I was the youngest of five boys, most of them out on their own by the time I have any real Christmas memories. Being the baby of the family, and 8-years-younger than my closest brother, I had a different relationship with my dad than they did. He was an old-fashioned father and my arrival had been quite a surprise (they were hoping for a girl.) My mother passed away when I was five-years-old and my dad was forced to raise my brother Paul and me by himself for a few years before he remarried.
Our lives as a blended family weren't always easy, but Christmas was a time for tradition and like many people we had old ones and new ones. The week after Thanksgiving my dad and I would head out to the local tree lot. We always had a real tree and it had to be a Noble Fir, which has the best branches and spacing for decorations. If Dad was going to pay good money for a tree he wanted as many options as possible and the earlier you went the better the selection. Once we found our perfect tree, up it went onto the roof of our Buick Estate Wagon for the long journey home.
Since we had to wait for everyone to be home to decorate the tree - another immovable tradition - it sat outside in our backyard in a bucket of water so it would stay fresh until the "big night." Sometimes it was Christmas Eve, some years the weekend before. I always wished it was up longer, but the rules were the rules. To set the mood my dad would put on the Firestone Christmas album he got from his local tire dealer every year and then bring down the boxes of ornaments and lights the family had collected.
Considering everybody on your holiday gift list – friends, family,
co-workers, neighbors, your kids' teachers – you might be needing a
stimulus package before you even get to the big-ticket items this year.
So why not take a page from your grandmother's playbook and make the
smaller gifts yourself?
When I was a kid, say about 7 or 8, my dad brought home a holiday gift that was emblematic of his personality: Frankenstein’s monster, a foot high, standing on a metal pedestal, dressed all in black with a large flat chalk green plastic head, decorated with bumpy zigzag cherry red scars. His black gash of a mouth spread across his face in a faint smile. The best part about this Frankenstein was the little switch on his back. At my father’s insistence, I pushed that switch and the monster, arms outstretched, started to shimmy back and forth and side to side. Then just as suddenly, my sister and I could hear a little grinding sound and click, off slid his pants. There he was, Frankenstein’s monster, no longer shimmying, just standing on his pedestal in red and white striped boxers. That faint smile of his now revealed a slight insouciance. Our gleeful giggles were overpowered by my father’s healthy, if sinister, chortle. To this day I am still not sure whether he loved the toy or our reaction to it. Knowing him, though, my money’s on the toy.
All I want for Christmas is my caviar pie. Which is a jolly good thing, since it's the only dish I take joy in creating.
Spending countless hours trapped in a cold, dimly lit basement -- that's what I remember about Christmas.