"Christmas Past and Present"

                                                                                                                      Sydney M. Williams

                                                                                                                      December 25, 2011

Note from Old Lyme

"Christmas Past and Present"

“It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is

infection in disease, there is nothing so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humor.”

                                                                                                                     Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
                                                                                                                     A Christmas Carol (1843)

“There is nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.”

                                                                                                                     Erma Bombeck (1927-1966)

It is a universal truth that Christmas has become over commercialized. Certainly, I have been known to argue that point, Perhaps it has? However, the truth is that in my seventy Christmases there has never been a time when commercialism and Christmas did not mix. Importantly, what has remained unchanged is the magic that Christmas conveys.

As children, growing up in New Hampshire, we were not exposed to the tree at Rockefeller Center, or the decorated stores along New York’s Fifth Avenue, as were my children and as are our grandchildren. But Derby’s, Peterborough’s department store, served just as well. The warmth of the store was welcoming, as one entered on a cold snowy day. The sound of Christmas carols filled the air. The aisles were decorated with holly. Everything looked so clean and new. Living four miles from the village, trips to town, which did not involve school, were relative rarities, and a trip to Derby’s was special.

In my memory, childhood Christmases run together, but what I remember best was getting the tree on Christmas Eve and then decorating it, and the reading of Clement Moore’s The Night Before Christmas, provided anticipation for the next morning.

The late 1940s and very early 1950s had to have been a special time for my parents and for the parents of most of my friends. World War II was recently over and my parents, like so many, were thankful to have peace restored, vowing as so many had done for countless generations that war would never infect their children. Unfortunately, that time never seems to arrive. We lived on a small farm, simply, as one might expect of young artists, interested in living on their own while raising a large family. In those early years, the house lacked insulation and there was no central heating. While wood stoves heated the downstairs and the two bathrooms were heated with hot water from a coal-fired furnace, the bed rooms, on winter nights, were very cold.

We always got our tree Christmas Eve. My father would hitch ‘Judy’ to a scoot and we would all hop aboard – by 1951, when I was ten, there already seven of us – and we would head for the woods. The house we lived in belonged to my paternal grandparents. Their home – a summer home, in their case – was located a mile and a quarter through the woods. The combined properties comprised about 400 acres, more than enough land on which to find a suitable tree. Once located and chopped down, we would return home, the bells on ‘Judy’s’ harness tinkling joyously, the vapor from her nostrils exhaling visibly against the cold clear sky. But the effort was worth it, as a fresh tree allowed my parents to use real candles, though a bucket of water always remained within easy reach.

With the tree set up and decorated, we never hung our stockings alone. There were always ones for the dogs, ‘Mopsa’ and ‘George’. Later, just before we were sent off to bed, ‘Mitzi’ our Shetland pony would come into the living room to hang one of her old horseshoes. That was always a special time, as my father would raise her front legs; the two would dance a jig, she on her rear legs, he on his two.

Sleep never came easily on Christmas Eve, but try as we might we could never stay awake until midnight when, so we were told, Santa made his appearance. Nor were we ever able to confirm my mother’s assertion that at midnight on Christmas Eve all the animals in the barn could converse in English. Instead, we would awake to the smell of coffee percolating on the wood stove, on which oatmeal had been warming all night. Toast was made by salting the top of the stove and then placing slices of bread on the stove top. Tears and laughter co-joined, as we waited for all to assemble and then to walk single file into the living room to see if Santa had truly arrived. He always had.

While those Christmases of yesteryear blend, there are moments I recall clearly, like my maternal grandparents arriving from Madison, Connecticut in 1946, coming through the front door, which was rarely used. The memory is special, for my grandfather died the next year. I remember receiving my first Hardy boy book, The House on the Cliff by Fentin W. Dixon probably when I was twelve. My excitement was such that I read it twice before letting my brother Frank read it once.

Thirty years later our Christmases in Greenwich always included the reading of Clement Moore’s wondrous tale, before a tree now decorated with electric lights. Stockings were hung as always, however, and a plate of cookies laid out on the hearth, along with a glass of milk (that became beer, as our children grew older and their belief in Santa was maintained more to humor their parents.) Nevertheless, the next morning, which arrived early, the plate and glass were empty. I remember once calling my mother at 7:30AM, to tell her that the last present had been opened an hour earlier.

Spending this past Christmas Eve and Christmas morning at our daughter’s home in Rye brought back many of my childhood memories, as well as memories of our children’s youth. But the Featherston’s have central heating and there is no Shetland that comes into the living room to hang her horseshoe, but the stockings were there and the magic of Christmas was alive and well, reflecting the excitement of children whose belief in Santa Claus has not diminished. The expressions of awe on the faces of her three children were as ageless as is the tradition of Christmas. The Holiday may reflect an overabundance of commercialism, but if that is the price we pay for the wonder that is childhood, it is a cheap.