Christmas Memories

The cinnamon scent of sand-tarts wafted from the kitchen, drifted up the stairs and swirled into my bedroom, rousing my olfactory sensors, and triggering a flashflood of Yuletide adrenalin. Being an 8-year-old trying to get to sleep on Christmas Eve was a difficult enough task in itself without the unprovoked excitation of my sensory and hormonal systems.

Before putting me to bed at 8 pm—with no resistance (I figured the sooner I got to bed the fast I could go to sleep, then wake up on Christmas)—my mother had told me not to get up because Santa Claus might be here at any time, and "he expected all good little boys to be in bed." If I had been more nimble witted, I would have seized this opportunity to retort, "Well, Mama, if it's his policy that only 'good little boys must be in bed,' then obviously that does not apply to someone like myself, whose pyromaniacal feats of the past two years almost resulted in the loss of two homes (ours and a friend's). Therefore, I should be able to stay up." But it's just as well that I hadn't said that, since my older cousin Jimmy certainly would have added, "Sure, Bobby, you can stay up as long as you want. With your record, it's not very likely he'll be paying this house a visit anyway—especially if he doesn't have fire insurance on his sleigh."

But none of that was ever said, and I struggled vainly to try to go to sleep while at the same time, listen for hooves on the roof (reindeers', not Satan's as Jimmy would have wise-cracked), a rustling in the chimney, or any other unusual sound that naturally would be a sign that he was here. I think I finally dozed off around 5 am or so, then awoke around 7 to the sunlight streaming in my window. It was OK to get out of bed at last. It was Christmas!

Of course, I had to wake up my mother and she, in turn, would rouse the other adults (my grandmother and my aunt) and my cousin, Jimmy, who was about 18. This was and is the grown-ups eternal Christmas rule—that no child should even see, much less touch his presents, until all the adults in the house are present. Ostensibly, this restriction was instituted so that the grown-ups could see the expression of joy on our cherubic faces, as we opened the presents. In reality, this restriction is to prevent Christmas Combustion, a seasonal phenomenon in which flames sometimes erupt from wrapping paper, as small fingers rip at it with such speed that friction-generated heat evolves. I once had an entire cardboard fort go up in a flash, and would have lost a Lincoln Log set, had I not received an already filled watergun in my stocking.

I managed to control myself by wolfing down a plate of sandtarts while the disheveled grown-ups snailed their way toward the bountiful living room. Once unleashed into the room, my eyes first lit upon a castle I had written Santa to bring me from the F.A.O. Schwartz catalog. Jimmy had thoughtfully explained to me the impracticality of Santa's elves making toys for all the kids in the world, and that he had worked out some sort of a deal like free advertising endorsements with the department stores. There were also several sets of metal soldiers, British Grenadier Guards, Black Watch, Gordon Highlanders and Greek Evzones. This was mostly what I was interested in in those days, so I was quite happy.

My stocking was, I gradually learned, as much a tribute to family tradition as it was a cornucopia of thoughtful gifts. Many items were the same every year, such as a can of pick-up sticks, jackstones, a bit-bat, a box of Brach's chocolate covered cherries, a top, assorted pieces of fruit (fillers, perhaps?), and always at the toe there were nuts, always the same nuts: a walnut, a pecan, a Brazil nut, an almond and a filbert.

The adults, too, were victims of the annual stocking gifts tradition. Victims, as well as perpetrators. My mother and her sister, for example, filled each other's stocking each year and they both always received, along with the variables, a box of Ex-Lax, a package of emery boards, a box of Dr. Scholl's corn and bunion pads, a bottle of Jergen's lotion and a jar of Pond's skin cream. They, of course, also received chocolate-covered cherries and the fruits and nuts.

From the laughter that always accompanied the revealing of these repetitious stocking stuffers each year, I soon learned that this was an example of family humor. Although every Christmas I grudgingly sniggered at these atypical presents, which I naturally felt were simply occupying valuable sock space, I believe that if the tradition had ever ceased, I would have been seriously concerned.

