Christmas Parties
When I was a very young child, our Christmas Eve always began with a trip to my great-grandmother's house to have Christmas with the Thurman side of the family. Mama Thurman was a widow and lived in a small neighborhood in Houston in a teeny tiny wood frame house. I think it was a 2 bedroom, 1 bath home with an eat-in kitchen and a small living room. We would gather together and there would be cookies and punch and cake. Everyone would bring a gift for Mama Thurman. I remember one year my mother bought her a little musical angel for her gift. She rotated on her base and played "Silent Night". Mama Thurman loved her. Years later, I got that little angel back and she still played so sweetly. She was always precious memory to me.
I will never know how all of us managed to cram inside of that little house! The women tended to congregate in the kitchen and the living room. I remember Mama Thurman sitting in her chair in the living room and everyone would take turns sitting near her to give her a present and visit a minute. I think most of the menfolk, after an obligatory 10 minute meet-and-greet inside the house, went out back to the yard (when the weather wasn't too cold or wet) to talk and pass a bottle around. I know that my dad often got started on his Christmas "cheer" pretty early in the evening, and I'm pretty sure my southern Baptist Mama Thurman didn't allow any drinking inside the house. I even remember one Christmas Eve I found my dad passed out, snoring on one of Mama Thurman's chenille bedspreads in the spare bedroom. Oooh, was my mother mad at him that year! I don't think he ever did that again.
While there were many, many Thurman aunts and uncles, it seemed there were never many cousins my age. So while it was exciting to be at a party, we didn't do a gift exchange and I was always ready to leave fairly quickly after we arrived.
After we had Christmas with the Thurman family, it was time to have Christmas with the Gibson family. I do remember some really big parties when I was very, very young. We were a large family with many aunts, uncles, and cousins of all ages. I remember going to various cousins' houses for these big parties, and I know we had one such gathering at our house one Christmas Eve. I remember the women were all so pretty in their party dresses of shiny satin or silk taffeta skirts! Their waists were narrow and belted; the skirts were big and wide, stiff with starch and some wore petticoats that made rustling sounds when they swished by you. All the women wore heels and nylons, too. It was a very dressy affair for them, although I don't remember the men being in full suits. I do remember lots of white dress shirts and ties, but I don't remember the men wearing suit jackets.
The children would also be dressed up in their Christmas best. Little girls wore dresses or jumpers made of red or green velvet or maybe black velvet embellished with tiny sparkling rhinestones. Crisp white blouses with Peter Pan collars, ruffled white ankle socks and shiny black patent leather shoes were de rigueur, of course. Our hair was tightly curled and ruthlessly pulled up high in the back with a big bow, ringlets falling like waterfalls from a crown. Boys would be dressed in their best dark slacks, crisply creased, with short sleeved starched white shirts and little plaid bow ties. The boys' hair would be cut neat and short, combed stiff with Brylcreem, or perhaps a dab of mom's Dippity Do. There were no jeans and tee shirts at parties in the sixties! We were all dressed to the nines, as they said back then.
I think hi-balls must have been the drink of choice back then. I remember lots of clinking ice cubes in short, thick-bottomed glasses. I remember the smell and fizz of 7-Up being used as a mixer, but funny, but I don't remember sodas or Cokes ever being offered as drink choices, not even for the kids. People were loud and laughing and excitement fairly shimmered in the air, sparked no doubt by the drops of flowing Christmas cheer! I do remember we had a set of champagne glasses at our house, but I never remember the sound of popping corks. I never saw a bottle of wine in anyone's house. Heavy dark brown beer bottles were always around though. And there was always a punch bowl with lime sherbet punch made with ginger ale for us kids.
There was more food at the big Gibson family parties on Christmas Eve. In addition to tables full of pies, cakes, cookies, and punch, I remember hot hors d'oeuvres and dips and chips. Nuts, olives and pickles of all kinds were set in bowls all around the living rooms, as well as lots of little pillow shaped pastel butter mints. Stalks of green celery filled with orange pimiento cheese seemed to be ever-present as well. But I never remember any ethnic foods being offered. There was no Tex Mex, no Italian, no Chinese foods on display. (In fact, I was sixteen before I ever even tasted a pizza! But that's another story . . .)
At some point though, these traditions fell away. Mama Thurman gave up living on her own in her little house and the Thurman Family Christmas party disappeared. I think the Gibsons must all have agreed that the family was just too big for any one person to host all of us in their house. And we morphed into smaller more easily managed groups.
