The holidays to me are often like an old acquaintance that shows up once every year and fleetingly breezes into your life and just as quickly breezes back out again. When the air starts to have that little nip to it, I start to have a quick in my step. I often hum and sing and my family just tolerates me and rolls their eyes. I turn into a holiday tornado. With gifts to buy and wrap, trees to trim, bannisters to decorate and goodies to bake, my life is chaos in a most spectacular form. I savor every moment. When I am out and about running my errands and I hear those holiday tunes being played throughout department stores, I do just what my mother would do. As soon as I arrive home, I began to play them all season long and forbid anyone to change my selections. Then as unmerciful as I am, I drag out old movies and instruct my family we must go along with tradition and watch all the vintage movies; Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life, and The Sound of Music being some of my favorites. My daughter says she dreams of raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. She repeatedly complains having to listen to my music and to watch my movies. Although, I have noticed when she doesn’t know I am listening, I have heard her humming those melodies.
I was blessed to be born and raised southern and I relish in my southern holiday traditions. I love the pomp and grandeur of shopping for the perfect gifts for my friends and family. I embrace wholeheartedly the task of decorating the tree. I also, nurture those times I spend with my family. It warms my soul to watch my children on Christmas morning. When they were small, I found it irresistible to watch their excitement mount as they bounded down the stairs showing their delight as to what Santa Clause had brought them that year. I enjoy preparing their favorite holiday foods and take pure satisfaction in watching them devour those foods. Nowadays, they are always with me in the kitchen and are old enough to help cook their favorite dishes. They are just as excited about helping prepare them as much as they indulge in eating them. One of the favorite foods that my children love is the holiday candid ham. It is one of my favorites as well. During this time, my kitchen seals itself within a steady perfume of different aromas. Just like their mother, my children love the smell of cinnamon, red delicious apples, breads, glazed hams and fresh mint. They also love the smell of fresh pine, firs and magnolias that come with decorating our tree and the fresh wreath that adorns our front door. It is these scented memories I remember from my own childhood.
I must tell you the frustration of tangled Christmas lights has not since faded with the years from my childhood. It is still undoubtedly the one thing that makes decorating an aggravating chore. But I truly don’t mind. I don’t even mind the never ending bulky boxes that are dragged out of the Christmas closet which have to be hauled upstairs to the family room. Nor even the every year panic of the missing boxes that contain the most valuable Christmas items; the handmade manger scene which had been carefully constructed by a five year old a few years back, or the plastered hand ornaments of tiny handprints. These only to be found later placed on a chair covered with mounds of garland. Then invariably there will be the disappointment of finding your one treasured Christmas ornament broken and then after that humbling moment has passed, you must deal with others. The task of pouring through boxes of ornaments wrapped in tissue paper and then slowly unwrap them to see the treasure you now hold within in your hand. Those gentle memories. Oftentimes, there are many emotions, happiness and laughter and then sometimes sadness. With me, the hanging of all those precious memories of Christmas’ past on the tree is welcomed. Even the sad feelings associated with remembering “Babies First Christmas”. I remember when I first hung that particular ornament on the tree. That one particular Christmas has long since passed and that sweet angelic baby is now an obnoxious teenager. Bittersweet it is, but I embrace it wholeheartedly.
Our family tree that graces the family room has morphed into a conglomeration of ornaments. There are ornaments we have purchased from places we have traveled and collected as souvenirs. There are ornaments which were gifts from family members, ornaments from craft fairs made by sweet little old ladies which consists of hand painted tin soldiers or gingerbread men, and those that were personalized with our last name. The most precious ornaments to me are those handmade ornaments made by toddlers: little paper wreaths decorated by tiny fingers dipped in green paint and tiny fingerprints pressed around and around the wreath. Then a small picture with innocent faces with lopsided grins is glued to the center of the paper wreath with a strip of red yarn tied to the back of the wreath. Such ornaments are gently placed on the most observed tree branch. There are also those ornaments made later in life by elementary students which are a little more intricately detailed with words that say “I love my mommy and daddy” or “I love Jesus” or the ones made from pinecones collected from our own yard and spray painted white and sprinkled with silver glitter.
Then against tradition, I have the Mommy tree which can be seen from the front of the house that occupies the dining room window. It is quite different from the family tree. I have grown up ornaments on this tree. Wide tulle’ in colors of gold and brown and burgundy and luscious ribbons are swirled in a spiral around the tree. There may be even fake pheasants with long feathery tales set on selective branches. This is the tree that my family laughs at and pokes fun of and the one my mother dislikes. She calls it the “Truly Fake Tree”. It is indeed the pre-lit tree that has perfect white lights all precisely lined up and down on individual branches. An enormous faultless bow is perched in perfect suspension at the very tip top of this tree and it has tendrils of ribbon that cascade to the bottom branches. I must agree with my family it is somewhat over the top but I conclude that I am one of those women who must have the same identical tree that garnishes your famous shopping store.
