Holiday Hilarity

Part l

Holidays always brought their unique mishaps to our family. We rarely made it through a year without something going awry. Every year we hoped. We hoped the furnace didn’t go on the blink. We hoped the oven didn’t go on the fritz. We hoped no one would get mad and go home during the party. We hoped our Aunt wouldn’t bring her God awful casserole concoction that she always brought. We hoped.

The Holidays never went off without a hitch though. But we’d come to expect these calamities with laughter and shared stories about them afterward. Our Mom, who we affectionately referred to as our own Lucille Ball, was notorious for her hair-brained schemes. A simple shopping trip in the late 1960s turned into a ludicrous escapade. With us four girls piled into the old blue station wagon and Mom at the wheel, she got lost and ended up driving across the runways at Ohare Airport trying to find a way out. When she finally found the guard house and asked the man how to get out, he replied, “Lady, how did you get in?!”

The kitchen was no different for Mom. It wasn’t that she lacked cooking skills. She could cook up a storm and it was all delicious. But it was like taking the scenic route on a trip when she cooked. We never had oven mitts. Why indeed when you had a perfectly good dish towel instead. Oftentimes these would catch fire briefly when Mom pulled something out of the oven. We were used to some scorch marks on most of the kitchen towels.

One Christmas, she decided to try her hand at making a gingerbread house. It went as planned until we began assembling the house and discovered the walls were so thick the end product looked more like a decorated WWll bunker. It may not have looked like a house, but our squaty bunker sure was tasty.

One year, there was this new splendid little marvel that was added to the frozen turkeys. It was a built in pop up timer that took the guess work out of cooking a turkey so that it was perfectly done when the timer popped up. The cook put the turkey into the oven, waited for the timer to pop up and Voila! Mom had made up her mind that she was going to have one of those turkeys with a timer. That morning she made the dressing, stuffed the bird (remembering to take the giblets out of their wrapper. Sometimes she forgot) put the turkey into the roaster, and Dad put it into the oven. The turkey would be basted to keep it moist. After hours of cooking and basting, she started to look for the little red timer to have popped up. She’d say, “Not popped up yet. Hmm?” This sounded ominous after hours of waiting. Dad finally inquired, “Isn’t that turkey done yet?” Mom decided enough was enough and had Dad lift the roaster out from the oven. Both had puzzled looks as there was no sign of the fancy little timer sticking out of the turkey. Dad lifted the bird out to start carving when he began to laugh. The timer had indeed popped up after all, but Mom had put the turkey in upside down. She told that story many times at family gatherings and still laughed at her blunder.

Part ll

When you have cats and add a live Christmas tree to their inside environment, one should realize that it’s a powder keg ready to blow. Our four cats climbed the tree like furry lumberjacks vying to scale to the top most branch. Who needs an angel when a cat is perched there? Something about the smell of the fresh tree enticed them to it the way sirens called to sailors. In the middle of the night, like pirates, they’d swarm over the Christmas tree like it was a ship to be boarded. We’d awaken to the crash of the falling tree. We‘d get up, right the tree, gather up fallen ornaments, adjust the strings of lights, and go back to bed. This went on some nights and our poor Christmas tree took a real beating. It was not surprising to find my Dad one day, with screwgun in hand , affixing two large eyebolts into the wall and securing ropes to each eyebolt which were tied to the midsection of the tree. It looked like when he’d tie the sailboat of ours to a dock. He stepped back with a satisfied smile and said, “That should do it.” And it did. The Christmas tree stayed moored to the wall until we decided to take it down. Now, when someone sees the two big eyebolts in the wall and ask what are those for? We smile and think of Dad.

3’s A Charm

My oldest sister Terry loved making ornaments for our Christmas tree. These homemade creations were crafted from pine cones, walnut halves, or other doodads. One year she decided to make edible cookie ornaments to hang on our tree. These were basic flat cookies in shapes of Santa, reindeer, stars, etc. A hole was put in the top before baking so that a loop of red yarn could be put through to hang on the tree‘s branches. After the cookies were decorated, we put records on the hifi and all the cookie ornaments were hung on the tree. The next morning, the cookies that were hanging from the midpoint of the tree down were gone! Some loops were on the floor and some empty loops were still hanging from the branches. At the time, we had an Irish setter and two mutts. We knew who the culprits were. Three hungry hounds in the middle of the night up for a midnight snack. How could we be angry at their late night foray? After all, the cookies were an invitation waiting to be gobbled up.

The Coda

Mom never again wanted or bought a turkey with a pop up timer. We never again made cookies to decorate the tree. When we put up the Christmas tree it is always anchored to the wall. But the cats still clamber up the trunk to sit in the branches.