My own family began to gather every Christmas Eve at either our home or one of my dad's siblings. The sisters-in-law took turns hosting each year. Then on Christmas Day we would gather at my grandparent's home. None of our houses were very large, but they always seemed to be more than adequate to host our family gatherings. At our largest census, we were 15 in all: 8 adults and 7 kids.
Christmas Eve was a time of great fun for all of us cousins. We would play together and tell stories of what we hoped Santa would bring. We would run outside to look at the Christmas lights and check for Santa's sleigh. Many times we would stay up way past our bedtime, which was cause for excitement in and of itself! The grownups would talk and laugh, too, drinking and eating and enjoying each other's company. I remember the absolute joy of those evenings, knowing I was loved and accepted, knowing I belonged in my family.
We always did a small gift exchange as well. The adults would "draw names" at Thanksgiving, and then exchange presents on Christmas Eve. The cousins all bought a gift for each cousin. I remember my mom was always a bit "put out" every year by this process. I was an only child and my cousins were all in sets of three. Mom would always quietly tell me that while THEY only had to buy one present for me, SHE had to buy SIX. My grandparents would also give their gifts out on Christmas Eve. Their presents were never big or lavish, but no one cared. It was the thought that counted!
As we grew older, more awareness of family dynamics emerged. I was an only child, and of course my cousins all had brothers and sisters, a fact that I envied at times. I was also aware that my cousins all had other grandparents and families that they visited on Christmas. But for some reason, I never questioned the fact that I only had one set of grandparents. That all changed when I was about 10 years old. My mom's parents, after a 10-year estrangement, suddenly decided that they wanted to make up. It was quite a shock to discover that I had another side to my family. My mom was also an only child, so it was just my Grandma and Grandpa Claussen. And I didn't like them!
There are complicated reasons behind family estrangements. I won't go into all of them here. But all of a sudden our Christmas Day routine changed. Now, after having "Santa Claus" at our house in the mornings, we had to go over to my new grandparents' house before we could go to my "real" grandparents for Christmas dinner. We would sit in their little house and listen to my grandmother play something or other the organ. (If it was a Christmas carol, I couldn't recognize it.) There would be drinks and snacks to eat. And then they would pass out the presents. As selfish as it sounds now, that was the only part of the whole visit that I liked. Being the only grandchild, and having missed out on the first 10 years of my life, my grandparents tried to make up for it with lavish gifts. It was fun, but it didn't make me like them any better. I was always so relieved when the visit was over.
But in spite of all the presents that arrived on Christmas Day, Christmas Eve remained the high point of the whole celebration to me. Our family parties were exciting and magical. Once we were old enough, we cousins often were allowed to play card games or dominos with the grownups at the kitchen table. And music was always a big part of our celebration as well. We sang all the Christmas carols we knew over and over again each year. As children in the sixties, we had record players and vinyl records. My favorite was Christmas With the Chipmunks! I loved that album. I can still sing every song on there. The anticipation of Christmas morning ran high, almost eclipsing the actual event. The grown ups were happy and in good moods (unlike sometimes on Christmas morning when a lack of sleep and an excess of Christmas cheer made them slightly grumpy!), teasing and playing with us. The night literally rang with laughter and song.
Eventually though the heads of the children would begin to droop and heavy eyelids fluttered closed. We would disperse to our own houses, to be carried in from backseats of cars and gently tucked up in our beds, awaiting the arrival of Santa the next morning. And Christmas Eve would close silently, quietly, with peace in our souls.
Vickie
Aunt Jeannie's First Baby Doll
The holidays, especially Christmas, kept Mama busy. Because she baked pies, cakes, and breads for a few of the local restaurants, the holidays increased the demand for her baked goods so she made more money, starting right before Thanksgiving. Also the town's folks paid Mama to do their baking too, so she stayed busy baking, made money, and the women who weren't as good at baking were still able to serve homemade baked goods for their families. Between the money she made baking and her S&H, and Gold Bond stamps that she collected all year, she had a little extra money to buy us a few things for Christmas. So the holidays always brought a lot of activity to our house with folks coming and going and the smells of all the good food Mama baked.
