Memory Lane

Dear Family,

Since we can’t be together this year, I’m sending this Christmas letter to help you all remember some of our past Christmases. Grab a nog and read on.

Think back . . .

1963. What did I get that year? A baby brother. Not even a real baby doll, but a stupid baby. Oh, yeah, everyone else enjoyed that bald, loud, stinky little bundle. But where was the REAL doll I asked for, hmmmm? Stupid present. One sister got a Chatty Cathy, the best doll in the entire 60s decade. Somebody else got a giant thing of Lincoln Logs. And I know there were Tinker Toys. But me? All I remember is that dumb little real baby. Blah.

1967-1980. Remember when dad waited until CHRISTMAS EVE to get a tree? He’d come in at dark-thirty and gather everyone in the Ford station wagon – the one with the wood siding – and go to EVERY. SINGLE. TREE LOT THAT HAD ANY TREES LEFT. This is a good/not good memory for me. Get in the car, drive somewhere, get out of the car, look at every tree, decide there’s no tree good enough for us (Apparently we were The Royal Family), get back in the car, rinse and repeat. And watch out for the one kid who got car sick and had to throw up between tree lots. How did we know dad did this tree-lot-hopping purposefully because on Christmas Eve he could use his gaggle of offspring to make the tree lot dudes feel sorry for him and give him a smoking deal on one of the last trees in the lot? Anyway, we were never without a tree, bless dad’s heart.

After getting the tree up and decorated, THEN we all had to walk ourselves up the street to midnight mass – without the parents – and do the whole church thing because we were such devout Catholics and mom and dad couldn’t have let us NOT go to midnight mass. They might have looked like bad Catholic parents, right? Besides, dad stopped going to church when they switched from Latin to English. That was it for him. He wasn’t going to any “fake” church where he could actually understand the language, no way. Ugh. But wait. The good part was getting home and having the annual White Castle burgers and champagne Christmas Eve closeout with mom and dad. That was a treat and a tradition I know some of you still carry on after all these years. Mom and dad did that for 62 years, so keep it going, thankyouverymuch.

1981-ish. This is about when we started the tradition of wrapping up one of mom’s brassieres for the baby sister. I don’t know how that started, but every year she would grab a present with her name on it, rip into the paper with excitement, and then give the best look of shock and embarrassment that she – a little kid – could conjure on her face. I mean, she got this inappropriate undergarment for a gift. What were we thinking? I’m sure, little sister, you’ve had plenty of therapy recovering from that. Funny, that sister grew into the adult with the biggest and best set of girls amongst us, while I remain the sister with the smallest and most boring - uh - well, not like hers. Go figure.

Omg, this is around the time mom decided to start having “old-fashioned” Christmases and she forced us to string popcorn and cranberries on thread. The sewing kind. Miles of thread. Piles of broken popcorn that wouldn’t take a needle through a kernel without breaking. Red, sticky cranberries that stained fingers. Great idea, mom. While grandma had the all-the-rage silver aluminum tree with the rotating color light wheel, we were down the street miserably trying to get popcorn to stay on a piece of thread and getting yelled at for cranberry stains on the furniture. And don’t forget how picky mom was about putting the tinsel on the tree ONE. STRAND. AT A TIME. Who else is still angry over this????

By the way, didn’t grandma use the blue part of the color wheel to tint her hair? Sorry . . . I digress.

The parents didn’t have money. Ever. But somehow they found money for fancy holiday dinners. Remember those dinners designed to impress visitors? Mom would set the pool-table-with-plywood-over-it dining room table with those brown 70s ceramic plates and REAL silverware that we had to polish for just this occasion. She’d find her stash of cloth napkins and put those out. Picture it. The mirrored wall. That huge pool table/dining table. The blue painted woodwork in that dining room that housed the puke-green liquor cabinet we just recently made mom get rid of. Several different colored tablecloths over the plywood because it was so huge and the biggest one we had wouldn’t cover the giant thing. The brown ceramic plates. The cloth napkins with Santa and the Easter Bunny on them. And . . . for the REAL fancy touch . . . those stupid, expensive, omg-if-you-break-one-of-these-you’re-dead wine glasses from Italy (or likely the Sears catalog). We were poor, for the sake of Pete, and yet, we would have roast duck AND prime rib on that damned pool table. In the SAME MEAL! There would be the best wine, the best bourbon, and some kind of fancy dessert that came out of the kitchen after having been lightly touched by one of those kitchen flame thingys (or likely a cigarette lighter, because that’s what mom had in order to make a beautiful crunch on her crème brulee).

How’s memory lane for you? Have you had enough nog?

Moving on to this year.

2020. No one’s together. Covid ruined everything. We have masks, temperature taking, sanitizing every damned thing we come into contact with. Travel restrictions. Blah. And bah humbug.

FYI, I still expect gifts. At least they haven’t stopped UPS, FedEx and Prime deliveries.

Oh, and that baby sister won’t be getting any brassieres this year from me. Too expensive! Have you priced a bra lately? Wonder if I could find someone to trade those stupid, don’t-break-them-or-you’ll-die wine glasses for a bra? It’s probably an even trade money-wise.

There are a couple things I realize after taking you all down memory lane with me. One, I should have appreciated my baby brother more. I didn’t know he’d grow up to be so amazing. Nobody told me that then. They could have at least help me understand it would get better with a real baby that grows up instead of a doll that I’d throw away one day. And two, we didn’t have much, but we always had a lot. I’m grateful for these memories and I hope you are too. I wouldn’t trade these memories for anything. Except a beach house. I’d trade them all for a beach house.

Somebody have a White Castle and a glass of champagne for me, will you?

Have a holly, jolly . . . you know the rest.