It was a different world, growing up in Winnetka, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago), in the 1950s and 1960s. You could forget about what was happening around the world because we felt safe. Christmas was always a special time and I remember each Christmas fondly.
We had a 45 rpm vinyl single of Stan Freberg’s “Green Christmas” and I’ve played it every year since it was released in 1958, to remind me what Christmas is really all about. Always wondered what atheists do for Christmas.
We lived in this 100 year old house that had an oil furnace that heated water for the radiators all around the house. When it was cold, there were a couple of radiators that had covers on them and you could sit on the covers and warm up.
I remember one year the snow was so high we had to dig tunnels over the sidewalk to get to the street corner. That’s a lot of snow. Any time there was any accumulation of snow, there were the inevitable snowball fights with the neighbors. Get enough snowfall and you made angels in the snow. A little more and it was time to make snowmen. Still more, and you could build forts with pre-made snowballs stuck into cubby holes for rapid fire snowball fights. We did have to make one rule. It there was a warm day and the snow thawed a bit, then a freeze, the snowballs would have a layer of solid ice on the outside. You had to throw those away and make new snowballs.
Christmas meant we got to see the part of the house we never used because it had antique furniture and rugs. A lot of wasted space when I think about it, but we never seemed cramped in our rooms, or the kitchen, or the library. The library was also the living room. The real living room was the whole section of the house we never used. We never lived in it, so it’s hard to call it the living room. You only sat on the furniture when guests were there, and only in nice clothes, usually suits. Then, there was the dining room that was only used on Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. It ran right into the “never lived in” living room and had sliding doors that recessed into the walls, like on Star Trek, but they weren’t motorized.
The Christmas feast allowed us to see china, flatware and glasses that we also saw on Easter and Thanksgiving. But, that doesn’t tell you about the meaning of Christmas, or the experience. Christmas is about being a kid. Even after you come to realize that Santa Claus is an idea, you play along like you don’t know.
Once a kid deduces that the “from Santa” on the present tag was actually Mom, he knows that the presents were hidden around the house, especially in locations they’re not supposed to go, like the parents’ bedroom closet. Most presents will be wrapped, except for those that are so large parents don’t want to wrap them, and they go under the tree when the kids have gone to bed the night before Christmas. Sometimes, Mom and Dad would get wise and hide the big presents in the car trunk. This was when cars had trunks so large you could play a game as to how many people you could stuff inside, like college students would do with telephone booths and the original VW bug. I learned to act really well, early on, to show sufficient surprise when it was something I’d already seen.
The tree went in an windowed alcove at the front of the house in the non-living living room. It was right by a radiator, so we had to keep putting water in the tree stand, sometimes several times a day. All the ornaments were kept in wine and liquor bottle boxes with the cardboard inserts separating the bottles, and wrapped in tissue paper so they didn’t break. Like everything else seasonal, they were kept in the attic. One time, in getting the boxes down, going up and down the folding ladder that swung up into the ceiling, I came across a live cannon shell sitting on a support beam at the side of the house, that had a manufacturing date of 1909 on it. My brother Dan’l thinks it was a 50mm shell, I remember it more like 100mm. It was big and scary. My parents bought the house in 1957, and it was there when we moved in. So much for complete house inspections in those days. I let my Dad know about it and it disappeared.
We didn’t have pets (other than hamsters) because my mother was supposedly allergic to fur, so we used tinsel on the Christmas tree that dogs and cats would eat. The original tinsel we used had lead in it and you could feel the weight. As it disintegrated over the years we switched to the mylar plastic type. One year we got Wham-O air blasters for Christmas and the tree was great for target practice as you could see the tinsel move from the blast of air. Every year after that we got out the blasters once the Christmas tree went up. Dan’l still has his blaster, almost 50 years later. Mine broke.
We used the same ornaments each year and occasionally bought new ones as some of the old ones broke. I still have a number of those original ornaments, still use them. They mean something.
Christmas morning was a regular tradition of torture. We weren’t allowed to go see what was under the tree until we’d had a filling breakfast which always took too long. Every morsel on the plate had to disappear on everybody’s plate before we could go. If Christmas was on a Sunday, we even had to go to church first.
I know people that meticulously undo every piece of scotch tape and neatly fold all the wrapping paper even though it’s all going to get thrown out. We didn’t do that. The goal was to see how fast you could rip off the wrapping paper to find out what was inside. Even then, tricks were played on us with boxes that used to hold something else entirely. Sometimes, we would play tricks on our parents with their presents by taking a small thing and putting it in a very large box, or putting a box inside a box, nesting them like Russian Matroysckas dolls.
Being a kid at heart with the exuberance, the energy, the mind of a child, is how to enjoy the Christmas season. I’m like Peter Pan. I’ll never grow up.
We all have different memories of Christmas, but we should all have the same feelings about what Christmas is about. It’s about giving, about helping those in need, without expecting anything in return. No, actually, those are traditions that have been created. Good traditions. Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. That’s what Stan Freberg tells me, every year.