Every year from the time I was a little bitty girl until my mother died, I always looked for proof that Santa existed. I tried to see him delivering the toys, and I looked out of our window hoping to see him fly by. But there was the one Christmas that I heard Santa and his reindeer. I was still pretty young because I remember that my older sisters were dating the boys who would eventually become their husbands. That was the last Christmas that they were all still living at home, so I was probably about 3 or 4. One of my older brothers still lived at home too and Christmas, that year, was going to include all of my brothers and sisters because my older brother and his wife and their two kids would be spending Christmas with us. The excitement at our house was so thick you could cut it with a knife. My mama was beside herself with excitement. We also knew that her brothers were all coming home to see our grandparents and they would surely come visit us too.
We always opened our gifts on Christmas Eve, probably a result of Mama having so many kids who could not wait one more day. There we all were in our little house and Mama was running bath water for all of us little kids, and I kept asking where Santa was and Mama said, well, he will be here soon. Then, one of the older girls came running in and said, listen, so we all got very quiet and then Mama said, I think I hear something on the house and I said, Santa, and she said, let's hurry but be very quiet so we don't run off the reindeer...and we hurried and Mama dried each of us little kids and those who could dressed themselves, and the two babies, my niece and my sister, were dressed by Mama and my older sister and then, we heard sleigh bells and a ho ho ho and we all ran screaming into the living room and there around the tree were all kinds of beautifully wrapped gifts and our socks were stretched full of oranges and apples and nuts and candy...and all of us kids, with our eyes wide open, stood while my brother passed out our gifts and we obediently waited until all the gifts were given out and then we ripped away the paper.
I remember opening box after box and finding new pajamas, slippers, underwear, socks, and then I only had two wrapped gifts left and I thought Santa must have forgotten that I was a little girl and needed a toy. I carefully opened the next to the last box and there it was....a beautiful set of dishes with little forks and knives and spoons. There were plates and cups and bowls. Each piece of the dishes were angled into the box and was protected by the plastic lid of the box. I could hardly believe my eyes and forgot that I had another box left. I didn't think I should even open the dishes because they were so pretty in the box...Jeannie Irene (that's what my brothers called me) you better open that last present. I didn't want to put my dishes down but I gently set them aside while I opened the last gift and there she was. The baby doll that would be my very best friend for so many years. I squealed with excitement and unlike the dishes, I wanted to get her out of her box, so my older brother used his pocket knife to release the doll from the box. She was a beautiful baby with no hair and her eyes opened and closed. She had her own diaper and diaper bag, a little outfit that she was wearing, and more clothes and booties and a blanket and a bottle. I forgot everyone in the room while I gently held her and thought she was the most beautiful baby in the world. I thought I must have been the best little girl in the world and then Mama said, Look here Sis. I looked over where she stood and she had a doll cradle that was full of doll clothes and blankets and a pillow. I didn't care if the doll cradle had once been a wooden crate that potatoes had come in or that all the doll clothes were made from flour sacks or scraps of material Mama got from the shirt factory. When my baby sister and niece both wanted to put their little dolls in my doll crib, I made room for those dollies too.
I had that baby doll until I was grown and only parted with her when one of my sister's girls saw her and loved her as much as I had loved her. I gave her the doll, the clothes, and even the wooden crate bed. The other day, my niece sent me a text with a picture attached and it said, hey, Aunt Jeannie, look real close at the doll that Marlie Joe is holding. There she was, my beautiful baby that had been my best friend. My niece said, hey, my girls played with that doll for years and then the other day, I got a box of old toys out of the attic and there she was and when my granddaughter saw her, she had to have her. If you want, I'll give her to Baby Girl. I really wanted to do that, you know, give my granddaughter my old doll but that dolly hasn't been mine for over 45 or so years...you keep her with your girls, I said. Make sure they all know she was mine first...she texted me another picture and on the back of the doll, written in permanent ink....Aunt Jeannie's first baby doll.
When I was a little girl Christmas was the most exciting time of all! I really loved the decorating, the music, the smells, and the family. We had our family, my self and three brothers, my Grandma and Grandpa, and my Uncle Alan (who was the same age as my older brothers). My little brother Jon and I were close in age so most of the fun times we had together. We always had the drive to see houses lit up and every year would pick our tree at the Boy Scout tree lot. We usually got a noble fir which had spaces between the branches so you could hang ornaments and icicles more easily. We put it in the front corner of our living room so you could see it through the windows. Sometimes we would use stencils and spray flock our windows. One Christmas my Dad bought the family a big present...It was one of the very first color TVs. It was such a new invention that there weren't and color programs for the most part. But that night there was... It was Red Skelton- his Christmas show. That was an exciting night for all of us! I don't remember too much about opening presents except that there were a lot of them, more for my little brother and I. It as a mixture of clothes and toys. Santa would bring something big for each of us, a bike, or nice doll. I can still remember Jon's mixed feelings about his gifts. He got boy gifts but he really wanted what I got. Even though we were young I felt sad for him. It always let him share my toys. One year I got the most special gift, a pink cardboard kitchen! There was a refrigerator, stove, and sink. Jon and I played house so many times with those appliances.
