Blogging My Autobiography - Chapter 9

Christmas as an adult is entirely different than Christmas as a child. At least for me it was. The way some adults are, the child has never left them. At some level, I envy that and wish it were still so for me. When I was a child, I couldn’t sleep a wink on Christmas Eve. In truth, next to Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve was ever my favorite day because of the anticipation. At the time, of course, I didn’t realize this, I just knew that I really could hear the reindeer on the roof and if I dared I could actually see Santa in our living room. In fact, that did happen to me one year when I was almost 10.

Christmas Eve and all the presents are out. Mom and Dad are relaxed with hot chocolate in their hands. My brothers were milling about and I was staring into the fire, daydreaming of the next morning and what it would bring. Just to interject, here, daydreaming was a favorite pastime for me. It did get me in trouble a lot at school and at home. Dreams were not encouraged, which I know now is a bad thing. Children should have dreams. Anyway, I was dreaming my Christmas dreams and all of a sudden, my father said, “Do you hear that?” Well I was deep into the flames and didn’t, of course. Then he said it again. This time I listened and sure enough, there was a faint jingle of bells outside. Still in a bit of a stupor, I didn’t realize what was happening. All of a sudden, someone pounded on the door and I hear a voice bellow, “Merry Christmas!!” Bells were ringing and my Dad leaped up to get the door. He said, “I wonder who that could be?” And opened the door. In bounded a man with a beard and a red suit....Santa “Ho, Ho, Ho!” rang through the house. My brothers were delighted and ran to him. Me, I hid behind the piano in our living room. Later my Dad said that I was white as a sheet. You see, I was at the age when the existence of Santa Claus becomes a question. To see the man himself, in my living room, knowing my name and giving me presents was overwhelming to say the least. He stayed and played the piano, sang funny songs, handed out gifts to everyone and asked us if we had been good boys. Then he left as suddenly as he came, disappearing into the night as if he had wings or a sleigh that could really fly. I know, I looked.

It took me a long time to figure out what happened. I really didn’t know until some years later when my Uncle Bert told me who came to our house that night. Seems he was one of Santa’s helpers and he was the helper that appeared that night. My Uncle Bert was one of my favorite relatives, he was my Grandpa Ted’s brother and sure enough, had the twinkle in his eye that they all did. That made him the perfect Santa that night and in my own mind, the perfect one forever.

I think the primary thing that separates Christmas as an adult and Christmas as a child is the amount of work that a person has to do. Adults have the responsibility of getting the tree, getting it flocked (in our case) decorating it and the house, taking care of the presents and paying for it all. I seem to remember my father grumbling quite a bit, especially about the flocking. My mother was very faddish about her trees. They had to be the latest and greatest. We used a number of innovative methods to decorate our trees, from icicles to flocking to a rotating color wheel that lit up the first aluminum tree on the block. I suspect that my father liked the aluminum tree because there was no flocking involved. Flocking meant that he had to set up the tree in the basement, cover the floor and walls with newspaper, fill the flocking gun and spray this white or pink goo all over the tree. Being my Dad, he was very grumpy if it wasn’t just so. If the gun clogged up, then I was outta there because a world of hurt was gonna come down on whoever was nearby. The tree had to dry at least a couple of days or it wouldn’t survive the trip up the back stairs, at least not with all the flock intact. Once we did get it upstairs (I was usually involved in this task because I was the oldest), decorating was the order of the day. Lights at the time were large, not these little lights we have now. They were also wired serially, so you had to check them all if the string went out. It wasn’t so bad though. We maybe had 50 to 60 lights on the tree and checking them was a matter of flicking them to see if they came on. Sometimes the filaments would reconnect momentarily and then we knew that was the one to replace. Now of course, I have 1000 lights on my tree and a specialized checker to see if they all work.

Once the tree was up I loved to lay under it and revel in the color and sparkle, the smell of pine in my nose. I especially liked the bubble lights. They changed endlessly as the light heated the liquid up. A long chain of small bubbles at first, snaking up the tube, followed by the bigger bubbles, each one different and exciting to my eye.

My parents did go all out on Christmas and that was a good thing. They also tried to hide the presents from Santa, which never worked. We always found them. The attic was a good place at first but we found them there too. I remember getting the ladder and climbing up into the attic to see what was there. The attic was cold but the presents seemed to have a special gleam about them, knowing they would be arrayed on the fireplace on Christmas morning. I was never disappointed in anything I got because I got what I asked for, even the Western Flyer 3 speed bicycle I wanted so badly. It was black and the first multispeed bicycle on the block. A 26 incher, which was a big boy’s bike. I tinkered with the shifter for ages to get it to work right and learned, the hard way, how to mount a bike that large. The cross tube was a cruel mistress, I can tell you. My parents did well by us on Christmas, no matter what the circumstances. I have tried to do the same for my children, even though they think me a Grinch.