A Family Christmas Somewhere in the World
We all have memories of Chritmases during our childhood. Many of them spur great memoir pieces for us to write. Or even a fiction short story based on something that occurred when we were children. Today, I'm posting a memory piece that might trigger memories of your own and inspire you to write.
December Memories
When I was growing up, on December first my mother turned to
the last page on the calendar and planted the seed of anticipation. “Oh look,
it’s December,” she’d often remark. And immediately, my brothers and I started
thinking about what we wanted Santa to leave under our tree. Our excitement
grew day by day.
We turned the pages in the toy section of the Sears catalog
over and over again, and we marked the initial of our first name by the items
we wanted most, confident that Santa would bring at least one of our heart’s
desires.
I looked forward to the time right after school in December
because every year a Chicago
radio station ran a serialized children’s story called “The Cinnamon Bear”
which became a real part of Christmas for me over the years. The adventures of
the two children and the Cinnamon Bear never changed, it was the same story
every year, but that didn’t matter. I listened to each episode as if it were
brand new and thrilled to the happy ending every time..
After a long, cold walk coming home from school on December
days, the smell of Christmas greeted me the moment I reached home. I’d open the
door to the pine scent of the Christmas tree mingled with the many delicacies
Mother baked. She made an assortment of cookies that pleased every palate.
Cinnamon rolls with icing drizzled over the top tasted so good straight from
the oven. Coffeecakes, muffins, homemade bread and even her fudge, that never
did get firm enough to pick up, graced our December table. Memories of a warm
kitchen, the air filled with spicy aromas, and an after-school cup of hot
chocolate and a fresh-baked treat remain with me these many years later.
Because our apartment had little storage space, Mother
wrapped the gifts as she bought them and then stacked them up on the dressers
in her bedroom. All through December, she sent my brothers and me on little
errands to that bedroom. “Bring my pincushion,” she’d say, and off I’d go to
the bedroom to get it. The sight of the stack of gaily wrapped packages made me
unbearably curious, but I knew better than to shake the packages. All I did was
look and wonder which ones were mine.
I enjoyed buying gifts for my family almost as much as receiving
them. I was the neighborhood babysitter from the time I was about ten. I made
the grand sum of 25 cents an hour and I saved part of that hard-earned cash all
year for Christmas purchases. I bought gifts for each member of my family and
also for some of the children I took care of. At our school parties, we were to
bring a grab bag gift marked ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ with a limited dollar amount. They
were always small things, but I looked forward to getting that grab bag gift
every year. It was the highlight of our class party, always held on the final
day before the Christmas break.
When I got to the pre-teen and teen years, my friends and I
rode on the elevated train to downtown Chicago for a visit to the famed Walnut
Room in Marshall Fields. We seldom got to eat there as the lines were long and
the food a bit pricey for girls our age. Instead, we stood in the entryway and
gazed at the spectacular tree decorated more ornately than any at our homes.
The dining tables closest to the tree were those most coveted, and it seemed
more old ladies sat there than people with children who would have loved to
dine so close to the magnificent tree.
Close to Christmas, the postman delivered a big box filled
with packages from my aunt and uncle who lived in Phoenix, so far from our
Chicago home. Aunt Jane wrapped her gifts fancier than my mother did and the sight
of those gaily wrapped gifts brought sheer pleasure. I’d check all of them to
see which one was mine and wonder if I could wait until Christmas morning to
open it. But wait I did, as there was never any opening of gifts until the
specified time. On Christmas Eve Mother sent us into the bedroom to bring the
stacked packages to Dad. We watched as he placed them around the tree. Oh, what
a glittering array it was by the time he’d finished. All evening I kept my eye
on those packages, while little shivers of excitement ran up and down my spine.
Mother shooed us to bed early, but not until we’d pinned one of our everyday
socks to the back of a chair. No fireplace mantel for our stockings in the
small apartment we called home. “The sooner you go to sleep, the sooner Santa
will come.” It was her Christmas Eve mantra.
In the morning, my brothers and I tumbled out of bed and
rushed to the living room to see what Santa had left us. Santa’s gifts were
never wrapped but sitting somewhere near the tree. We all knew which one was
ours for hadn’t we marked our wishes in the Sears catalog? After the excitement
of seeing the surprises from Santa and checking our stockings, which always
held an orange and walnuts in the shell, we opened the gifts one by one as Dad
passed them out. Often, the packages held little things or something to wear
but a few had new toys that thrilled us.
When the last gift was opened, we had a big breakfast, and
it was the one day of the year I was allowed to eat fudge early in the morning,
a special Christmas treat. The rest of the day we played with our new toys and
I helped Mother in the kitchen with a special Christmas dinner. Often it was
roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, a special recipe my grandmother passed down.
Sometimes my Aunt Vivienne and Uncle Jimmy came for Christmas dinner. Their
daughter, Carol, was my age and an only child. She always got many more gifts
than I did but it never seemed to bother me. I accepted the fact that she
didn’t have brothers to share with like I did.
December holds many happy family memories. Our Christmases
today are somewhat different than those of long ago, as we’ve made our own
traditions with our children, as they are doing with theirs now, too. But the
warmth of a family celebrating together remains constant, and I pray it always
will.