As we grew older and were living through the 60's our Christmas decor changed, as well as our furniture...we had a new style, I think it was called Danish Modern. Our Christmas tree looked like foil. The branches had colors at the end that corresponded with length. The trunk was a dowel with holes and you inserted each branch into the right colored hole, starting at the bottom and moving to the top of the tree. Then you put on the glass bulbs- ours were hot pink. The last step was plugging in the light and aiming it toward the tree. It went around and around in a cycle of red, green, blue, and yellow I think. We lived an hours drive from San Francisco and our Christmas was hippie perfect!
In the early 70's we were back to the traditional holiday. In 1972 my Dad spent Christmas in the hospital. He had a tiny flocked tree with colored lights and he didn't want us kids to come into the hospital. We waved at him in the hospital window. Mom said that he was afraid to see us because he couldn't stop crying. He had had a massive heart attack and he thought he was going to die, but he just couldn't face telling us goodbye. That was a sad Christmas. That was also our first Christmas without Grandma. She had died in October of a stroke while playing on a slot machine in Reno. All of a sudden I had been introduced to the sadness that can come at the holidays. Of course I have learned that once the losses start, the sadness becomes part of the holiday every year. My Dad lived a few more years, but died in 1976, and my little brother Jon died of AIDS in 1987 at the age of 34. The year Jon died my Christmas was all grief. I would be in a fog in the rush of shoppers and be wondering ho hey could be happy. That was my hardest Christmas. I have a healthy dose of grief each Christmas since they both died. I think that the strongest memories I have are locked up with my brother and now matter how happy I am about Christmas a smell, a sound, a taste, anything you can imagine will create a flood of memories and some tears. I think it will be that way for the rest of my life. I am ok with it... Tears are a part of me that I have made peace with I guess. I have so much empathy for older people...losing loved ones is very hard. And at the holidays the hole feels bigger. I am usually quite happy though, and I do love most of the traditions.
This is such a bittersweet time of year. I love all the fun memories you posted, especially the "hippy christmas". Quite the visual! But I am so with you on the grief. As we get older and lose more and more loved ones, it's just harder and harder to get through it without emotions. Hugs to you.
________
137 pounds lost - from a 24/26W to a size 8/10!
I am just loving reading about your Christmas traditions, y'all. This is a bittersweet time of year but I do want to share some of my own sweet memories.
I am of Italian descent. Both my mother and my father's parents emigrated from Italy. We embodied nearly every stereotype of Italian families, minus the mafia stuff. Or at least, we did during MY childhood!
Christmas Eve was huge for us, as big a holiday (if not bigger) than Christmas. We were always closer to my mother's side of the family, probably because everyone in her family lived within 1 mile of each other. Even so, my mother was the oldest in her family and her parents - my Nana and Grampa Gentile - would spend Christmas Eve with us. I should say, my grandparents were honestly revered by the entire family. Every single grandkid thought they were the "favorite" - I don't know how they managed it, but they made each of us feel as if we were indeed the favorite!! To this day, each of my cousins and siblings adore our grandparents and miss them. Anyway, my mother would make two HUGE vats of tomato sauce: one with meat (for Christmas Day) and the other with seafood (for Christmas Eve). My father was a barber so we weren't very rich, but if Dad had a good season, we would have lobster in the Christmas Eve sauce. Oh, yum yum yum! Nana and Grampa would come to the door at 5 on the dot. Nana was 4 foot 6" (no exaggeration) and she would carry in a huge tray - bigger than her - of filet of sole oregenata; a layer of thin white fish baked with with tomato sauce and oregano seasoning. My sisters and I called it "pizza fish" because, it looked and tasted like pizza! Anyway, my sisters, parents and grandparents would eat dinner and then we would get to open one gift each. Strategically, this gift was always the Christmas PJ's! All 4 sisters would then change into our PJ's. I was the youngest and the only one who believed in Santa as a child but my sisters, who were 12 - 15 years older, played the parts perfectly and dressed for "bed" with me. So on went the PJ's and then my Nana would some upstairs and sing Silent Night with us in Italian, and tell us bedtime stories about her childhood Christmases in Sicily.