I am very compulsive when it comes to decorating and I toss it up to as an inherited trait. I feel that anything less than perfection is not acceptable. This tires my family relentlessly and I usually wind up doing a lot of the decorating alone. I don’t mind most of the time. Often during the holidays when I decorate my mind drifts back to Christmas’ when I was a little girl. I remember visiting aunts, uncles, cousins and my grandparents as a child, and I often paid close attention to their decorations. It must have made an impact for me as I remember every detail even today.
As a child, my parents and I would begin our celebration of Christmas by foraging for that “special tree” at our local Christmas tree farm. We would always first stop by a quaint little restaurant in my home town called the “Cedar Post” and get a cup of hot coco “to go” before heading over to the farm. The farm had rows upon rows of straw covered paths flanked by hundreds of different types of Christmas trees to choose from. Scents from the Cedar trees were very overpowering, the Balsam Firs were very fragrant as well; the Douglas firs which were actually not fir trees at all produced a sweet scent when the needles were crushed between your fingers. We always went with a Frasier Fir. It did not necessarily produce the lovely scent that I so admired in live Christmas trees, but we always picked a Frasier Fir. It also had to be a very fat tree. My mother always professed Frasier Firs were the prettiest trees and held the ornaments upright the best. After we hauled our perfect tree home and stood it in place, I remember my mother and father rushing around tripping over extension cords. A litter of boxes, along with piles of tissue paper would be stacked on top of one another. Music would be playing in the back ground on my mother’s console stereo. If I listen closely to those recalled memories, I can hear Nat King Cole, singing “Chestnuts Roasting on and Open Fire” and Bing Crosby singing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas”.
Those tangled Christmas lights would be untangled and wrapped ever so carefully along each tree branch. My mother wrapped all of her ornaments delicately in tissue paper. And just like with my own ornaments, it was like opening a gift every time the tissue paper was removed. She had many beautiful, glass, feather tree size, Christmas ornaments. I remember each one had a tiny gold sticker that she never removed that said “Made in Poland” and I never removed it either. I did however remember picking the edge one year and I noticed it removed some of the paint; therefore, that being the reason for leaving it in place. I remember the red ornaments were teardrop shaped, and she had blue and purple ones as well which were in the shape of a ball. These would be careful hung on the branches followed by small silver tinsel. The last adornment would be the placement of a white angel on the tree top. Then my father would work on the outside of the house. Quickly he spread lights on all the shrubbery that flanked the house and would hang fresh pine garland over the front door. My mother would display her manger scene on her coffee table in the living room and last she would place the fresh pine wreath on the door. The only adornment to the wreath she would add would be a simple bow at the bottom. She used the same bow year after year until finally it began to fray. I do believe she still has it in a small cardboard box somewhere in her own Christmas closet. At the end of this very long but productive day, we would sit in our family room with all the lights off except for the tree. We would watch the colored shadows that would play across the walls. We would watch it twinkle and comment about how beautiful it was. Sometimes we would go outside and look at it from the outside just to make sure it was just as pretty and it was.
Often I cling too fondly to the memories from my childhood of the trips to my Aunt Clara’s house on Christmas Day. It is where all my mother’s relatives congregated for Christmas. There were about forty of us most Christmas’s. Decking the halls with boughs of holly was one of the beautiful things at my Aunt’s house. As my father drove down the street toward her house I remember seeing the greenery cascading down her mailbox. She had wreaths made of magnolia leaves and pine boughs, which were always placed on both the front and the back door. The woodsy smell was heavenly to me and often I can remember just standing and smelling the deep earthy scent. I remember my Aunt Delene, the professional piano player in the family, would always make an edible wreath made of marshmallows and corn flakes, colored green with food coloring and decorated it with “red hots” candy. Truly, I don’t think I ate very much of it as it was a little too sticky and the red hots burned my mouth. But it was very pretty and I miss seeing it.
In Aunt Clara’s living room she always had the largest, unlike us, artificial tree. I remember walking into that room as a small child and trying to visually comprehend what faced me; underneath the humongous Christmas tree was what appeared to be a million presents. Well, it seemed like a million when seen through a child’s eyes. My family was always very generous in their gift giving. It was just a part of the celebration. We would transport our gifts from our car to inside the house and more often than not there would not be enough room to place our gifts anywhere near the tree so my father would simply pile them up against the wall, as close as he could. Other family members would come in behind us and follow suit. Next, we would proceed to the “taking off of scarves and coats” and “putting purses and gloves and hats” on the beds in the extra bedrooms. Then my mother would take the food she had prepared at our house to my aunt’s kitchen and finish helping with any additional cooking. It was always so very busy in the kitchen. My aunts and my mother wielded spatulas and large platters, and twirled in and out of the dining room like precision ballerinas.
