Christmas Seasons

As Christmas rolls around again this year, I have been thinking how different Christmases have been in different seasons of my life. For me, those seasons seem to divide up like this: Childhood, young married life, children, empty nest and old age. Each season has been unique and great in its own exceptional way. Each season has made for some great memories.

Ah, the memories of childhood. It is less about the gifts and more about the things we did. For several years we bought a live tree. And my brother and I were given the task of hauling the heavy tree and root bundle out into the far end of the yard to plant it. Over course, it being January, the ground was thoroughly frozen; making I difficult job almost undoable. I went back a few years ago and those six-foot trees are now about 60 feet tall. They are beautiful and amazing.

Most years we cut our own tree. One year my sister Linda and I thoughtlessly crossed over onto a neighboring farm and cut a cedar tree for our Christmas tree. It is the only one I remember cutting. It was a prickly, sticky, smelly, ugly little tree, but we loved it. To say it was misshapen would not be giving it justice. It was the Hunchback of Notre Dame of Christmas trees. No matter how many lights and decorations we put on that little beauty, it looked sad. Linda and I were so proud, and the rest of the family was tolerant.

Decorating the tree was a family affair. Attendance was required, so one showed up, like it or not. It was at this early age that I learned to hate decorating a Christmas tree. The lights were put on first and Mom and Dad were in charge of this segment of the operation. My favorite lights were shaped like candles with a bulb in the base to provide the heat to make the colored water in the glass stem bubble. They were so cool. After hanging the lights, Mom and Dad quickly moved to supervisor mode. To be honest, Dad was always in supervisor mode. He was a born boss.

The rest of us kids were to hang the ornaments. Most of them were fragile family heirlooms. After just a couple of mishaps, my brother Bob and I were banned from ornament hanging duty. Which suited us just fine. When I say Mom and Dad supervised, I mean they told my sisters exactly where to place each ornament – Exactly. Bob and I were given the task of hanging the unbreakable decorations; the aluminum icicles. It was my theory one could stand back a few feet from the tree and throw handfuls of those aluminum strands at the tree. But, Nooo, they had to be hung one at a time. Each carefully placed. Thank God almost nobody puts those things on their trees anymore. The last thing on the tree was the angel Mom had made from scratch. The center that the angel was built on was a toilet paper tube. That seemed unholy to me.

My mother was artistic, so she did her own tree upstairs in the rarely used living room. Most of our lives were lived in the kitchen/family room and the living room was for guests and special occasions. With baubles and left over bright cloth, mom made three wise men that were just amazing – intricate and beautiful. The upstairs tree that I remember was aluminum and sparkly. Mother used artificial trees before most people had heard of artificial trees. She decorated it with blue ornaments and strung blue lights on it. My first thought was that it was tacky, But after looking at it for a few days I realized it was beautiful; a work of art.

My mother was also an amazing cook. Everything from scratch. Everything delicious. Each year she made a variety of candies to give as Christmas gifts. She made caramels, chocolate covered caramels, (They were the best.) pull candy, Aunt Bill’s candy, (Kind of like a brown, unusual fudge.) bonbons, caramel brittle, (Thin and chocolate.) and more. She would lay they out on the dinning room table, and we kids would circle the table filling tins with the deliciousness. I’m embarrassed to admit that I resented every tin of candy Mom gave away. I wanted it all for myself. A couple of years after she stopped making candy, I borrowed her recipes and started cooking candy. Some of the recipes were rather complex and some were incomplete. They had all of the ingredients listed but were short on instructions on how long to cool the candy or what the candy should look and feel like during the process. Foolishly, I called mother to ask for advice. She said things like, “Stir it until it looks right” or “pull it until it is the right consistency.” I told her I could express to her how little help her instructions were. I finally loaded up all the ingredients and drove the 50 miles to her house. In person, she was much more helpful.

We opened presents on Christmas morning. Before we could start, Dad always started a roaring fire in the fireplace. It was for esthetics or for heat, it was to burn the wrapping paper. And Dad believed in cleaning up as you went. One of us would unwrap a gift and Dad would snatch the gift wrapping and throw it into the fire. Over the years we lost a lot of great gifts to the fireplace. The worst thing about the fire was that mother burned one of dad’s gifts every year. Not a random gift, but the same gift. Every year Dad wrote Mom a dirty limerick, put it in a white envelope, and gave it to her. Every year she opened the envelope, read the limerick, turned bright red and threw it into the fire. My siblings and I would give a lot to have those limericks back.

My father, like most fathers, had ways to irritate, tease and embarrass his children. For me, every year he threatened me with Christmas gift of “frilly britches.” We would go in a department store and he would step over to the store Santa and engage in a short conversation. I fell for it every time and would invariably ask him what he had said to Santa. His reply was, “I reminded Santa to bring you some frilly britches.” I, much to my father’s glee, threw a fit. When I got a little older my mother and I got our heads together, bought dad some boxer shorts. Mother sewed rows of frills across the bottom. I wrapped them up and gave them to dad. It was the best Christmas ever.

Those are some of my childhood Christmas memories.

Early in our marriage, we moved from Louisville, Kentucky, to Mitchellville, Iowa. Since it was an 8-hour drive, we spent Christmas in Iowa and started our own family traditions with our children. That was a wonderful, fun-filled, exciting and special kind of hell. Perhaps I will write about Christmases when my children were little.

Copyright © 2017, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved

Bill McConnell is the Interim Minister at Norwood Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is a Church Transformation consultant and a Christian Leadership Coach. He is a frequent speaker at Church Transformation events. His latest book on church transformation is DEVELOPING A SIGNIFICANT CHURCH and is available at Westbow Press.

He can be contacted @ bill45053@gmail.com. Connect with him on Facebook @ William T. McConnell or on Twitter @billmc45053 or visit his Amazon Author Page @ Amazon