Can you feel it? Something is different, very different. It only happens once a year and it is magical. I don’t know about you but every Christmas Eve something changes. I’ve never been able to put my finger on it but it’s palatable. This year it could be the remnants of the 14 inch snowfall we had two days ago. Santa will definitely be maneuvering through the white stuff in Colorado tonight. Maybe it’s the wrapped presents under the tree or the neighbors stopping by with holiday goodies. Maybe it’s the smell the glazed ham or the stuffing baking in the oven while the cranberries are popping on the stove. Maybe its the anticipation of the ghosts visiting Ebenezer Scrooge or Clarence getting his wings or Bing once again singing White Christmas. I’m not exactly sure why today always seems so different but it does.
Santa
People are rushing but they’re smiling and offering holiday greetings. Scores of people are wearing Santa hats and reindeer antlers, lighted necklaces and a wide variety of tacky holiday sweaters and socks. There’s last minute shopping for gifts, food and booze all in anticipation of the evening to come. For some families the main celebration is on Christmas Eve, for others its Christmas Day and some brave souls celebrate both in earnest. But regardless of the wide variety of traditions and beliefs, it all begins to start feeling different today. Why?
As I was traveling out and about today I gave that some serious thought. Here I was in my car and once again feeling very different. Why does this happen every year at this time? And even though I’ve never been able to figure it out, something suddenly something dawned on me. Unfortunately as you get older you tend to get a little jaded about some things. You’ve been around the block a few times and seldom do you look at things with childlike awe and innocence… except on Christmas Eve. It is the day when you believe again, in angels, in people, in goodness, in family, friends and yes, even Santa Claus. The tree seems brighter, the presents shinier and there is the anticipation of reindeer on the roof. I know there is also a strong religious implication with this holiday, and although I am not traditionally religious, there is also the belief that many years ago on this night in a stable in Bethlehem the Christ child was born. On no other day do these feelings occur making Christmas Eve perhaps the most special day of the year.
So on this Christmas Eve, I am thankful for my family and friends and grateful for the many blessings in my life. I am also missing my parents who instilled in me a special appreciation for this time of year, but am feeling them in spirit sharing with me the joys of this special day. And in the spirit of sharing, some past holiday memories of my family and me set to some of my dad’s favorite holiday music. Merry Christmas to all!
My mind is a hodgepodge of memories around the holidays – some joyous others sad. Although you wish for your days to be merry and bright, life does not take a vacation over the holidays. When you are very young, you experience nothing but euphoria over the holidays – Santa Claus, holiday parties, presents under the tree, beautiful decorations, snow falling – the list goes on and on. As you get older those memories are still vivid, but they are tempered by years of experience, things that have changed and people who are now longer with you.
I have a very vivid memory of watching television with my father on Christmas Eve. Every year we would sit and watch Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye sing about following the “old man wherever he wants to go…” and watch how Bing and Danny singlehandedly save General Waverly and his Inn. You guessed it – the movie was White Christmas. Every year we would watch it. Maybe we would drink hot chocolate, maybe not, sometimes I would go to bed immediately afterwards and other times I would stay up and go to midnight mass. But every year father and daughter would sit together and watch White Christmas, a precious holiday memory.
My father’s favorite Christmas song was The Christmas Waltz. We had a big band album that had a fabulous version of that song and every year my dad would play it and ask me to sing along with it. He always seemed to do that when I was making cookies. My dad felt that song typified the spirit of the season and he would get this huge grin in his face when I would sing it – another precious holiday memory.
Although we had our tradition of going downtown to shop on the first Saturday of December, there was always at least one more shopping trip my parents and I did together. Every year on that trip they would ask me what I really wanted for Christmas. Sometimes I knew exactly what it was, other times I needed to be inspired by what I saw. I have to admit I was spoiled. Anytime I asked for something, I got it. From clothes to housewares, to electronics – my parents always gave me a special gift or gifts at Christmas. Years and years of hugging them in the stores, thanking them for the gifts, smiling and laughing – feeling such joy – another precious holiday memory.
Then there was Christmas morning. When we were very young we always got up before our parents – after all we couldn’t wait to see what Santa brought. As we got older the roles reversed and my dad would get up first, sneak into the living room and put on Mitch Miller’s rendition of Joy to the World. The song starts out with church bells gloriously ringing and then a choir joins in singing the song. I can still hear those bells ringing in my mind – the signal to get up, gather around the tree, find joy in each other’s company and celebrate the best day of the year – another precious holiday memory.
