Showing posts with label christmas past. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christmas past. Show all posts

Friday, December 6, 2019

The Season

I'm ambivalent about Christmas. The sentiment, don't get me wrong, is great. Maybe it's the TV commercials. Some gal is always standing outside her house in the moonlight wrapped in a pristine white muff and matching mittens, ogling the new Lexus wrapped in a giant red bow. I don't give a damn about the car, but in my latitude in December, we don't stand outside unless our car battery has died and we're stranded on the side of the road peering helplessly inside the open hood's innards, frantically punching numbers into our cell phone.

Not to mention the carolers. If a group of random strangers perched outside my front door warbling Christmas carols, I would panic and begin rummaging through my cupboards for anything I could feasibly turn into hot cocoa. Finding nothing, I would slip off the light switch and quietly creep upstairs to my darkened bedroom.

It wasn't always this way. There was a time when I would pick a Saturday night in December, punch up some holiday music, assemble my huge artificial tree in the downstairs family room and make a night of placing the ornaments and garlands and lights upon it, arranging and rearranging until everything was perfect.

When one's kids are little or at least semi-little, Christmas is fun and as awe-inspiring as that fake woman and her luxury car. There are holiday clings to paste on the windows and fat stockings to hang from a surface that mimic a fireplace, which I did not have. Letters handwritten to Santa and shopping lists cleverly written in shorthand (a lost and useful art), covert trips to the mall to purchase everything (yes, everything) on the wish lists; hiding the Lego sets and Masters of the Universe figures in a bedroom closet until secret wrapping day.

Stringing air-popped corn on green thread and twining it around the tree to simulate an old-fashioned Christmas.

Too, Christmas music used to be fun, or at least fun-kitschy. I remember playing Alan Jackson's Christmas CD when my son walked into the room and asked, "What is this? The saddest Christmas ever?" (admittedly, it was kinda sappy.) Now when I hear "I'll Be Home For Christmas", all I do is cry. Because there is no home anymore.

We weren't church-goers. I once was. As a teen, I went to midnight mass and reveled in the mysticism. Then the seventies arrived and church was forgotten amid the excitement of gathering together my few dollars to search out appropriate, cheap gifts for every single member of my family, and especially for my very very best friend.

How do I feel about Christmas now?  It's mostly an obligation. Fake cheer. If I could attend midnight mass in a little chapel, I would choose that over anything. As one ages, they pine for times that can't be recreated, because their most cherished people in the world are gone. We distract ourselves with Secret Santas at work and spend dollars we can't afford on presents that will be forgotten in a day and breathe a sigh of relief when everything is over.

Bear with me ~ I liked this song in the sixties, and it brings back good Christmas memories.



I give it my all to listen to Christmas music every year at least once before December 25, and I will this year, too. As the days pass, I will share some of my favorites.

Just ignore my tears.
















Friday, December 22, 2017

Christmas Really Is For Kids

(Unfortunately, I never got the outfits.)

I wasn't a toy kid. One must understand, in the early sixties, there weren't a lot of fun toys. Boys had Tonka trucks -- and they were the ones with the sharp metal edges; not the molded plastic "safe" ones. One unfortunate stumble in the living room could result in a nasty head wound, which in modern times would mean a trip to the ER, but in the sixties Mom would slap on a Band-aid on and call it done. Boys (and moms) were tougher back then.

Even though I wasn't really into toys, I was into the Sears Christmas catalog. That awesome cornucopia of glossy full-color images showed up in our rural mailbox sometime in November, and I lay prostrate on the kitchen linoleum with a sharpened pencil for hours and days, circling every shiny thing I wished for, for Christmas. I really, really wanted the Barbie wedding dress. Really.



I never got it. Apparently it was "too expensive". But Mom said that about everything I wanted. How much could a Barbie wedding gown have cost in 1963? $3.99? What could Mom and Dad afford -- a Three Musketeers Bar?

It wasn't so much that I liked dolls -- I didn't. But I liked pretty dresses. I had a baby doll once. I think I cut her hair and then she looked hideous and I shunned her. She was one of those dolls that you fed water through a bottle and then she wet her pants. Apparently bed-wetting was a desirous trait in plastic dolls in the sixties. Shoot, I had a little sister for that.

(Me, pretending to like my doll.)

I also never got a Chatty Cathy doll, which is just as well. Look at her:


She is reminiscent of seventies horror films. I think this is where the inspiration for "Chucky" came from.

I liked coloring books and crayons. Again, I wanted the box of 64 crayons with a built-in sharpener, but the most I ever got was the 16. I made the best of it. There was a wondrous invention -- paint that, when you touched the brush to a coloring book drawing, it created sparkles. Sapphire, emerald, and ruby shimmers. That engrossed me for approximately one evening.

I also had paper dolls. Those were fun. I had the Patty Duke ones -- you know, Patty and her identical cousin, Cathy.


Come to think of it, I was a very economical gift recipient.

The weird thing about my mom, who I was convinced hated me, is that she always found stupendous gifts. One year I got a cardboard storefront with pasteboard shelves, fake bottles of milk and counterfeit boxes of mashed potato flakes and a cash register with pretend money. Suddenly at six I was a proprietor. I loved imagining.

(The store is on the left. The people are all nuts, except me, in the lower right.)

Of course, the very, very best Christmas gift she ever got me was my record player. And I had no inkling.

Maybe Mom wasn't so bad after all. 

The most fun I ever had with toys was when I shopped for my sons for Christmas. Those are the toys I remember best.

