Christmas is Coming
Christmas spirit is in the air once again, heralding the eventual arrival of the Big Day itself. When I was a kid, the “countdown” to Christmas nearly drove me batty. “It won’t EVER get here,” I used to wail to my mom. She said: “Be good. Santa is watching.”
It was quite hard to be good back then. And the closer the Big Day came, the “gooder” I had to be. Had to stop whatever I was doing, especially if it was fun. That was no fun. But Christmas always came, and somehow Santa always thought I’d done okay enough to leave something under the tree.
Christmas when I was growing up in Fresno was a magical time. Fulton Street downtown was alive and well, with legendary merchants like Montgomery Ward, Roos/Atkins and Penney’s, all dressing up their windows with colorful displays of trees and lights and snow-filled scenes of fantasy. Giant Christmas bows were strung across Fulton.
Out north, Christmas Tree Lane dazzled, with hundreds of trees decorated with thousands of lights. Families in car after car – with headlights dimmed – slowly, oh-so-slowly, drove their way up Van Ness Boulevard to take it all in. It was heavenly – all of it.
Back then, residents in lots of neighborhoods showed their holiday spirit by putting up lights or other outdoor displays. I bought my first set of GE outdoor lights at the nearby five-and-dime store on McKinley Avenue – and put them on the big juniper bush in front of our house. I probably was in junior high when I did it.
And that Christmas, someone came along and unscrewed some of those bulbs and threw them hard enough on our walkway to break them. Stupid kids, I guess.
But that did not stop me – and every year since that first one, I’ve put Christmas lights on – or in front of – whatever house we were living in. Yep – I do it here in Paso Robles, too. That’s 55 years of putting up lights – and still counting, thankfully.
We didn’t have much money when I was growing up, and the first Christmas tree I remember was the one I brought home from kindergarten on the last day of school at Fremont Elementary before the holiday break. But what we lacked in money, we made up for in food.
We always had the grandmas and Uncle Jerry over for Christmas Day lunch – a giant affair that Mom had gotten up before dawn to prepare. Turkey, stuffed. Ham. Potatoes. Gravy. Cranberries. Carrots. And more. Much more. I can’t remember all of it, but I will never forget sitting at that table, decades ago, with my German-speaking grandmas and Uncle Jerry.
It was magical. I thought, the way young kids think, that it would last forever. Of course, it couldn’t – and it didn’t.
Fast-forward a half-century, in the blink of an eye. These days, the run-up to Christmas makes me feel better than the actual event. For one thing, I love Christmas weather around these parts. Nights as brisk as great expectations.
Around our neighborhood here – like my neighborhood in Fresno so long ago – colorful outdoor lights gleam on trees and shrubs. In lighted windows, sparkling Christmas trees shine. Downtown, the park’s trees glimmer at night with thousands of lighted bulbs. Store windows show off holiday motifs.
Christmas music is already on the radio – at least, on the satellite radio in our car. When we were first married, we had a record player and plenty of Christmas platters from the big boys – Crosby, Nat, Sinatra.
Way back then, we thought a fine way to spend a Christmastime evening was to make hot chocolate, spin some records and turn off the living room lights, leaving on only the colorful bulbs from our tree. Nothing better than hot chocolate and warm Christmas music on a frosty night.
Those Christmas records from long ago are long-gone – replaced, over the years, by CD’s of holiday music by those same “big guys,” as well as by Tony Bennett, Barry Manilow, Rod Stewart, Mel Torme – you get the idea. But, alas, the only CD player we still have resides in our garage. And even if I made a cup of hot chocolate tonight, for some reason Sharon would refuse to take it into our chilly garage to listen to the glorious Sounds of the Season. Ah, well.
So we stay inside our living room, and TV has to deliver the Christmas magic. And, indeed, soon enough, Scrooge will be back, astounding the Cratchits with the turn of his flinty heart. And some TV shows might even feature Christmas themes – though, truth to tell, I don’t watch many TV shows these days except ones that are somewhat ancient – the ones I enjoyed when I was growing up and older.
And no holiday TV show today can hold a candle to the ones that Crosby and Hope and Andy Williams and Perry Como put on. Things change, darn it.
Another thing that’s changed is the concept of sending Christmas cards. Those cards were the social status symbols of our times when we were newly marrieds. And time was, it was my job to make sure we had a piece of that “status.” I accepted that responsibility with unreserved pleasure.
I used to love creating a list of people who would receive our holiday greetings. I’d print their names neatly on a three-by-five index card – then trek to whichever store carried Hallmark cards (because I wanted to, as Hallmark’s TV ads said back then, “send the very best.”)
Then I’d labor for hours, writing personal messages into the dozens of cards we’d send, placing them into envelopes, addressing those envelopes, and hoping the addresses matched the names I’d just written on the cards that were now inside.
And for years, we received cards from almost everyone we had sent one to. Sometimes their cards cost more than ours, but no matter. At least, not much of a matter. It was the thought that counted. We would display each and every card we received. But sometime awhile back, those return cards dwindled to almost nothing, and I finally stopped sending our own cards, cold-turkey. Things change, darn it.
But we still try to keep Hallmark in our lives during this festive season. Yes, we watch those formulaic two-hour Christmas-themed movies on that cable channel the card-maker runs. These modern flicks are by no means of the same quality that Hallmark used to feature during its decades-long “Hall of Fame” movies that had really big-name stars and that aired on really big-time networks like CBS and ABC.
No, these new Christmas video baubles feature wanna-be actors and actresses – or ones who used to be Prime Time but no longer are – in scripts that always start and end the same predictable way.
No matter. Sharon loves them, and because I love having a peaceful living room (and garage) – especially at this sacred time of year – I do, too. Things change, darn it.
But something that has never changed about the 70 Christmases that have come and gone during my lifetime is that essential message – Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men. Even if we think about that only one day a year, it makes Christmas – with all its pressures and stresses and expectations – worth it. In spades. Merry Christmas, all.