Christmas 1950-2025

The long road from joy to resignation, or maybe serenity?

Christmas day A couple days ago, I talked to my cousin Jan, and she remembered how much I loved Christmas. As I recall, I was very much into receiving presents. I didn't feel like we were poor as children, but we weren't often indulged (or "spoiled," as they liked to say). I never had any money until 7th grade, when I got $0.50 per diem for lunch, allowing me to eat and save about half of that, which I applied to buying a record player, and then a typewriter. That allowance increased slightly over the years. I rarely if ever earned money. I mowed some lawns, and hated that kind of work. During my dropout days I had no skills that would allow me to get a job, but my parents raised my allowance to $10/week. I remember that number, because at the time a car dealer, Don Schmid, advertised a new Fiat 150 for $99 down, $9.99/week — tantalizingly close to possible. But by then I could borrow the car for my regular book store and library trips, without having to budget for gas or insurance. I put nearly all of my money into books and magazine subscriptions. But I have no memories of Christmas during those years, other than that my mother always made candy, and we had a big dinner on Christmas Eve.

Christmas was more fun, for them as well as for us, when we were children, excitable and easily fooled. During the year, I could on occasion wangle a book or a model car out of them, but begging was hard (and not very rewarding) work. We had a little record player that would play 7-inch 45s, and a stack of records about 6-8 inches high. "Sixteen Tons" and "Honeycomb" got a lot of play. I recall lobbying for "Puff the Magic Dragon" and "The Monster Mash," but not much more. But we did get some significant presents on birthdays, and at Christmas. My father bought an 8mm film camera around 1956, so we have a video record of most such events up to about 1964. After that, my life went to shit, and the video goes blank, at least where I'm concerned.

We always had a Christmas tree, which accumulated wrapped presents over the weeks leading up to the holiday. We had a dinner on Christmas Eve, then opened the presents under the tree. Clothing was disappointing, although Dad got Mom a new nightgown every year. We much preferred toys, but the big things I remember were a bicycle for a birthday, and an Erector set for Christmas. We didn't have a fireplace, but my mother had sewn up three large red "stockings" with our names on them, and they were pinned to the wall in case Santa Claus came. He usually did, and we could look forward to small presents ("stocking stuffers") in the morning. Nothing very memorable, but we usually avoided the lump of coal that we were threatened with for misbehavior. After that, we usually had waffles, although that was pretty standard for holidays: my father usually left for work around 6, so only on weekends and holidays did we have a chance for breakfast together.

So when growing up, Christmas was a rare day of hope, peace, and tranquility, and the season was one where our instincts for generosity and selfishness found a symbiotic equilibrium. Plus we had lots of candy: fudge, pecan roll, date/walnut roll, "snowballs" (marshmallows dipped in coconut), and "out of this world" (a sugary ball of nuts and coconut dipped in chocolate). For many years, my mother bought antique-looking tins and shipped boxes of candy to relatives, including to me after I moved away.

Religion had very little to do with Christmas. I do have an early memory of going to Central Christian Church downtown on Christmas and Easter, but not otherwise. We did attend regularly in the early 1960s, when I went through my religious phase. That was shortly after they opened Glenn Park Christian Church, in southwest Wichita near where my uncle lived. My parents weren't disbelievers, but they were dissenters in their own way. My father inherited his father's (and grandfather's) intellectual interest in "Revelations," but had his own distinct theories, which as near as I bothered to discern turned the book into some sort of joke. My mother loved the music, but didn't sing or play, and she was delighted when a guest would offer a dinner blessing, but never did so herself. She hated gambling, but loved to play cards, and had no truck with ministers who reprimanded her for indulging in such "sins." My sister used to say that Mom only loved the pagan parts of Christmas, but my sister clearly sided with the pagans.

During my years in the East, I occasionally came home for Christmas, but I hated traveling during winter, so mostly stayed put, sometimes sending presents home — notably a computer for a then teenaged nephew and niece one year when I was feeling particularly flush. My first wife used to hoard discounted Christmas decorations, but she never used them until one year I dragged a tree from 2nd Avenue into our highrise apartment. But the experience was so disspiriting I never repeated it. After she died, I had my most pathetic holiday ever: I took the train into Boston only to find that Christmas was the one day per year Tower Records, contrary to their advertising, was closed, then got back to Tewkesbury only moments after the video store closed. I'm not sure I even found an open restaurant (although in later years I found I could count on Indian).

After that, I married again, this time to a Jewish girl with strong political beliefs but little concern for religion. She appreciates the strangeness of Christianity, in some cases more than I do, so she goes along with me on Chistmas, but isn't very encouraging. On the other hand, I've learned to make a fairly decent Hanukkah spread, which we did last Sunday — latkes with sour cream and applesauce, cured salmon and salmon roe, herring, chopped liver on store-bought bagels, spinach with raisins and pine nuts (because she wanted something green), and cheesecake.

When we moved back to Wichita in 1999, one of the things I was most looking forward to was Christmas with my family. I shopped for presents, but got sick and missed the Christmas Eve dinner. My father was also ill, but at the time it wasn't clear that he only had three months to live. My despondent mother, ten years older than him, died three months later. In retrospect, I now see that our celebrations in and shortly after the 1950s were their way of indulging, and playing with, their children, but by 1999 they signified family order and binding. After they died, with no children of my own, I just went through the motions. I made Christmas Eve dinner. My brother left town, where he has enough of a family to build his own traditions. My sister came over until she died in 2017. Her son is the only family I have left here. I've kept cooking, inviting the occasional rare friend who has no other commitments. We came up empty this year, and having just done Hanukkah three days before, and being totally buried in the final throes of this year's jazz critics poll, we were sorely tempted to dispense with tradition.

Nonetheless, within moments I resolved to cook anyway, just for us: if nothing else, to spite a world that has given us little but spite this year. My first thought was to return to my favorite family foods: chicken and dumplings, with green beans on the side, and maybe I could make a reduced single-deck edition of coconut cake? When we shopped for Hanukkah, I picked up a chicken and some green beans. I simplified a bit later. I switched to chicken with biscuits: the chicken is boiled and the meat stripped the same way, then put in a casserole dish with the reduced and thickened stock, then topped with biscuits and baked. Normally the latter is easier, at least with Bisquick, but this time I had to make biscuits from scratch, and I had to synthesize buttermilk (diluted sour cream, with a little instant buttermilk powder added). I found a couple of large cans of baked beans, skimmed off most of the old sauce, and added my own, plus a layer of bacon on top, and baked them another hour. I considered going with a simpler cake. Then I remembered I had picked up some pecan-based pie shells in case I should ever want to throw together something quick for dessert. I landed on the idea of chocolate pecan pie, which is about as intense as you can get. [I wrote about this dinner here.]

Christmas day was sunny and unseasonably warm. The squirrels were so excited I had to step out to see what all the noise on the roof was about. I wrote this note, then counted the last jazz poll ballot, and started reviewing the website files, taking down the messages meant to entice and inform voters, and fixing up the various mistakes I had found. I have another week to try to wrap this all up. By then, the year will be done, and we will enter another one, older and wearier than we were in facing this one.