My oldest son liked toys, no doubt. He loved Transformers. But his gig was Lego sets. He would sit on the living room floor for hours building all manner of structures out of Legos. Sort of like my crayons, he was into creating things.

For my youngest, one year when he was around three, I got him this:






He probably doesn't think of this as his very best Christmas gift ever. I can attest that he liked it, though.

I wonder if life consists of collecting memories. When we don't even know that we are.

I try not to play this song at Christmastime. But I inevitably do. And then I tear up.

I think I subconsciously need to play it.





Merry Christmas.

May your memories make you cry, just a little.









Saturday, December 12, 2015

The Thing About Christmas Songs



If merchants had to depend on me for their Christmas cheer, they'd be crying into their mug of wassail.

I'm not a Christmas fan.

I do have my reasons. Number one, I happen to work in an industry whose busiest time of the year is the last three weeks before Christmas. Therefore, no one is allowed to take time off, not even one lousy day to do their shopping. Add to that the stress of a long, heart-attack inducing day, and the last thing I want to do when I (finally) get off work is go shopping for holiday trinkets. All I want is a cup gallon of hot wassail. Secondly, Christmas is happy and exciting when there are kids in the house. Cats and dogs don't experience that same euphoria of anticipation that actual human kids do. In fact, Josie and Bob only anticipate when their next meal will be forthcoming, as they perch in their assigned spots two hours before suppertime.

When I had young kids, I exalted in the subterfuge -- writing out my shopping list in shorthand so no little eyes would tempt themselves and spoil the surprise.

That one big day with one big shopping cart, trudging my goodies through the snow and slush, the cart's wheels refusing to budge, as I twisted the cart like a pinwheel to deposit all those special toys in my trunk.

The Saturday evening when I would put on a favorite Christmas CD, dim the lights and decorate the tree, placing the school-made ornaments in very prominent spots on the branches; stringing together wreaths made of popcorn.

Writing out Christmas cards and slipping school photographs inside. Getting Christmas cards with school photographs slipped inside.

Pasting red, green, and blue window clings on the big picture window in the living room -- red trees and green boughs, white snowflakes, and blue letters that spelled out MERRY CHRISTMAS.

Hauling the big stand mixer out of the top cupboard and mixing up a batch of sugar cookies to be decorated, and a big pan of fudge, and divinity, and whatever other cookies struck my fancy that particular year.

The kids tearing open their gifts on Christmas Eve, exclaiming it was just what they wanted. Me on the floor assembling Fisher Price farm yards and, in ensuing years, admiring all manner of Transformers and Deluxe Lego cities (Those little yellow plastic bricks hurt like hell when you step on one with your bare feet two days after Christmas!)

When we packed up the car and drove to spend Christmas Day with Grandma and Grandpa, the kids loathe to leave their new treasures behind at home, Grandma pulling open the oven door to baste the giant turkey, Grandpa "helping" by sitting back in his recliner in the living room. Me salivating over the fresh-baked pecan pie. My brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews gathered around the long table Dad had set up in the living room to accommodate everybody; munching on green olives and carrot sticks from the relish tray to quell our hunger, Mom's candle evergreen centerpiece gracing the center.

That was Christmas to me.

I really should just chalk it up as a life phase that's come and gone. My kids are grown and they have new traditions of their own. Mom and Dad left in 2001. Really, the only thing I have remaining from Christmas Past is music, if I take the time to listen to it.

But here's the thing about Christmas songs....

Thank God they only come around once a year.

Our local oldies station begins playing Christmas music twenty-four/seven, right after (or maybe even before) Thanksgiving. Those DJ's must be hitting up the liquor store every couple of days, because if one has to find enough holiday music to fill all that airtime, one knows (the DJ's know more than anyone) that the great majority of it sucks. I listened for a few brief moments on my car radio today as I was motoring off to perform a semblance of actual gift-shopping (I got two -- yes, two gifts). I learned, from my radio, that Christmas music falls into a few categories:


  • Sucky
  • Maudlin
  • Instrumental (which, to be frank, could be anything - could be Arbor Day music for all anyone knows)
  • Too jazzy
  • Annoying
  • Cheesy
  • Not bad


I thought I would highlight a few of these types.

Best drunk performance by someone trying to appear sober:



(Yes, I know this is a montage. Sorry, it's all I could find.)

Best sober performance by someone trying to act drunk:


Best cry in your beer, drown your heartache Christmas song:


Christmas song that makes you want to drink yourself to death:


(I'm sure Andy Williams was a fine man. But this song falls into the "sucky", "too jazzy" category. Sorry.)

Other songs I would pay top dollar to never hear again:

  • Do You Hear What I Hear (no, and stop asking me!)
  • Little Drummer Boy (especially the Johnny Cash version...rum pa pah PUM)
  • Christmas Time Is Here (that stupid Peanuts maudlin song with the screechy kids singing. Really gets one in the spirit!)


Now, I like my eighties pop, as you know. Some people, particularly my husband, would say my favorites are sucky. I'm okay with that. Because I like what I like.

Hence, I like this:



It's not so much that I like this song, but I love the performance:



Let's not forget the sixties:



But honestly, Christmas is not Christmas for me until I hear these two songs (I heard one of them today as I was shopping, which inspired this post.)





In conclusion, there are two songs that are my special treasures, for different reasons. The first reminds me what we're doing this all for (and this is the version that lives in my heart):


And this one just makes me cry, because there is no more home:


If I don't have time, and I know I won't, Merry Christmas to you.