So many memories over so many years. My dad died in 1998, my mom in 2006. I miss them both every single day and I know both of them would want me to continue to have joyous holidays. Sometimes easier said than done. But I try to make new memories and traditions to honor them and all that they gave to me. Every year since I’ve lived in Colorado I make a donation to a dinner at Denver’s Children’s hospital. A friend’s son was diagnosed with leukemia over the holidays several years ago. He is now cancer free but every year his family brings a holiday meal to the hospital on Christmas Eve to feed the parents who are going through a similar experience. I bake a ham and make a huge plate of Christmas cookies to help them, in a small way, get through the terrible time they are facing. I do this to honor my mom. To honor my dad, I donate to the Salvation Army – one of his favorite charities. I also do holiday music postings every year on Facebook in his memory. My dad was a music fanatic and he gave me my love of music. He would have gotten a kick out of seeing what song I would post every day. Just a few little things done in the spirit of keeping my parents alive over the holidays. It wouldn’t be the holidays if I couldn’t share them with my parents, the two people who created so many magical times and memories for me.
We are now in the home stretch of the 2011 holiday season. The next week will be frenetic and in that frenzy many new Christmas memories will be made. Memories that will last a lifetime, precious memories both happy and sad. I would not change any of mine for the world. Thank you mom and dad for having made past Christmases bright and for creating the memories that continue to light the way. And in the spirit of what you created, I share with all of you the song that my dad played to wake us up every Christmas morning – Mitch Miller’s Joy to the World.
I’m not sure when it started – I think in high school, but I’m not sure. My mom used to make the holiday cookies. I have memories of almond crescents, chocolate snowballs and chocolate chip cookies. My mom was not a baker. She wasn’t a cook either for that matter. She did what she had to but it wasn’t one of her big joys. So no wonder, somehow, the cookie making chores fell to me.
It was a sneak attack actually. Luring someone young and impressionable with the temptation of chocolate chip cookie dough. Now doesn’t that taste good, honey? Isn’t that divine, honey? Don’t you just love it, honey? Would you like to know how to make these – I’ll show you. I think that was the trap, but I can’t really say for sure. Then first it was just can you make the chocolate chip cookies for me, honey. Then it was standing by the oven with mom and learning how to determine when the chocolate snowballs were actually done. Then it was mom showing me the art of rolling out and forming the almond crescents. And lo and behold, slowly but surely torch was passed.
Now it is a tradition I cannot escape. Each year the expectation is there – when are you going to make the cookies? And then it’s – which ones and how many and who is getting them and planning the timetable for getting them all done. Only the chocolate chip cookies have survived the test of time. They have been made every year since the beginning. The snowballs went by the wayside years ago – too dry. And this year the almond crescents left the pack – too sandy for my husband’s mouth after his radiation. But fear not – there are the others: the triple chocolate brownie cookies, two varieties of cranberry cookies (one with icing), peanut butter chocolate kiss cookies, spritz cookies (trees and wreaths), sugar cookies dipped in chocolate, two varieties of kolachkys (apricot and raspberry), and the newbie this year – the raspberry walnut bars. Somehow in a weak moment I decided that I would try at least one new cookie recipe each year – I never made a rule as to how many or when one variety would be transitioned out. Maybe I should because the list seems to get longer every year.
How did I ever get roped into this? I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I wouldn’t give it up for the world – precious holiday memories and traditions.
One of my most precious memories, or years of memories, I have of the Christmas holiday season was producing the annual holiday shows at Hiawatha Park. The shows started out as small plays and evolved into Christmas musical extravaganzas. For me, the fall and winter seasons are still defined in my mind by the rigid schedule we kept to get a show up the second week in December. It was always the second week in December for several reasons, mostly so it would not conflict with the myriad of other holiday activities planned by schools and families. But I also arranged my schedule so that once the show was done I was on vacation until the first of the year. Ah, those were the days…
We did many full scale musicals including Babes in Toyland, Cinderella and Peter Pan and we also did shows consisting of holiday skits and dancing. But, regardless of what we chose to do, it was always a magical way to ring in the holiday season. Auditions started early in September and the competition was always fierce for the lead roles. Once the show was cast rehearsals began and the tried and true schedule we was put into motion. Rehearsals were two to five days a week, depending on the size of your role. At least once, if not twice, during the course of the rehearsal period I would tell the students the show was canceled, not because I intended to do it but it was a weapon to get them to behave. It worked for a while and then became just another element of patterns of the rehearsal schedule. The first complete run through was always the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I would always dreaded that day but more often than not was surprised that the kids could actually pull it all together.