I had a red stocking and my cousin Jimmy had a green one. My mother's and her sister's were actual long cotton stockings both white with different colored dots. My grandmother, however, had as her stocking a large—probably 20-pound or so capacity—ham bag. Although we all laughed about it, as did my grandmother, it was always a great paradox to me that this sweet, refined and gentle old lady, whom we were all taught to revere, love and treat as a queen, would have as her Christmas stocking, a huge, coarse fabric ham bag from the meat department of the White House Grocery Store on King Street. A brocaded or tapestry patterned one with a ring of ermine around the top would have seemed more fitting. It became, however, less of a paradox four years later when my grandmother further shocked me by becoming an avid fan of TV wrestling. Now she never smashed her knitting bad against the wall and yelled, "Kill the lousy scum!" Her only emotional display was to exclaim, "Oooo, oooo" in a moderate tone whenever her favorite good guy got "hurt." I tried to explain to her that nobody got hurt. It was acting. But she didn't believe me.

Our tree was always bedecked with blue lights and a lot of ornaments that are not made anymore, like small snow-covered houses, manger animals on wheeled stands, delicately-made sheep with cotton that resembled wool, fruit and cornucopias. Some of these items I have managed to save through the years and they reappear on my family's Christmas tree every year. I still have a small wooden puppet from Germany whose limbs flail whenever a sub-torso string is yanked. Nowadays, a similarly-operated Peewee Herman doll might sell in vast quantities.

My favorite ornament, however, is a small, probably 75 to 100 year-old Santa Claus whose upper body appears to be made of some sort of ceramic substance. The end of his nose is nicked off. He has bulbous eyes, and his face is a pinkish red hue, making him look like a heavy drinker. He became sort of a family joke, and every year as he was carefully unwrapped and hung on the tree someone would make the remark that he looked like he had had a stroke. My son never found him, not any of the old worn-out ornaments, amusing. He would always redistribute them to the back of the tree, or sometimes even hide them.

As a child, I was always given the responsibility of putting the tinsel on the tree, and inevitably I was praised—unreservedly, I'm sure—for my contribution. "Ohhh, Bobby, the tree looks so much better now that you have put on the tinsel." I probably did a fair job up to a certain height. After that I had to throw it on, which only created little clumps of silver matter on the upper branches. In fact, I actually continued to think I was doing a great job with the tinsel well into my adult life until my wife finally made me aware of my decorating deficiency:

Barbara: "You're putting the tinsel on in clumps and it's not hanging down, Bob."

Me: "What? This is an outrage. I have been acclaimed as a tinsel artiste by my family since I was 4 years old."

Eventually, after observing some correctly tinseled trees and comparing them with mine, I realized, at age 26, that my credentials were obviously spurious. God only knows what other fake foundations of competence my well-meaning mother and grandmother laid for me.

Me (to Barbara): "What do you mean shoes are supposed to be tied in bows, not knots?"

Anyway, after our first Christmas together, we never used tinsel again.

For Christmas dinner, Uncle Harry, Aunt Lorene and their five children were invited over. We always referred to them as "the thundering herd" because of the noise their 14 feet made on the steps from the street to the porch. There were four boys and a girl. David, the youngest, was my age, then there was Nancy, 9; Frederick, 11; Sandy, 12; and Harry, 14. Of course, Jimmy, my other cousin, was already there. We always had a great time. My grandmother was very diplomatic about giving us presents, meaning sometimes we all got the same things, expect in Nancy's case, of course, or when a large age difference necessitated otherwise.

That year, we (the boys) all got flannel shirts. (Theirs were red, while Jimmy's and mine were Kelly green.) I don't think there was any significance to the assignation of colors, in retrospect. Certainly none of us paid it any attention at the time. In fact, since it was clothing, we gave it little thought at all, preferring to concentrate on the toys. Sandy, Frederick, David and I all received wind-up tanks from our grandmother, the kind with rubber treads and a flint inside the turret cannon that spewed out sparks. We rolled them back and forth all day long, only ceasing when we over-wound the springs.