There was always Christmas music. My mother and her sister collected those stereo console monstrosities. Famous Christmas songs on revered Christmas albums would be played over and over again. Then as I grew older a piano was added in my aunt’s house and either Uncle Milton or the music artisan of our family, Aunt Delene, would play beautiful Christmas ballads such as Caroling of the Bells, or Oh Come All Ye Faithful. Fun tunes, such as Sleigh Ride and Deck the Halls, and all the young kids and “old” kids would gather and sing as each song was played.
Aunt Clara was relatively creative with her decorating. Her house, just like my mother’s, was filled with scents of cinnamon and oranges. Sometimes she would place cored apples with tiny tea lights inside each apple on a silver tray covered with magnolia leaves and snips of holly in the center of her dining table. Paper whites in containers wrapped in red, green and silver foiled paper adorned her buffet. The table settings were very important. Aunt Clara would use her Christmas china and her silverware would be polished to a gleam. Each setting would have a fork on the left side and spoon and knife on the right with a cloth napkin rolled to perfection and placed on top of the china. As a child, we were not allowed to eat off the Christmas china or at the adult dining table, but instead we ate off her gold Fiesta Ware on a card table. As a child, I somehow never noticed the difference. The food was indeed the same. The sweet tea was the best. It was ever so sweet and Red Diamond Tea was the best to be had in Dixieland. There was never any alcohol that was passed around that I knew of or that anyone would admit to partaking inside Aunt Clara’s house. I do remember though some of my older cousins sneaking outside, to the back of the house and adding something to their eggnog. I often wondered what was in that silver container they continuously laughed about pouring into their cups. They were indeed very merry.
I do remember the wait was uncontrollably difficult before being allowed to sample that wonderful food. I remember when the time would arrive and everyone would be allowed to gorge themselves on more food than ever thought possible. . As I said before, everyone in our family would bring multiple, delicious creations that we would generously consume on and off throughout the day (even third and fourth “helpings” were the norm). It could be a dish of green beans cooked with slices of ham, a cherry cheesecake pie, a tin of popcorn, sweet potato casserole with melted marshmallows on top. My grandmother always made the dressing. Stuffing according to the rest of the country is called dressing in the South but it doesn’t matter what it’s called it was just one of the best things ever melted in a person’s mouth. My grandmother would always make my favorite dish. Her famous macaroni and cheese and mind you it didn’t come from a blue box with a picture of how it would look on the outside of the box. It was made from scratch and it was heavenly. It was made with real cheddar cheese, and sweet cream.
But before we ever picked up the first fork we always said “Grace”. My Uncle Conrad who was a soft spoken man always led the prayer. It would be oh so quiet in the house as we all waited for my Uncle to speak. I can still here the peacefulness within his voice as he spoke of how blessed we were to all be together as a family and encouraged that love lead and guide us, not only for today but throughout every day of our lives. The tradition of spirituality is stimulating to all my senses. And then after what seemed like a long awaited “Amen” we pushed our way toward the kitchen.
I must tell you the consumption of all that food was undoubtedly excruciating. Afterwards, we would find ourselves sitting stuffed as the turkey we just ate and then “miserably” contemplating dessert. If there ever was the dream of having all the most magnificent desserts located within one room, that dream became reality in my Aunt Clara’s kitchen. I remember the red velvet cake with cream cheese icing and Aunt Clara’s favorite “Sock it to Me” cake. There were German chocolate cakes, pecan pies, chocolate pies, coconut pies and the irresistible fantasy fudge. My mouth is watering just thinking about it! I felt like royalty being able to gorge myself on all those sugary confections. After stuffing ourselves at lunch and without much resistance, we did it all over again that evening at dinner. It’s just what we would do.
In between meals everyone would congregate to that expansive living room and all one million gifts would be passed out. We did not lose a single person either after being buried alive beneath tons of torn gift paper and ribbons. As children we would spend the rest of the day playing board games or rediscovering our gifts we had received. Sometimes we would migrate to the living room and sit in front of the fire place, and as naughty children would do we would play in the fire by throwing bits and pieces of wood into the fire. Then the time would come to go home and we would “rewind” the day as if we all operated in reverse, gathering our gifts, our coats, and hats and gloves. Hugs and kisses of farewell and Merry Christmas would be exchanged and then we would cross it off as another Christmas past.
Remembering all those Christmas’ past brings such happiness to me. Often I have shared them with my friends and children, and we have laughed and I alone by myself have cried. Cried for those who are no longer with me and unable to make new memories with me. Today those memories, those old acquaintances I call them, I treasure them more than money. And as this holiday season approaches, I encourage you all to do like my elders have often said to me; “Live each day to the fullest and count your blessings because as time passes, in a twinkling of an eye the moments that make you catch your breath will soon be caught up on the wind and gone and then all you have is the memory of it”. So when the air turns cold and you pick up the pace, and as you turn another page in the book of your life and you should reflect on what love and wonder you have witnessed and how blessed you truly are.
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