My first memories of Christmas were of magic. Not just the magic of the season, but the magic my mother would conjure up to make the holiday special for us. My oldest memory goes back to Christmas Eve, 1958 when we children and bags of presents were loaded into the station wagon, ready for our drive to Newport to spend the evening with my mother’s family. We had spent the day threading popcorn on strings and making aluminum foil stars and ropes of construction paper to decorate our tree. Mother brought out her few, precious ornaments and the string of bubble lights which went on first. Her handmade tree skirt hugged the trunk of the mis-shaped pine waiting to be adorned with presents. An angel graced the top of the sweet smelling pine standing tall in its red tree stand.
When we’d arrive at Grandma’s house it was already packed with aunts and uncles, cousins and kin. The Bristow home was a “shot gun” style house meaning there were three rooms in a row on each level with no doors between them. Therefore the sounds from each room spilled out into the others.
Aunt Juanita, Grandma and Aunt Sheila would have spent the day preparing dinner and my mother would join them, laden with cookies and cakes. The family would then eat in shifts, first the older adults in the dining room with the younger adults taking seats as they vacated. We children were set up at the table in Grandma’s big kitchen in the back of the house. I clearly recall sitting on large metal pans to get us higher and closer to the table. The bottom of the pan would be terribly cold on my skinny legs. My cousins, my brothers and I would be scooted in close to each other and we’d attempt to eat our dinner even though the anticipation of presents made each bite difficult to finish. The younger adults sipped on eggnog and smoked as they waited their turn to eat turkey, ham and all the fixings.
After we had finished our dinner the children would huddle close to the TV and sat as quiet as we could, watching a Christmas program as the grownups would finish their coffee and cigarettes, talking and laughing. Television was still quite new to us and it kept us entertained until time to open presents. My cousins, Barb and Carlene, were close in age so we girls knew that the gifts from our aunts and grandparents would be identical. Same for the boys, only sizes and colors to differentiate. Aunt Juanita was one for petticoats and underwear and Aunt Barb usually bought pajamas in soft flannel, one pink, one blue and one yellow. Grandma would have had our mothers pick up pretty dresses for us to wear to church on Christmas morning.
After presents were opened and the wrapping paper gathered up we kids would wander the house, grabbing a piece of brittle or candy ribbon to enjoy. Grandpa would sit in the kitchen sipping his Hudepohl beer and giving us kids a quarter if we gave him a “sugar”. His kiss was more of an opportunity for him to scratch our little faces with his beard stubble and then laugh with us as we’d giggle. He’d slip the quarter in our hand and tell each of us not to let anyone else know, as if we were his favorite and the only one to be given such a grand sum.
Later in the evening when things had settled a bit, we’d have cake and homemade fudge for dessert. We had no pies at Grandma’s. No pies had been baked in her house since 1951 when Uncle Bennie had died in the war. Grandma had packed pies as carefully as possible and shipped them off to Korea for her dear and only son, Pvt. 1st Class Benjamin Bristow, who bragged on her pies. His photograph, proud and handsome in his Army uniform, looked down at us while we gathered at their home.
After a night of family gathering there was still more magic to be had. Shortly after midnight we would return home to tree standing proud over smartly wrapped gifts, spilling out into the middle of the room. Santa had come while we had been in Newport, just as mother had promised! Our bare little tree was covered with more ornaments, our stockings were filled and dozens of perfectly wrapped presents covered the living room floor. Santa had even eaten the cookies and sipped the eggnog we had left by the window. We had no fireplace so we were thrilled to see his footsteps outside that very same window, left slightly cracked open in his hasty retreat.
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