When I saw the quote from Laura Ingalls Wilder about childhood memories, it got me thinking about Christmas during my childhood. Every child should be able to experience the magic of the season—Santa Claus bringing gifts, Christmas programs at church and school, baking Christmas cookies—traditions that become so ingrained that they carry them into adulthood to pass on to their own children.
Some say the holidays have changed over the years, and I know to a certain degree that is true, but some things remain the same. Let’s start with the most essential part of decorating: the Christmas tree. In my childhood, we went to the Christmas tree farm. After tromping through snow and checking out several trees, we finally selected one that met my mother’s approval. My dad would cut it down, haul it back to the car, tie it to the roof, and we drove home.
The debate over which tree to select always involved a discussion wherein my mother didn’t think it was tall enough or full enough, and my dad claimed it was too large and wouldn’t fit. We wouldn’t know for a while because we usually purchased it early in the month. The tree went into a bucket of water in the garage to keep it from drying out until a week before Christmas. That is when it was carried into the house and placed in the stand. Dad usually had to cut more off the base for it to clear the ceiling. One year, my mother kept thinking all the trees were too skinny. The one we brought home was so big around it took a massive chunk out of the living room.
Christmas, age one
My mother always insisted the tree sit in the living room for 24 hours to let the branches drop before we began decorating. The large, hot lights were strung on before we hung ornaments. Ornament placement was a procedure taught by my mother. Stand back from the tree and look for a spot needing an ornament. Once all the ornaments were on the tree, the garland and tinsel were applied. The trees of my childhood had a lot of sparkle, but the ornaments couldn’t be easily seen through all the add-ons.
Eventually, we went to an artificial tree, which allowed us to put it up earlier, and there wasn’t a rush to get it down after the holiday due to dry, dropping needles. That brought a switch to the small, cool bulbs, and we eliminated garland and tinsel. Now, our ornaments were easily seen, which, over time, I grew to prefer. Photos of trees with tinsel still make me smile with memories of days gone by.
When Hallmark began their yearly dated ornaments, my mother started a tradition of purchasing a dated ornament each year for my sister and me. When I married, I had a wonderful collection of ornaments for my tree. I continued the tradition with my own children and now my grandchildren. Although I sold most of my ornaments in an estate sale when I left my home to live and travel full time in a motorhome, I have been buying some ornaments, plus making photo ornaments of places I visit. Someday, when I stop traveling, I will once again have a Christmas tree and decorate it with my travel memories.
My mother did not enjoy baking, but every year, she made sugar cookies cut into shapes for my sister and me to decorate. As a child, I loved the red cinnamon candies, so I used them for the bell clappers, reindeer noses, and plenty when decorating Christmas trees. When my kids were little, we also decorated sugar cookies, and they were also heavy-handed with red cinnamon dots. To this day, I love sugar cookies, especially at Christmas time.
Notice the tinsel on the Christmas tree
While I don’t have a lot of other Christmas tradition memories, we always went “up north,” meaning to Traverse City, Michigan, to visit both sets of grandparents during the holidays. We stayed with my maternal grandparents and would go to the tree lot to purchase and decorate a tree for their house. One year, my dad laid the tree we bought between the snowmobiles on the trailer. As he was driving, he suddenly realized the tree was missing! We never found it as we returned to the tree lot; the guy running the lot gave us our next tree for free. I remember my dad saying he hoped whoever picked it up couldn’t afford one.
When it comes to childhood memories, who can forget the splendor of seeing the tree on Christmas morning with all the gifts below it and stockings full of goodies. The beauty of the gifts sparkling under the lights, the anticipation of what is inside each wrapped package that Santa brought. That is the magic of Christmas, the memories of childhood.
As an adult, it is the anticipation of seeing your child’s face when they experience the season’s magic and the pleasure of knowing you made it possible. That is because Santa lives in every one of us; we create the magic.
Let me here about some of your magical Christmas memories in the comment box below.
Along with tree decorating traditions, most of us grew up with the magic of Santa Clause. Saint Nicholas was a Christian holy person believed to have lived in the third century, who became known as a protector of children. The bearded, jolly Santa dressed in red that first appeared in Clement Moore’s A Visit from Saint Nicholas in 1820. Thomas Nast was an artist who’s first major depiction of Santa Claus in Harper’s Weekly in 1886 created the image we envision today. Nast contributed 33 Christmas drawings to Harper’s Weekly between 1863 to 1886, and Santa is seen or referenced in all but one. It is Nast who was instrumental in standardizing a national image of a jolly, kind and portly Santa dressed in a red, fur-trimmed suit delivering toys from his North Pole workshop.
We would sit on the porch playing jacks. At one time I was able to handle pick-ups of 20 jacks at a time. We played a lot. Do kids play jacks anymore? Are they even available to purchase? Ours were tiny metal jacks with a small red ball. What about hula hoops and pogo sticks? With a swing of the hips your hula hoop could be forced up to the neck or down to the knees and back to the waste. Regular jump rope, Chinese jump rope, and hop scotch kept us busy.
Back then most people did not have air conditioning. Windows were open, fans were used. One strong childhood summer memory does not involve me but my father. He would mow the lawn and then afterward watch the ball game on TV. One of my favorite scents and sounds of summer is the combination of fresh mowed grass and a baseball ball game on the TV or radio.
When you are born a lover of the written word it never goes away, it just transitions over time. Writing and literature go hand-in-hand. My high school classes were filled with literature…classes in modern short stories, mysteries, American literature, Advanced Grammar and Composition, and more. When I went back to college in 2010 one of my favorite classes was public speaking because I was writing whatever I chose to talk about. It was fun!
I write in many formats. I titled this blog Life is a Melting Pot because my life is a jumble of various activities and I like to write about whatever strikes me at the moment. This blog is not the only regular writing I do. For the past eight years I have held the position of newsletter editor of Bluewater Family Backgrounds, a publication of the St. Clair County Family History Group. As the editor I gather content and put together the entire newsletter, writing some articles that go into it. I have been writing a column called “Who AM I?” for the past five and one-half years for The Lakeshore Guardian, and local free publication. The column is on genealogy. I am in my fourth year as an opinion columnist for our local newspaper, The Times Herald. I select my topics and how often I write a column, frequently selecting topics that can be a bit controversial. Finally, my daytime job is that of Paralegal in which I spend my days doing legal writing. All of the areas in which I write are slightly different and I enjoy each one.
I belong to a Freelance Writer’s Group and at the meetings I see a variety of people with a wide range of interests. The group includes people who write children’s stories, adult novels, travel columns, science fiction, non-fiction, memoir, and more. We all have one thing in common…we love to write! Writers are like any other type of artist, they are imaginative, creative, passionate about their art, well-read, self-promoters and self-starters. Writing is something you do solo; you have to be motivated to write or you will never succeed. Writers love words, language, and people watching. Everything is a potential story or scene. If you spend much time with a writer you may find yourself popping up in their stories, blogs, or columns. You may not be there in name, but you will likely recognize a scene in which you have lived.
--- LIFE IS A MELTING POT --- Grace Grogan...Writer, Photographer 