My dad always hated Christmas, for the most part. I think it was the commercialism. Maybe it was the sharp contrast to his childhood of want (his mother was a waitress and his dad grew vegetables on a truck patch very successfully, but gambled the profits away and gave Dad beatings. He never had a birthday anything, and he was supposed to wear an eye patch, but his school teacher made fun of it, so he went without and became blind in one eye. He his his only little toy (I think it was a little car) in the back of his drawer, and one day he discovered that it wasn't there: an older sister had cleaned the drawer out and thrown his toy away (maybe it was rusty and dented).
He said he survived on ketchup sandwiches and developed rickets. And their house burned down, and he thought all his life that he had done it - we were interviewing Aunt Evelyn, after he passed away, and she just laughed at the notion. She said it was a bad heater or something like that. Poor Dad! The thought had always haunted him.
Anyway, maybe that's why he didn't like most of the Christmas season.
He did like the parts about Christ's birth, though. He liked to sing O Holy Night in a beautiful Mario Lanza voice (only in front of the family, remember, usually while driving, and in front of Mama Nagy's voice students; she was one of the little old ladies he helped out, and Sandy and I and Dad took voice lessons from her forever! She was a skiing and opera star in Hungary until her brothers and father were killed in WW II and her family's estates were taken over by the Nazis. She and her grandson escaped over a bridge at night, with bullets flying around them!)
One of my earliest Christmas memories, when we lived at Harristown, outside of Decatur, was of nothing under the tree and Dad in my parents' bedroom with the door locked. My mom said that he had stuffed everything in a box and had it in their with him. He had told her that we weren't having Christmas. I was really confused. I know somehow my mom got him to open the door and he brought the box out and we got our presents. I got one of my all-time favorites, a little barking dog name Fifi, which I always thought of, until this very moment, as "FeeFee."
we had some fun Christmases too. I I remember one year when we got the tree from the school when the school was done with it and it was huge it was so fun decorating it and I remember that year I got a case to put things in when I went somewhere and it was round and zipped around the outside and I also got a china doll that my grandma made outfit for and she said to expect it it would break to go ahead and play with it because that's what used to happen with little girls and every year they would get broken in the get a new one for Christmas so since she said that, it was like it had a reverse effect on us: we played with them very carefully and neither one of her china dolls ever got broken except for the foot on mine got broken wwhen I was an adult when one of the kids playing with it but that that's a minor thing we fixed it and she's still in great shape!
It really meant a lot to me to get that china doll from my grandma wakefield!
there was another Christmas time where we had a big tree and relatives came to our house on Christmas Eve. I remember we had pork steak or chops, and I ate one that was almost all fat and I loved it, but then it made me feel kind of sick afterwards so I lost some of my enthusiasm for the fat.
When Christmas morning came, I remember getting an etch-a-sketch and seeing it under the tree and being super excited about it that was a really fun Christmas!
Usually, though, I experienced stress about Christmas morning, I guess. I tried to pretend a lack of interest around my dad.
I remember one Christmas Eve night, at 910 No. Water St. in Decatur, when I was nine, I dreamt that I got a baby hippo for Christmas, and I didn't know what to do with it! I woke up all anxious and I ran downstairs, only to see a screen around the tree and no one in sight. I knew that a baby hippo was behind that screen, and my nightmare had come true! Fortunately, my parents showed up with Roger, saying that they'd had to take Roger on his paper route to get him back before we woke up. And I don't remember what I got; I just know it didn't begin with an H or end with an O!
When I was twelve, at 1040 E. Lincoln St. in Decatur, all of my sibs and I stayed upstairs on Christmas Eve. On Christmas morning the boys woke us up and we ran downstairs, but the downstairs door was locked! We got it open, except for the chain, and I heard my dad laughing (for once!) and telling us to wait. Then I heard tissue paper rustling - they were wrapping our presents! Finally, we were allowed in.
That was a happy Christmas for me. I got model horses from Santa Claus and my brothers, plus a little radio all my own! And a Penny Brite doll and wardrobe with clothes and accessories - so darling, with little drawers and hangers. (You can still buy them on Ebay, but they're kinda expensive.) There were tiny accessories, like tiny fake magazines and purses and shoes and all kinds of things. I love miniatures!
I also got a Monkees album! I loooooved Davy Jones, after loving Micky Dolenz till he let his curly hair go natural. I was glued in front of the tv on Monday nights, drooling over Davy. I wondered if ten years age difference was too much. I wrote him a letter, which I still have because, fortunately, I never mailed it. I was going to enclose a pair of x-ray glasses and a drawing I did of a horse with it, and, in it, I tell him that I Love Him! Love Him! Love Him! And I invite him to come visit us - so much like Megan and Melinda writing to David Bowie and giving him directions to our house in Perry. I don't think it was mailed, but they still expected him to jump out of hiding and surprise them at any moment!
When I was fourteen, I was suddenly the only child at home. Don and Roger were married and Sandy had just married. It was quite a shock. Mom and Dad started accusing me of everything, since there was no one else to blame but themselves whenever lights were left on or wet washcloths not hung up properly. Geez Louise! I reacted by holing up in my room or going out on our tar and gravel back yard, the roof of The Pop Dock, which we lived on top of, at 240 W. Packard St. in Decatur. But I didn't go out back in the winter time.
I couldn't sleep on Christmas Eve after that. Well, it didn't feel like I did. And I hated having Mom and Dad watch me open my presents. It was so awkward, and I felt shy and clumsy; I was never an elegant un-wrapper. I got some clothes, as I recall. Mom was working at Montgomery Ward, and I think she got some deals. I remember a striped burnt orange and gold sweater and 2 skirts in those colors. I was ungrateful in my heart. I thought Mom always picked old lady clothes for me, in ugly, drab colors and plain cuts. I was probably right about that, but it was still ungrateful.
After I got married, I remember Mom and Dad got us some cans of food storage for Christmas, which I was delighted to get. And Dad grudgingly liked his radio headphones (after we rushed to the store to get them, when we saw how much he liked Randy's - it was the next day, and we told him that we'd missed his pkg. somehow :) He wore them after that, as he cleaned the church. Finally, a brief break in the cloudy winter skies!
As an adult, I just couldn't feel the Christmas joy the same as other people did. Well, it was fun opening presents, doing things anonymously, singing carols, telling the real Christmas story, and watching Christmas movies and drinking hot chocolate, but I knew that I was distant from the joy of the season that I saw in many others, and I felt like I was blocked from much of it, somehow.
For some reason, that is miraculously gone this year! Maybe it's because I wake up happy every day now. We live in a tiny little space and most of our things are in storage units, here and in IF. No matter: The Christmas Kraken has awakened!
Have a wonderful Christmas Season!
xoxoxo
1 comment:
That was so neat to read your memories! What great stories. I feel bad for Grandpa and his feelings towards Christmas. I think it had to do with gifts. He seemed to think they were such frivolous things, but then he lost out on some good experiences of giving and receiving. I still remember when I gave him a homemade gift (pretty sure it was a pillow like I made Tammy). He wouldn't take it, and I was so sad and didn't understand.
Anyway, what crazy Christmas' you had! Our kids have had such traditional holidays thus far. Hoping to keep it that way, or at least keep them fun and uplifting!
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