Christmas past.

[rivka]

hobbitbabe made some interesting long posts about her Christmas memories. I thought I'd do the same - maybe, as she did, one post about childhood and one about adulthood.

Christmas in my childhood.
I can barely remember any individual details of my childhood Christmases; they are all one mass of celebratory tradition. We were a family who had a Way of Doing Christmas, and did Christmas that way every year.

Decorations.
Decorations went up first, in early December. We never put up lights outside, but the inside of the house was decorated. We kids were allowed to play with the creche, which had unbreakable resin pieces, and with a much-loved, much-worn-out Santa statue. Three plastic "candles" with orange electric bulbs burned in each of the front windows, upstairs and down. Garlands of plastic candy and gingerbread men hung over the double doorways into the living room, dining room, and family room. My brother and I hung old Christmas cards along the lintels of each doorway to make a border. And the most important decoration: giant cardboard cutouts of Santa in his sleigh and four separate pairs of reindeer. They were mounted alongside the stairs so it looked as if they were taking off. Mom strung thick red yarn between the cutouts to be Santa's reins.

We hung a plastic wreath on the front door, but the Christmas tree was always real. We picked it early in December and stored it in the backyard, leaning against the garage, until Christmas Eve. The tree was always decorated Christmas Eve. We had huge colored lights, the kind that I think are supposed to be for outdoor use. Our ornaments were a hodgepodge of colored glass balls and homemade craft projects - some quite ugly. Even the ugly ones were always hung on the tree. And always tinsel, the individual silvery strands that are also called icicles. (I haven't seen those on anyone's tree in years. Were they a 1970s thing?)

Food.
We baked. A lot. Christmas cookies in my family are snickerdoodles (rolled in red and green colored sugar instead of cinnamon sugar), spritz cookies from a cookie press in tree and wreath shapes, refrigerator nut cookies, and chocolate chip cookies. We'd also have chocolate cake baked in a tree-shaped pan and decorated with sprinkles, and pecan pie, and pumpkin pie.

It was customary for the doctors in my father's practice to exchange Christmas presents every year, and those presents were almost always baked by the doctor's wives. A week or so before Christmas the doorbell would start ringing. We looked forward to the same treats from the same families every year.

We didn't have any traditional savory foods, although my mother usually made a turkey dinner with all the trimmings on Christmas Day. We had a red tablecloth and red napkins, and we set the table with the best china and the real silver, brought out only for holidays. At Christmas kids were allowed a little wine, but my parents had lousy taste in wine so we never liked it.

Presents.
Everyone got presents for everyone. I was expected to do my own Christmas shopping from the age of eight or nine, and I don't think it was much after that age that I started being expected to use my own allowance to buy them. We'd make Christmas lists and post them on the refrigerator. I remember poring over the Sears Wish Book every year, paging through it again and again and again.

Santa brought one present: the big one. Santa also filled stockings with little toys and unwrapped presents. On Christmas Eve we each brought a little pile of presents downstairs and put them under the tree, and my parents put out the gifts from our aunt and uncle and grandparents. I still remember the electric thrill of coming into the living room in the morning and seeing so many more presents than had been there before bed.

Ritual.
When I was quite young, we usually had grandparents or my father's aunt staying with at Christmas time. We never ever had Christmas anywhere but home. As my mother's parents aged, they stopped coming. Instead we drove to see them on Christmas afternoon and stayed for a night or two. My great-aunt, aunt, uncle, and cousins were often there at the same time. But Christmas Eve and Christmas morning were at our house, just us.

After decorating the tree on Christmas Eve, we went to the 5pm service at church. It was supposed to be a short service for families with young children, but it got longer and longer every year. We had to go because we were always in it, singing in the children's choir or performing something. After church we'd come home and my mother would desperately rush to get some kind of festive dinner on the table. Then it was time to hang stockings and go to bed. (You have to go to sleep or Santa Claus won't come.)

Older kids were allowed to stay up for the late church service, which was at 11pm when I was young and was then moved to 10pm. It was very exciting to go out to church so late and to keep a close eye on my mother's watch so that I could whisper "Merry Christmas!" at the exact moment of midnight. The best part was lighting candles and singing "Silent Night" in the darkened sanctuary.

