I have many wonderful Christmas memories. My parents loved creating a Christmas Day with plenty of toys, decorations, and a morning that always brought us together as a family. There were never threats that Santa wouldn’t stop at our house or a complaint about an unwanted gift. My mother and father were successful at wowing me every Christmas morning for as long as I lived at home. The first year I was on my own and living in my apartment, I decorated my small, sad-looking tree with photos of Christmas mornings at home. In 1973, driving those six miles from my new apartment to my parent’s house on that first Christmas away from home caused me to wonder if I had made the right decision about leaving home. Christmas mornings would never again be the same.
The Cohen Brother’s Department Store Santa
I always had great transportation thanks to Santa.
My Father wasn’t hard to please on Christmas. Mom and I used to come up with some great presents for him, and we knew when had hit a home run. His favorite saying while opening presents was Always. “Hmmm, just what I always wanted-but, not very badly.” He loved new golf balls or a new putter, and he always wore all of the beautiful ties I picked out for him.
My Dad In his Christmas Shirt From Rosenblums
So many WONDERFUL Christmas Dinners
Christmas day always included a big turkey dinner my Mom would labor over all day for us. She was a great cook. One year my Dad got the idea he wanted to cook a duck on the grill for our Christmas dinner. It was an all-day effort since he didn’t realize how Duck + Fat = Fire and cooking a duck was a full-time job—no more duck experiments after that. Our table always included my favorite, a can of Jellied Cranberry Sauce sliced neatly on Mom’s special cranberry dish. In later years, she made her own, and it was so much better. She always checked with me to see if I needed the canned version. I finally outgrew the can. I wanted to learn how to make my own cranberry sauce and conferred with Mother about her secret recipe. She’d laugh and say, “Nothing special dear, the recipe is right on the back of the cranberry bag - Just leave out some of the sugar!”
We were among the first on our block to have an artificial tree. Unfortunately, my father was allergic to whatever molds and pollen hitchhiked in on the tree, and he either broke out in hives or had a stuffy nose for the duration the tree was in the living room. I also convinced myself I was allergic to real Christmas trees, but George Winterling, the Channel 4 weatherman, told me to WASH THE TREE before bringing it into the house. This worked for me—no more tree phobias.
My mother usually kept her robe or housecoat on while we opened presents, and my father was generally quick to get dressed. Seeing him in a robe usually meant he was sick or hospitalized. Neither one of my parents wore bed clothes or loungewear after 7:30 am. Whereas, I can stay in my pajamas for an entire day and think nothing of it.
The Wrapping Paper Mess Intrigued Spot
Spot had a strange penchant for tinsel. He managed to digest it quite well. One thing missing from our living room on Christmas morning was that big black plastic Hefty bag to keep things neat and tidy. Instead, our entire living room floor was an ankle-high sea of torn Christmas wrapping paper and ribbon in which we had meticulously wrapped our presents. I was usually my father’s wrapping slave and became adept at creating neatly wrapped masterpieces. We always had the latest bow maker, self-making bows, curling ribbons, or the coveted “Sasheen” ribbon that my mother probably purchased at the drugstore after the previous Christmas or at Woolworth’s or Sears’ after-Christmas sale. I got wise to the gift wrap and looked for compensation from my Dad to do his wrapping. He used to have me shop for him and even develop gift ideas for Mom. It was evident to Mom numerous times that I had picked out my father’s gifts for her, and she didn’t appreciate that. Finally, I had to tell him my cover was blown after being questioned by my Mother. I thought my father’s traveling on the road with his job would have allowed him some extra shopping time, but looking back now, he was probably so exhausted from driving all over North Florida and South Georgia, he opted to drive home instead of getting a hotel and going shopping so that he could sleep in his bed. Motels didn’t have Egyptian cotton sheets or mock Sleep Number Beds to entice you to stay the night. A broken “Magic Fingers” at twenty- five cents a pop was about all the luxury available in the sixties.
Two Christmas mornings stand clear in my memory. One when I was only in elementary school and lived in Lakewood, and one when I was seventeen living on Praver Drive. These two Christmas’ were trumped after I had a child of my own and witnessed his disgust on Christmas morning with the mess Santa’s reindeer left on our front porch after we were nice enough to leave carrots out for the reindeer to snack on. Leaving Santa a beer one Christmas Eve to go with his cookies seemed normal. One Christmas, my granddaughter, Leola, woke up to a brand new bicycle under her tree, and the first thing she said to her parents was, “Hey, I’d like to have one of those!”