We had the typical Christmas dinner with turkey, cranberry sauce, etc., expect that the pastries and desserts were always German, since that was my grandmother's heritage. There were strudels, something called Wieckelkucken, and other whose names are no longer retrievable. Of course, there was always the omnipresent fruitcake that some insidious distant relative would make for my grandmother. She was usually the only one who ate it, and perhaps she merely did it out of politeness. In fact, I'm sure that was the case. Its incomprehensible to me that anyone so discriminating in every other quality could enjoy a cake made of mutated fruit and grocery store sweepings.

We also invited a family friend to dinner every year, an elderly lady of French descent, Miss Inez Chapeau. She used to live in the old St. Johns Hotel (now the Mills House). She was a very nice lady, but she had established an apparently well-deserved reputation as a cheapskate, which she, despite having more than adequate funds, glorified by purchasing her wardrobe from a shop called "The Thrifty Lady" or the Salvation Army Store and her Christmas presents from any of the dime stores. I mainly remember her mustachioed, mole-decorated countenance scraping across my cheek or lips after obeying my mother's command, "Give Miss Inez a big kiss, Bobby."

In 1948, it was a special Christmas. We all got to see our "special" aunt, Adele. Aunt Adele was my mother's sister, who was single and lived with her female roommate in Washington, DC. Adele was at the time, in her early 40s. She was about 4'10" and weighed probably under 85 pounds. She had her hair cut very short, wore mannish looking suits and orthopedically-styled low-heeled shoes or blue or white tennis shoes (or easy walkers, as they were called then). She was also—if you have not guessed by now—a lesbian, though none of us kids, nor many of the adults for that matter, knew that term then. We just thought she was a very odd looking and acting person whom we tried to prevent our friends from seeing.

Adele also had a very volatile temper. In fact, all the other grown-ups in the family referred to her as "the Atomic Bomb" because she was always exploding. And she always exploded at a different person each trip home. To make things even more interesting, she also would choose a favorite new nephew or niece (there was only Nancy) every time she came down.

So there was always this almost intangible air of suspense among us with Aunt Adele's arrival. I had once been her favorite when we visited her in Washington one year, but the next two years I had been the victim of her wrath. She always gave us money for a present, I guess because she really didn't have a handle on what kinds of things kids liked.

Actually her explosions were often quite comical, mainly because they were very predictable. As soon as she started drinking—which apparently was while she was on the train—her face gradually grew a deeper crimson and the veins in her forehead got blue. So after she'd been in the kitchen tossing down "shooters" for an hour or so, we knew the blast was imminent. We just didn't know who she'd be aiming at. Even though the other adults would be upset at her tirades, we kids never took them very seriously. She was simply part of our family Christmas pageant, a sort of strident, Grinch-like counterbalance to the occasional Yuletide tendency toward ultra-sentimentality, mawkishness and syrupy over-indulgence.

After dinner, we'd all go over to Uncle Harry's and Aunt Lorene's house. I was always ready for this because I wanted to see what toys they had gotten. And without exception, I would always find at least one thing they got that I didn't and that I—at that moment—wanted really bad. This year, it was a little metal sailor that David had gotten in his stocking. What a covetous little brat I was. It was a fun time at their house, an environment quite different from the more controlled and peaceful ambience of my grandmother's. I was a sort of action-packed Never-Never Land, where I could venture out onto their dock and exercise my childhood right to fall headfirst into the pluff mud (which I did), where I could watch Nancy being pulled up the uncarpeted steps by her ankles, where Uncle Harry's voice occasionally interrupted with a mild complaint, "David, are you and Bobby playing with the ripsaw again?"

Later that night, we'd all pile into the Pontiac and head back across town to my grandmother's. Sometimes Adele would stay at Uncle Harry's, a decision which always pleased me immensely, since I would have friends coming over tomorrow. Aunt Adele always took a lot of explaining.

All the way home and about an hour after I got into bed that night, I thought about that little metal sailor David got. Thank goodness, I had a birthday coming up in two months.