In the morning, as we woke up, we'd go sit at the top of the stairs in our pajamas. You couldn't see around the corner into the living room. I remember how indignant I would be about teenage sisters who insisted on doing their hair before coming out. At last we'd all be assembled, and my parents would give us permission to race downstairs and around the corner to see the blaze of Christmas glory. A family of six-plus-maybe-foster-children means a lot under the tree.

We could open our stockings right away. Then we had to stop and eat breakfast - surely the most sadistic parental requirement ever. At least we could play with our stocking toys while we waited for everyone to finish breakfast.

Every year, my father suggested that we open presents according to some orderly system. Every year he was overruled and we unwrapped in chaos. We did hand presents around to each other, and, especially as we got older, we tended to unwrap each present in front of the giver. I don't remember jealously comparing my haul to my siblings', but I do remember that my brother and I would try to stockpile presents so that we'd still have a bunch to unwrap when everyone else was done. You had to pretend to be very interested in other people's presents, but if they caught you they'd make you unwrap your stockpile.

We'd get dressed in whatever new clothes we'd been given and play with our new toys all afternoon.

The childhood Christmas I feel worst about.
When I was nine, Santa Claus brought identical dolls to me and to a nine-year-old girl who had recently arrived in our home as a foster child. I cried and cried and refused to open any other presents for a long time. It wasn't the doll I had asked for, but that wasn't the problem; the problem was that getting the same present as she did made me feel like part of a Christmas assembly line. I didn't feel special. Comparable dolls would have been fine. Identical dolls was a disaster.

Nobody understood, probably in part because I was crying so hard and wasn't really able to articulate what was going on in my head. To this day, I think my brother and sisters remember this as the Christmas that I was incredibly spoiled and ruined everyone's morning. The story gets told as "...not the right doll." I've tried to explain, but you know how stories go in families.

The next year, Santa brought me two presents. One was labeled "for 1982" and the other was labeled "for 1983." I feel bad about that too.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I hung tinsel on my Christmas tree today. I think I bought it at Target.

K.

re: tinsel and present opening

[lisajulie.livejournal.com]

We hung tinsel on the tree as well (the individual silvery strands), but being in Portland, OR, we didn't call it "icicles", we called it "rain".

As for opening presents, I was an only child, so as I opened each present, a note was made of the giver, so thank you notes could be written. Also, caused by family population dynamics (both parents from large families, me an only child), my parents sequestered 12 presents and I got to open one each day between Christmas and Epiphany. It was actually kind of cool.

[suzilem.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid (50's) the tinsel was actual metal strands, which would carefully be taken off the tree after Christmas and stored away until the next year (my mother was thifty) :-). When I was out on my own (70's) and had my own tree, the tinsel was plastic. One memorable Christmas, I observed tinsel on the south end of a northbound cat. The next year, I used garland instead of tinsel. :-)

[suzilem.livejournal.com]

thrifty...thrifty....

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Thanks for writing this. Knowing what your Christmas trees look like now (they're beautiful, in case anybody reading is wondering) I can see where your traditions came from.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Nobody understood, probably in part because I was crying so hard and wasn't really able to articulate what was going on in my head. To this day, I think my brother and sisters remember this as the Christmas that I was incredibly spoiled and ruined everyone's morning. The story gets told as "...not the right doll." I've tried to explain, but you know how stories go in families.

Oh, good lord, I sympathize with the child-Rivka, and with the burden of family-stories ever after. (But in one sense, it's just such an iconic "how things can go wrong" story that it's also a bit wonderful. Something to remember if I ever have Christmas for children.)

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Your post reminded me of a bunch more things about our childhood Christmases that I forgot. We had the plastic wreath on the doorknocker, and no outside lights because my dad didn't think they were safe or worth the hassle. And we loved how huge the pile of presents was, overflowing from the tree, when we got to peek in from the doorway before Christmas breakfast.

My middle brother figured out one Christmas that almost all his presents were duplicates of either his older brother's or his younger brother's, and I remember my parents trying to find out, mystified, what else he might have wanted instead, when his list looked like everyone else's.

[kazoogrrl.livejournal.com]

I think my parents still use the icicles on their tree. I'd love to use it too, but with three cats I'd like to avoid tinsel butt.

[brainwane (from livejournal.com)]

Speaking of Christmas rituals, and sitting at the top of the stairs in pajamas, I think you might like this video.