The Storybook Princess
Imagine the look on my face on Christmas morning at age six or seven, finding what I considered to be (and still do) the most magnificent doll ever created by The Madame Alexander Doll Company. Fashioned after a princess who read stories on The Howdy Doody Show, The Storybook Princess Doll under my Christmas tree with her ball gown crisp and full, waiting there just for me, knocked me drop dead speechless and brought me to tears. I approached this doll from Santa with wonder and disbelief that it was really for me. The doll’s dark and neatly netted hair came with a rhinestone tiara, and in her hand was a small wand or scepter that was missing in the picture above. This wand was used on television to majically bring a story to life. The doll’s gown was bright fuchsia satin and netting with miniature tea roses sewn under the net. It was a large doll, but much larger in my memory than it probably was. I scooped and loved her until her hair fell off and her strung arms and legs sagged loosely from their sockets. Sometime in the 1980s, I finally had to dispose of her due to the smell of her decomposing plastic body and sticky rubber parts that turned gooey and sticky. Rather than see her in her deteriorated state of old age, I threw her away. I had painted her molded fingernails with a red ballpoint pen that had bled into her graceful rubber fingers, turning them into a bloody mess. Naturally, my Storybook Princess had a variety of hair-dos created by me.
Anyone familiar with dolls knows that a Madame Alexander doll wig was never meant to be brushed. My mother stored all my dolls in our oven-like attic, knowing I would not want them thrown away. When she finally gave me the box of dolls, a few had succumbed to the Florida heat. Others fared well, and I enjoy them to this day. Even Suzy, the first doll I had, is still around. She hasn’t changed much (she’s the one on the left with her other buds). I don’t remember getting Suzy on Christmas morning, and she was never very special to me until I was a grown woman. Suzy accompanied me to Hope Haven and was allowed to come home with me. According to my Mother, all the other gifts and toys I received during my stay in the hospital were thrown into the incinerator. For some reason, Suzy survived the nursing staff death squad and is even listed in one of my doll appraisal books. She is pictured and shown with the name “Crying, Baby.” These dolls remind me of the thoughtfulness that went into the gifts from my parents and the endless enjoyment I had playing and imagining with them.
The Christmas Suzy Was Under the Tree
Suzy (left) and my mother’s two dolls
The other Christmas I will never forget was when I was seventeen. Being born two days before Christmas and having a grandmother born on Christmas Eve, she mandated that my birthday gifts never be wrapped in Christmas paper. This particular birthday was slim pickings. Not only did I not have any gifts bestowed on me in the usual birthday manner, but my Mom didn’t apologize for the unusual lack of the enthusiasm I was customarily spoiled with. I think I received a few pairs of much-loved Vanity Fairs from my Aunt Marian, and that was it. I felt that I maybe hadn’t deserved anything since my grades in school were unremarkable, to say the least, and being seventeen, perhaps all of the birthday fuss had ended, and I was too old to expect much. I certainly didn’t say anything about my disappointment, but I sensed in my mother’s eyes and voiced that she knew. Christmas Eve came and went, and the same thing happened on Christmas morning. Wrapping paper was all over the living room floor, and my little terrier Spot was dug in between my hips and the armchair I was stewing in. There were no presents for Claire except those from my relatives in Pittsburgh. It wasn’t until my brother Neil was assigned to clear away that sea of wrapping paper that my Mother asked me to get her slippers and sweater from her bedroom closet. It became evident that I had fallen off Santa’s radar that year, and I was left wondering why I, who had put a lot of thought into the gifts I gave that year, was honored with NOTHING. You are probably guessing by now that the slippers in the bedroom were a ruse to get me to the back of the house to behold a sight only second to that Storybook Princess. Out of the box and all set up waiting for me in my parent’s bedroom was the costly reason I had not received anything for my birthday and Christmas. My parents had bought me a brand new top-of-the-line Singer sewing machine set in a gorgeous walnut sewing cabinet with a bench included. It was a beautiful beige model that would do a zigzag stitch, and I noticed a few other features that were not on my Mother’s old black White Company sewing machine that I had finally convinced her to let me move out of her bedroom into my own. I learned to sew when I was very young, and there was never an end to the knock-off Villager dresses and pants I produced for school clothes. My favorites were skirts, culottes, herringbone wool jumpers, and fully lined wool tattersall pants. My Mother rarely turned down a request for fabric as my sewing made me happy, and I was always confident and comfortable with my school clothes.
A Lifetime of Enjoyment
My Mom Dorothy
Here’s to you, Mom & Dad. Thank you.
Merry Christmas
With Love,
Claire
These are my favorite Christmas memories. I believed in Santa Claus to the point of hearing sleigh bells while trying to sleep on Christmas Eve. My husband makes the same claim. These things are why I enjoy Christmas and all that goes with it. I don’t mind shopping or coming up with ideas for gifts. I don’t attend church like I did when I was young, but instead, I love watching “Christmas at the Vatican” in a dark living room with only my Christmas tree lights on. One of these days, I’d like to return to Rome and witness the crowds at St. Peters on Christmas Eve. Until that happens, you will find me home in my living room, wishing I still had that Madame Alexander doll in mint condition with the box to auction off on eBay. More likely than not, you’ll find me sewing.
Here’s to you, Mom & Dad. Thank you.
Merry Christmas
With Love,
Claire
Christmas Lucky Stars
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