NOSTALGIA DURING THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

 CHRISTMAS WAS ALWAYS A MIXED BAG

I have already written about  the ways that my Aunt Grace provided  the food for our Thanksgiving and also our Christmas feasts.  But there is so much more to  Christmas than the  big meal which is really the entire focus of Thanksgiving.

We had various ways of preparing for Christmas.We thought a lot about Advent.  I also tried to go to daily mass.  Devotional aspects of the season increased after my father's departure in 1953.

Even before that sad event we celebrated or at least I did by saving whatever money I had and buying Xmas gifts.  Our gifts to each other were  not very glamorous. I would pace around Grants and Woolworth's looking at lipsticks for my Aunt Anna and  a perfume for my mother. I got my sisters paddle balls one year and that was a big hit. They could  play with them quite successfully. I had seen them borrow those of other kids, and I knew they could make the ball bounce off the paddle.
 I remember that when my friend Lucille came over to see  my tree and gifts and she looked at the three piles of  gifts that we had opened--one for each of us children. They were almost identical--pajamas, underwear, a new robe, socks. She said, "I see that you have a very practical Xmas." My mother laughed and my Aunt Anna said that she was rude. She was not, she was just being truthful.
We did not get toys. None of us cared about dolls.The only thing that I got that my sisters did not get would be paper doll books and coloring books. Our stockings were filled with an orange and an apple and some walnuts in the shell. Also sometimes hair ribbons or hair clips.
One winter I  had complained to my Aunt Grace that I had to wear some cast off hockey skates of Lucille's brother when we went to the  Blue Pond to skate.  I was amazed when new  lovely white figure skates showed up under the tree for me.There was no giver's name--these were from Santa.  My mother  warned me  not to whine anymore to  my Aunt Grace and I  knew what that meant.
Aunt Grace was always  my secret Santa.  
When  my father was still with us, I do recall some  sudden eruption of a great gift--like a tricycle. Later when I was about six, he brought in a large and gorgeous doll house. Somehow, there was some suggestion of  scandal  about these gifts--that he had won them in a card game or even stolen them.

 I remember that one Christmas morning he reached under his pillow and took out a small box and in it was a gold cross very plain and simple on a gold chain.  I still have that cross.