December is not a very nice month. It is saved from our antipathy by hosting the best holiday of the year. If it weren’t for Christmas, I think we would all dislike the month very much. The weather can be awful. The days are short and gloomy, the nights long and dark. Christmas redeems December. Instead of dreading it, we await it with high anticipation.
My feelings for Christmas have changed a lot over the course of my life. When I was little, it was a magical time. In the 60's when we lived on Bridge Street in New Cumberland, we would drive across the river into Harrisburg at Christmastime. There were towering decorated trees on the Market Square. The streets were decorated with lights strung from pole to pole, all stars and snowflakes glittering and beautiful in the snow. We would park and walk down Market Street to look at the amazing displays in the windows of Pomeroy’s and Bowman’s department stores – displays with automated elves, model trains, and toys. Then on one day during the seemingly endless days before Christmas, my parents took us to Joe the Motorists Friend to see Santa Claus. We sat on his lap and whispered to him what we wanted for Christmas and got a candy cane. There was an amazing model train display there, too.
When we lived on Bridge Street, the big first floor windows of our house, where my father’s office was, were decorated with holly garlands and strings of red and green lights. We put our Christmas tree in the basement where we had a big family room with a fireplace. We usually bought a live tree with a big root ball wrapped in burlap that we put in a washtub (to be planted in the back yard in the spring where it would usually die before the next Christmas). Our stockings, special decorated red flannel stockings our mother made, hung in a row from the edge of a long cabinet behind the tree. On Christmas morning those stockings were filled with candy and nuts and a tangerine. The presents did not appear under the tree until sometime during the night on Christmas Eve while we were asleep. Christmas morning was a time of high excitement. We had to wait upstairs until my parents were ready, which seemed to take forever (a tradition we still keep). One year my father bought a Super 8 movie camera and we have amazing movie footage of Christmases for a decade after that.
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| Christmas morning 2001 |
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| 2004 |
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| 2011 |
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| 2012 |
The Big Event at Christmas in those days was the family party we held on Christmas night. My grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins on my mother’s side of the family gathered for a gift exchange, games, and food. I have such happy memories of those years.
We moved to Ohio in 1968 and then to Illinois in 1972 and on to California in 1978. During those years of my life, Christmas was still a happy time, but it wasn’t quite the same. We still had beautifully decorated trees, delicious things to eat, and presents, but there were no more big family parties. As I grew older most of the magic and excitement of Christmas was replaced by nostalgia.
The next big change came when I had children of my own. I loved watching their excitement. I felt some of the magic return through them. There were years in California when my brother, my sisters, and their families all lived close enough that we could gather at my parents’ house at Christmas. Those were happy times. Over the years we’ve scattered. Now most of my own children are gone from home. Some have started their own families. It’s hard for us to get together and even harder to be apart.
I love Christmas. I love the traditions that I grew up with, the traditions I kept with my children, and that they will, I hope, carry on with their own families. I love the special foods, the gingerbread, cookies, eggnog, and candy canes. I love the decorations, the garlands, lights, the tree whose every ornament holds some meaning or memory. And I love the music.
We had a few Christmas records when I was little, two that I remember, both Mormon Tabernacle Choir albums. That changed after Aunt Sally came to stay with us in 1971. She brought with her a big stereo and a color television (our first) and lots of new record albums. She stayed only a short time and then moved west, but she left those things with us. Among the records was a Readers Digest collection of Christmas music – four discs with all kinds of Christmas carols and songs sung by Doris Day, Nelson Eddy, Gene Autry, Steve Lawrence and Edyie Gorme, Johnny Mathis, and so many other great voices. We devoured it. We played those records over and over again every year after that. I still have them. And, although they are pretty scratched up, I still listen to them.
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| My favorite Christmas album. |
We’re awaiting another winter storm right now. The one that wreaked havoc across so much of the nation is expected to arrive here tonight, but much diminished. I like having snow on the ground at Christmastime. Ice I don’t like. And the snow is welcome to leave again by mid-January, although I know it will overstay its welcome by several months. I don’t think tonight’s storm will amount to much. The last storm didn’t. We are prepared for whatever comes I think. We have wood to burn. The downstairs bathtub is filled for us to use if the power goes out and the well pump with it. We can stay snug, at least for a while. Dinner is almost ready. This afternoon, after my Sabbath nap, I plan to make a soft gingerbread. We even have a real lemon for the sauce. Then we’ll be at Shillig’s to watch the First Presidency Christmas Devotional and then maybe another sappy Hallmark Christmas movies. I love Christmas.
