Christmas to remember

Christmas Gifts

I have a belief that if you ask the typical American about their most important memories of Christmas it would probably be those of their younger years. The intrigue, the excitement of the Christmas season to a six, seven or eight year old kid is impossible to put in words even today. There was just this incredible feeling.

Dad was a carpenter and this was the 1950’s. If there was no work, there was no pay. And in the winter construction work had a tendency to get slow – or non-existent. So Christmas was special despite a lack of steady income, just to provide some background. My brother, JC, and I typically got a special present and perhaps one other thing if it was a good year.

Part of the excitement was the tree. Mother usually picked it out at the grocery store. They always sold them out in the parking lot of the A & P and we wind through rows of trees cut somewhere in some other state, no doubt, and trucked into north Texas. Some of them were drier than others, and boy did they drop needles. But that smell! That was Christmas. When we finally selected the perfect tree we would load it in the truck of our car and take it home with great excitement. I loved seeing the boxes of decorations coming out of the closet and looking through them. The balls were glass and extremely fragile. It seems we broke at least one a year – I don’t know how we had enough to fill the tree but we did. The exercise of Dad troubleshooting the aging string of multi-colored lights was almost a ritual. It took FOREVER. And if one bulb was out, guess what.

I remember some folks had those cool little lights that were shaped like candles and contained a liquid that bubbled when turned on. I thought those were for rich people. Driving down the streets of Oak Cliff my brother and I would editorialize on the outside decorations of the houses we passed. Some multi-colored, some uni-colored blue or green or white.

And the Sears Roebuck display window! Oh what a sight! They would have toys, trains, arranged in a fantastic display. Kids would be stacked five deep ogling the fabulous display of things most of their parents could not afford. And of course, Santa was inside accompanied by a line waiting kids and parents. I only remember seeing Santa once as my brother saw fit to inform me at an early age that Santa was not real, a crushing blow indeed. So afterwards I was not so interested in waiting in the line to visit with a pretend Santa.

And then seeing a present or two or three appear under the tree would raise my anxiety to another level. I would shake, touch and weigh them with such anticipation. By Christmas day the wrapping was pretty well worn.

My family saved gift opening until Christmas morning. I remember hearing some kids talking about opening gifts on Christmas Eve and thought that was very odd.
Now, if Christmas happened to fall on a Sunday there was a problem. We went to church in those days – a lot. In fact, there was huge guilt complex that accompanied an absence from service. I can still hear Brother Noah shaking my Dad’s hand and saying, ”we missed you last night, Brother Hogan”, and the tone had a nice but sort of condemning tone. Dad would sort of duck his head and make an excuse. But that didn’t happen often because if there was a service we were there. Even for Christmas on Sunday! I remember one of those and being so anxious to get home to my toys I thought I would wet my pants. Not sure I absorbed much gospel that day.

Another memory about Christmas: our church always passed out these cellophane bags of fruit and candy. They were the same every year; an apple or orange, a few nuts in the shell, and this spiral candy that was sticky, messy, and not very good. But we ate it anyway. Free stuff, you have to eat it, right?

So let me tell you of a few Christmas’s that stand out in my mind. My parents were mindful of people who might be in need, that is more in need than we were. One year it was decided we would bless a family who lived nearby who had children our ages, and Mother and Dad had talked with us about the need to be Christ like and offer something of what we had to the kids in this family. So JC and I were encouraged to pick one of our toys and take to this family. I remember laboring over this decision and discussing it with my mother (Dad was not a big conversationalist, you know). I can’t remember what the other toy was, but the one I really liked was a little car with wheels that actually rolled when the toy was rolled on the floor. Somehow I thought I would feel guilty if I did not volunteer this favorite toy and so it went with me to this other family and did not come home with me. I was probably five years old, but this made an impression on me, one that I am grateful for.

There was another year when I was probably seven or eight and my father had been out of work for a few weeks and times were tough. There were no credit cards to even things out in a situation like that. So it was awfully close to Christmas and there was no tree and no presents. Mother and Dad had told us that there would be no Christmas presents that year as we didn’t have money for them. What I did not know was that groceries were awfully thin as well. I remember hearing the words but not quite believing them; how could we not have Christmas? What happened was one of those God things.

I remember one of those bright, sunny warm Saturdays that we sometimes get in late December, and a car pulled up out front. Out stepped a smiling man who proceeded to unload a whole car load of groceries AND wrapped Christmas gifts. This was even better than the usual Christmas with all its anticipation! Wow! And then that same day, a neighbor down the street brought a live Christmas tree already decorated to our house. Yep, it was a Christmas to remember alright. You know, it’s good to know how to receive graciously.

Ok one more. While several of us in my family, really all of us, are somewhat musically inclined, I LOVED music and was keenly interested in instruments. I just itched to get on the piano and anytime I got near one at church would try my hand at it. But the Christmas I’m thinking of I received a little plastic ukulele that I adored. It had these little plastic strings with terrible plastic tone, but I loved that ukulele. On Christmas day we went to Granny and Granddad’s house to have some time with them and with my cousins. I took the favorite toy with me, of course. You know what happened. I will never forget the sound of it cracking under the weight of my fat cousin Gene when he sat on it. Oh that cracking, crushing sound echoed the feeling in my heart. It was a pathetic sight when pulled from beneath his big butt, and I was distraught. What made it worse is that I got no sympathy, or at least that’s the way I recall it. Seems I was at fault for leaving it lying on the couch. I didn’t get that lesson. Scarred for life, I was!

What’s remarkable to me is how my Mother managed to make Christmas special even in those lean years, and I think they were mostly lean! I remember a cold night in the Christmas season making popcorn balls and drinking hot chocolate. Hot chocolate was made the old fashioned way; you heated milk on the stove, stirring slowly until it just reached that boiling point, turn the heat down and stir in cocoa. I can smell it now. And popcorn was made the old way too. Waiting for both of these was part of the ritual and somehow added to the enjoyment once it was ready. And we enjoyed it together. So simple yet it’s so much a part of what I remember and cherish from my childhood at Christmas time growing up on Peru Street in Dallas in the 1950’s.