Every year I am amazed to have made it to another happy, healthy holiday season. Oh, the truth is they haven't all been happy. Nothing was happy around the time that my marriage ended -- way back in 1976. But my Christmas memories encompass so many years that a couple of not-so-great ones fade into the background. And even in those years the celebrations were good and complete. I was still carrying on the family tradition of Christmas Eve smorgasbords at that time. That went on until the Christmas after my brother's son committed suicide just around Thanksgiving time.
The year of the suicide my brother called me on December 11th, the day of his birthday, to say that he had received the final "gift" from his son -- his ashes. We tried to maintain the Christmas tradition that year, but anyone could have told us the pall would be too great.
After that, for a while before I moved from Connecticut to Minnesota, I enjoyed presenting a modified smorgasbord for my women colleagues/friends at Southern Connecticut State University. They were such a blessing. I miss that group. I miss the non-Christmas memory of the time I hosted a tupperware party for that group and we got really silly/giddy fighting for a little plastic pill container. I still have mine.
But my memories carry me back much farther (further?) than that. I was pretty much the youngest of the youngest on both sides of my family. My cousin Eunice on the Anderson side was about six months younger. But you get the picture. I was really special. And how special those Christmases were! My father's oldest brother and his wife had acquired a lovely Victorian house by working for it. The stories vary, but I think the correct one is that they had worked as butler and maid for the family who owned it, with the deal that it would be theirs when the owners died. However it happened, it was a fantastic Christmas house. Christmas Eve found some 22 or more of us around a huge smorgasbord. I don't think I enjoyed it much, because I couldn't wait to go into the parlor to sit around the tree and anticipate the ho-ho-ho of Santa Claus. And he did come -- year after year. Somewhere around when I was 8 years old, my brother, eleven years older than I, stood in for my cousin. Harvey couldn't see very well without his glasses, so he needed my help reading the tags. I guess it was time anyway, but there was no way I could believe in Santa Claus after getting up that close. I didn't tell my parents until the next year, though, because I didn't want them to feel bad.
That was Christmas Eve with the Gustafsons. And now I have to leave this to go on to a newer Christmas tradition -- helping my daughter get her house ready for the family coming together for another annual celebration. I'll be back.
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