After that, I would spend rehearsal times focusing on weak areas and ensuring that we did a few more complete run throughs before we moved into the gym. The Hiawatha Park gymnasium was the venue where we staged all of our shows. We could never get into the space until the Monday before the show so we literally had only two days to rehearse in the performance space before the show opened, and one of those days was dress rehearsal with no stopping and starting. So technically we had only one rehearsal to get it all down.
The Monday of show week was perhaps the day I dreaded the most. Moving from the small room where we rehearsed for two months and trying to get sixty kids to adjust their blocking to the much bigger space was always interesting. The more seasoned students learned quickly and adapted very well. The newer students had difficulty but always seemed to find their way by show time. Monday was also the day that we staged the major dance number of the show that involved every single student in the program. It was the first time all of them danced the dance together and it was a technical nightmare – sixty kids doing different things at different times weaving in and out of each other while watching in awe the dancing of the Dance Company. How we all got through it I will never know, but the result was spectacular. The Monday rehearsal always seemed like it would never end. Having to restage the entire show, adapt the choreography and do a complete run through with lights and sound for the first time was a daunting task. But we all pulled through.
Then came Tuesday, dress rehearsal night, and you could feel the tension in the air. This was it – regardless of what happened, the show would be done in its entirety without stopping. I had strict back stage rules for the cast but trying to keep a slew of excited grammar school children behaving was perhaps the biggest task of all. I spent as much time keeping them seated, preventing them from peaking out from behind the bookfolds, and not talking as I did stage managing. Quite often I would snap my fingers and point at someone misbehaving with a glare that I hoped would stop them in their tracks. Some times it work and some times it didn’t. There were even a few surprise rump taps to keep them in check. If I were teaching today, that definitely would not have occurred. And eventually we made it through dress rehearsal and on to three nights of performances.
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday – performance days. The first night you could cut the tension with a knife, the second night the kids were old pros and the third night they were just plain having fun. And then there were the flowers. Every closing night they gave me flowers. For fourteen years I got flowers and for fourteen years each group that gave them went through elaborate measures to make sure that I didn’t know I was getting flowers – or so they thought. And although I knew, I cherished each gift because I knew it reflected the love they had for me, which I also had for them.
And then came Saturday. This holiday play producing tradition was capped off by the annual Christmas Party at Hiawatha Park which always occurred the day after our show closed. And every year the dancers would perform at least two of dances they performed in the holiday show. And that was it, the auditions, the rehearsals, the canceling of the show, the pre-Thanksgiving run through, the first day in the gym, the dress rehearsal, the three nights of shows, the flowers, the Christmas Party – all culminating in the second week of December.
Today is Saturday in the second week of December, the day of the annual Christmas party. And in my mind today, the show is over, the holiday songs are being sung (accompanied by Rita Utz on the piano) and the dancers for one last time are performing some dances from the holiday show. The flowers they gave me the night before are in a vase in a prominent place in my house, serving as a beautiful reminder of what we all accomplished together. Those beautiful flowers, those precious flowers. They are so vivid in my mind even though you don’t bring me flowers anymore…
Holiday songs underscore all of my holiday experiences. You only get a chance to pull them out for a very short window of time but the memories they create last forever. My love of music was instilled in me by my father – he loved music and loved to dance and handed down those passions to me. I also found out at quite an early age that I had a pretty decent singing voice and had an ear for musical harmonies. The nuns at my grammar school loved that and hence the holiday memory I am about to share.
I have a few very strong memories of grammar school but one that always rises to the top was gathering around the piano during music class (how many schools have music classes anymore) and singing Christmas songs. My sixth grade teacher had a penchant for The Little Drummer Boy and was elated to find out that I had a range that could support doing the bass rum pum pums in the song. I also had an ear to be able to sing that on pitch so that assignment was always relegated to me. I never wound up singing the lyrics to that song but I was the best background singer my sixth grade teacher had ever know. And what is that song without that background refrain? My sixth grade teacher would boast to other teachers that she had a student that could sing the bass part of Little Drummer Boy on pitch and they were always surprised to learn that it was actually a girl who was doing it.
But I also had a range that allowed me to sing soprano and that gave me a starring role in the song “Angels We Have Heard on High?” I could belt out the Glo ooooo ooooo oooo oria like no one’s business and finally got the chance to sing a lead vocal in a song in the holiday concert. To this day that song holds a very special place in my heart. I can still see this little sixth grader, strong and proud, singing with gusto and faith – truly an magical and angelic time. I can still see my class gathered around the piano, divided by our vocal ranges, smiling and singing, having the time of our lives. A special time of year with special songs to sing.