Excuse me while I wipe a tear. That is a precious memory.
Anyway, Nana and Grampa would leave for Midnight Mass and the rest of us went to bed. (We always went to church as a family, every Sunday, and would go to mass on Christmas morning while I still believed in Santa.) Once I fell asleep on christmas, my siblings and parents would make the Christmas Magic happen - presents would magically appear and I would wake up the following morning to find a transformed home with presents, cookies, and all sorts of stuff my Mother had hidden for weeks.
Christmas Day was spent at my grandparents house, with EVERYONE in the family - Aunts, Uncles, Cousins. Grampa was a musician with a wedding and party band - he played accordion (I told you we were stereotypical) and sang, too. Though his band played every weekend and holiday, he NEVER played on Christmas Eve nor Christmas Day. Even so, we would have a huge dinner and party at Nana and Grampa's, and Grampa always pulled out the Accordion for sing alongs. We would have music and dancing and it was glorious. Everyone I loved, everything I loved, all in one place at one time. Gosh we were blessed!! (We didn't know how much we were blessed!!)
Here's a true story: one Christmas Eve when I was about 4 or 5 or so, "Santa had a little accident."
Dad (who had had a few too many hi-balls at dinner) fell down the attic stairs while retrieving the Christmas Presents from their hiding place. Of course I woke up and started running down the hall to see what happened! Well my mother grabbed me in the hallway to keep me from seeing, but I heard my father groaning, and my sisters hysterical in laughter. My mother just kept yelling "It's ok, Santa had a little accident! Just go back to sleep!" Dad was yelling and cursing and my sisters were laughing (he wasn't badly hurt). I was really little but it was obvious that Daddy brought in the gifts. Basically, the jig was up. Daddy is Santa. It seemed like the end to me! I was devastated!
Somehow - I don't know how - my sisters got me back to bed, and I cried myself to sleep. And then, who knows how much later, my sister Linda (who shared a room with me) woke me up whispering - "listen! listen! What's that? "
I heard scraping on the roof top over our bedroom. Lots of stomping, bells jingling, and a booming "HO HO HO! HO HO HO!" I jumped up and ran into the hall, where my father was in his PJ's, acting like he had just been woken up. He was saying "what's all that noise?" Wait, if Daddy is standing here and someone is on the roof booming HO HO HO then - Daddy wasn't Santa! Mom was waving out the front windows yelling "see you next year!" My sister Linda - who was in on this whole thing but played it great - was screaming "oh my God it's SANTA! Let's go see him!" So we ran up to the attic - because that's where Santa had his accident, so he must be up there! And there in the attic there was snow, boot prints, all sorts of "remnants" of Santa's visit. The attic window was partly open. A piece of red velvet was caught in the window sill. Linda dragged me to the window and we saw, on the roof outside the window, boot prints and what looked like sleigh tracks. But it was otherwise a silent and snowing night. Seems we had just missed him!
It was PERFECT I tell you. Perfect!! Nearly 50 years later I remember every detail like it happened yesterday.
So we ran to the living room, where the gifts were displayed, a note from Santa telling us that he would be fine and apologizing for the racket. Christmas proceeded and I was a devoted Santa believer, for a few more years at least.
The reality is, my sisters took it upon themselves to stage the most perfect Santa visit ever. My second oldest sister Shirley was the athletic one in the family, so she was out on the roof in the middle of the night, in the snow, jumping around in boots, waving bells, and yelling HO HO HO. She and my oldest sister Karen lugged the flexible flyer sled up to the rooftop to make the tracks. My sister Linda thought of all the little details like the torn velvet and a lone jingle bell left behind (which I still have to this day), and my Mom improvised the waving good bye part.
My childhood was far from idyllic, I assure you, but that Christmas Eve so long ago was absolute PERFECTION. I was given the best gift ever. The gift of love and joy and laughter. It's the gift that keeps on giving, year after year. Christmas will always be special to me - and the year of Santa's Little Accident was the absolute best.
TRUE STORY folks! Hope you enjoyed it!! and MERRY CHRISTMAS! HO HO HO!!
________
137 pounds lost - from a 24/26W to a size 8/10!
