall was still a season and winters seemed so much simpler.  Waiting and wondering if school would be closed from the wintery weather. The weather forecast seemed more accurate with less sophisticated instruments for prediction. 

As a kid everyone congregated at my parents for the holidays.  It seemed as if all the major holidays occurred in the winter.  The day post Thanksgiving started the countdown to Christmas. Yes, for the purpose of this writing I am going to use the word Christmas I know it is not politically correct but as a kid it was Christmas.  Where I grew up I had no idea anyone else celebrated anything else.  My family is not the picture Norman Rockwell painted.  I wonder if any family actually measures up to his creations.  My family however is always full of adventure and there is never a dull moment.  We are a rather eclectic group with strong opinions. 

Christmas started Thanksgiving evening with the tree and all the accompanying adornments.  My mother would begin purchasing gifts the day after Christmas and finalize her purchases right before the big day the following year.  We always had amazing Christmas’s.  Growing up in a typical middle class family in the 60’s and 70’s everyone, or most everyone, had an artificial tree.  Dad would drag the tree box out of the attic and mom would sit and try to resurrect the bottlebrush limbs so they had the appearance of a real fir tree.  With enough lights, icicles and the ever-popular Hallmark ornaments you could almost believe this group of toilet bowl brushes wired together was a real tree.  Mom sprayed artificial evergreen scent periodically through the house during the season.  I am sure it contained carcinogens but it created such a great moment. If you closed your eyes and took a deep breath and managed not to inhale the actual spray, you could imagine being in the forest surrounded by evergreens.    

Christmas programming riddled the television with classics such as “Rudolph”, “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, “The Grinch”, “White Christmas” and the ever popular “It’s A Wonderful Life”.  My brother and I would negotiate time to watch the television.  In those days we had only one television, one telephone and no one knew what a computer or an iPad were.  We would stare at the screen as if it were the first time the Grinch stole the town’s presents.  The Norelco Santa would soar through the air on his electric razor at commercial breaks.   We devoured popcorn chased by coke in real glass bottles and real sugar. 

For weeks before the big event my great-grandmother created the most amazing cookies, pies, cakes, dream bars and many delectable confectionaries I am certain I am forgetting.  She meticulously painted every cookie with a paintbrush and colored icing, each a labor of love.  Her carrot cake was legendary. It was so moist and contained everything but the kitchen sink, topped with caramel icing thick like fudge.  She cut out felt ornaments, stuffed and sewed them and carefully decorated each with rickrack and sequins.  She placed them meticulously in ziplock bags and everyone received a variety every holiday. 

Each passing day we became more and more excited.  We would sit and stare at the lights on the tree and guess what each package contained.  As a momentary diversion my father loved to pack us all in the car and drive around town and look at Christmas lights.  A tradition we continue to practice even today. I enjoyed these evenings the most when snow would blanket the ground and change the terrain into a wonderland with blinking, twinkling lights. 

Christmas began for us on Christmas Eve, with my aunt and uncle, my mother’s sister.  My uncle prepared the annual Christmas Eve pizzas.  An occasional gift would be opened, but the majority was saved until morning.  Santa had to bring them of course.  So this meant we were off to bed early only to toss and turn from the excited.  It was so hard to sleep knowing there would be an amazing bounty of gifts in the morning.  How did Santa get all those presents in the house?  How did he know exactly what we wanted, what size we wore and our favorite colors?  The biggest question of course was how did he enter our house it had no chimney?

I recall several gifts I would never consider even for a second giving to my son.  Looking back my parents trusted us, perhaps overly trusted us based on some of gifts we received.  Lets start with the chemistry set, honestly who entrusts a young child with a Bunsen burner with the full array of chemicals to perform experiments. It seems so funny to think back on loading the burner with alcohol and cooking up the chemicals and conducting experiments. Wow, they either trusted me or secretly prayed for a fire so they could rebuild.  Some years later I did set the house on fire, by accident, and not from a Bunsen burner.  This is another story for another time.  The year of the child’s hunting knife, gifted to me by auntie.  I spent a lot of time in the woods behind our house. It had its own leather sheath and attached to my belt.  Honestly how I manage not to cut my hand off or someone else’s was nothing short of a miracle.  Over the years there was such an array of incredible gifts such as air hockey, stereos, Stretch Armstrong, Rock’em Sock’em robots and numerous board games.  The word board games may confuse some of you.  These were games played as a family and contained no flying birds, no electronic components or flashing lights to entertain the player.  Just a set of dice or twirling arrow that told the player how to move, and a board with writing that told the player how to proceed, simple but effective. 

Christmas morning would arrive and the energy emulating from two young boys equaled an atom explosion.  The presents were passed to us one by one as we ravenously devoured each.  We opened until our fingers bleed.  One year my mother ran out of wrapping paper and money to purchase more.  She placed the remaining gifts in a large box. Each gift placed in a brown paper bag and stapled closed to preserve the surprise as long as possible.  This was the same year I received the stereo and who can forget the 45 of “Rubber Band Man”, 45’s are a primitive plastic disk containing music and played on a primitive device called a record player.   I played this record over and over, singing and dancing.  The excitement of the gifts and the holiday spirit would calm down and my brother and I would play with our newfound bounty.  It never seemed as if we had much time to play before the guests arrived for dinner.

12:00pm sharp dinner would be served; we still eat at 12pm sharp.  Guests would arrive in mass groups.  The tiny house I grew up in always seemed to be full to the brim.  Someone or someone’s were always living with us.  The guest list of the who’s who arrived carrying more packages and various sweet treats. We never really knew who would be sitting at our holiday tables.  My parents embodied the true spirit of the holidays and never let anyone spend a holiday alone that wanted to be with others.   The tables were placed end-to-end beginning in the eat in kitchen and finished in the family room.  Did I mention the house where I grew up was not a huge place? A kid’s table was assembled in the corner for the wee ones.  The day I finally moved to the adult table marked a milestone in my evolution of the Christmas Holiday.  I must confess the food did not taste any better, the conversation was not more stimulating, but I believed I had arrived.  The bounty consisted of traditional dishes with very little variation from year to year.  The seasonal requests of don’t let me burn the rolls marked the beginning of the eating competition. My mother was and is an amazing cook.  She worked her tail off cooking those meals and cleaning up the messes.  I would not appreciate the finely orchestrated event until years later after I hosted a few of my own.  The shindig was full of festive interaction and never seemed to last long enough, at least as a kid. The day would come to an end and everyone would take their leftovers and scurry back to their respective homes.  The event that took so much planning and coordination would come to an end. The silence of Christmas night was perfect for one last tree gazing because as quickly as the toilet brush tree arrived it was swept quickly back into its box and stored away for another year.  We would keep the carcinogen laden room spray out for a few days fantasizing we were in the forest. 

As a father, husband and family member I see Christmas so much different than as a child.  When I stray to my Scrooge place, I embrace what the holiday meant as a kid.   It helps me embody the true meaning of Christmas lost in the rush of the machine we now know as the Holiday Season.  These memories help my tiny black holiday heart to radiate with the glow of gratefulness and spirit.  Much like the Grinch I feel a smile slowly overtake my frown.

No matter what or how you celebrate I hope everyone has an amazing holiday.  Be safe, remember your family traditions and create a few of your own.