I’m not sure why to this day this one particular grammar school memory stands out for me. But I can still clearly see the room we were in, the piano in the back of the room, the winter sun streaming the windows, the uniforms we wore, the big blackboards with examples of palmer method cursive writing above them – I can even remember the smell of Maurice Lenell cookies wafting through the hallways – the hallways always smelled like that in our school. And I distinctly remember the pure joy I felt every time I sang a rum pum pum or a Gloria. It felt like Christmas time would last forever and that I was the luckiest kid in the world. Pure happiness, a precious memory.
I don’t sing these song much anymore. I don’t know why. Maybe I should…
They are the best of times, they are the worst of times. My apologies to Charles Dickens but those words aptly sum up the holiday season. Never is there a time during the year where the joys can be so immeasurable and the sorrows so intense. And the more years you have under your belt the more memories you have to cloud the current reality. It seems like the thermometer of the season can go either way, often day-to-day or hour to hour and eventually the season is measured by the overall average temperature of happiness or sadness.
Are all those holiday experiences and memories precious or stigmatic? I’m not really sure. All I know is that, for me, every year the the holiday season is an adventure in feelings and emotions. So, with that in mind, I am going to dedicate my blog this month to the recounting of current and past holiday stories. Do they help to make the season bright or just reinforce what once was but is not to be again? That determination is solely up to you.
Growing up the holidays were always big in my house – it was a magical time. And although we were not rich by any stretch of the imagination, we always had a lot to be thankful for on Christmas Day. Our house was filled with holiday music the likes of which I still treasure. My dad was a huge fan of the “Big Bands” and so our holiday music consisted of Christmas albums by the likes of Guy Lombardo, Lester Lanin, The Three Suns and the incomparable Mitch Miller. We always had a meatless Christmas Eve followed by a big Christmas Day dinner at my Grandmother’s. Then we would get packed up into the car and travel to my other grandmother’s house where we would spend the rest of the day with my dad’s side of the family. Christmas cookies, homemade bread, turkey and all the trimmings, football on the television and lots and lots of presents under the tree. That was the basic game plan for the day. But my memories are not so much tied up in what we did that day, but with the events and the traditions leading up to the “big dance.”
The first big event came every year on the first Saturday in December – the annual family trek to Downtown Chicago to see Santa at the Carson Pirie Scott store and go Christmas shopping. We had a route and a game plan and we followed it for years and years. We would park the car at a parking lot near Congress and State Streets and begin our journey – first stop the Sears Roebuck store. I can still smell the ‘pine-like” aroma that came wafting out of the small incense burning log cabins they sold. In my mind I can clearly see the small puffs of smoke coming out of the chimneys in the display as we made our way up the escalator to the toys floor. You see, the main highlight of the trip was the fact that every year my parents gave us five dollars to spend on anything we wanted, no restrictions. It felt like we were given a million bucks and the decision as to what to spend it on was agonizing. We combed through every toy department several times before making those decisions. It was heaven.
My Dad and Me circa 1956
Our annual trek which began at Sears proceeded north on State Street to The Fair Store (how many of my Chicago friends even remember that store), Carsons, Wiebolts, Walgreens and the final destination, the piece de resistance, Marshall Fields! As we made our trek and purchased our gifts my dad would hike back to the parking lot and deposit our treasures in our car, often making the trip several times during the course of the day. We never worried about someone breaking into the car and stealing them – that just didn’t happen at that time. It was a day of buying presents for loved ones, looking at the amazing holiday windows, getting to spend our five dollars, putting a donation into the Salvation Army bucket, listening to Christmas carolers on the street, passing the street vendors hawking roasted chestnuts and praying it would snow to make the day absolutely perfect. And to top it all off, the icing on the cake was dinner at Millers Pub. At that time Millers Pub was on Adams street and every year as we made our trek back south on State Street we would stop to have dinner at Millers capping off the day. Even now, Millers Pub means Christmas to me. The pub was always jammed packed and we learned early on to adjust our holiday routine to include a stop at Millers as we made our trek north on State Street to make a reservation for that evening. We got seated a lot faster that way. And after many years of doing this we had our routine down to a science. I so looked forward to this day every year. We continued this tradition all through my college years although, after a while, I decided that a trip to Santa’s lap was not to be part of the plan anymore.
That was the first Saturday in December every year for at least twenty years. And then no more. My parents moved to Florida and I stayed in Chicago. I changed my personal tradition and started making a similar trek on the Friday after Thanksgiving, but it was never the same. Joyous memory or sad memory? There are days I teeter between both. But every year as we approach the first Saturday in December I hold my father’s and mother’s hand in my heart and take a walk in my mind north on State Street.
You Betcha Can Make This! 