Daddy’s birthday was December fourteenth. He was born in 1893. He had never had a birthday party in his life. Mother and Daddy were too old for birthday parties. They always mentioned his birthday; it was never forgotten, and Mother would make a cake or something he especially liked, and they would sing the birthday song. Jenny decided to herself, “I am going to save up pennies and buy a present for him next year.”
At school Miss Lucy put up a canopy of red and green crepe paper streamers as she had done with black and orange for Halloween. There were wonderful red and green tissue paper bells that folded flat and opened with a rustle and were hung from the ceiling where the canopy did not cover. There would be a store bought Christmas tree, which was second only to the fragrant cedar branch that would be decorated on Christmas Eve at home. Practice for the school program began early in December. There would be plays they called dialogues, pieces and readings spoken by individual children, and Christmas songs with the teacher accompanying at the old upright piano. Names were drawn by the school children for a gift exchange held after the program. You were allowed to pay no more than a dime, but what wonders a dime would buy. There would also be gifts to and from the teacher. One year Miss Lucy got the little girls dainty china tea sets. Jenny took good care of hers and always put it away in its box when she finished playing with it. The P.T. A. candy committee would get together before the school program to bag the bright Christmas candy, which had been purchased in bulk with money collected from dues. There would be a bag for each man, woman and child at the program. After the program, a red faced jolly Santa would appear to pass out the gifts and the bags of candy. Jenny thought this could not be the real Santa that came to their house on Christmas Eve, but just one of his helpers. The real Santa didn’t let anyone see him, except for once in a while on Christmas Eve. The Santa helper handed out the bags of candy, the gift exchange gifts, gifts from the teacher, and gifts to the teacher. After the Friday night program, there would be a whole week of vacation. When they walked to the car in the crisp, cold, late night air, the stars looked very bright. Jenny was sure God had made them that way for the holidays to remind people of the star that had been seen over the little town of Bethlehem, so many years ago.
On the day after the program Jenny would look at last night’s gifts. How wonderful they were. She would line up the candy from the bag. She thought the hard candy very pretty, with its stripes and flowers and Christmas colors. She preferred just to look at it. There would be an occasional dome -shaped chocolate drop, which she would impale on a toothpick and lick like a lollipop, so that it lasted a long time.
Christmas Eve was surely the most magical night of the year. On that afternoon, Daddy would cut off a cedar branch and put it in a tub of dirt in the southeast corner of the dining room. Mother would get out the box of Christmas ornaments from under the bed, and Jenny and Margaret delighted in putting the beautiful richly colored glass ornaments and crinkled silver icicles on the dark cedar branch that whispered Christmas Eve.
On the Christmas Eve that Jenny was five, Mother’s relatives came over after supper. She had been planning for this night since way last summer and had saved joke gifts for the men, a strip of sticky fly paper with dead flies still attached and wrapped in holly berry paper for Uncle John, a piece of dried smelly cod fish for Uncle George, and Mother’s cousin Harry, who drank a little, got a whiskey bottle filled with golden syrup. These were passed out early. Mother opened some jars of chilled concord grapes in grape juice from some she had preserved last autumn and served some in pretty glasses and with her daintiest spoons. One jar had fermented slightly and the men said this was like wine, the best of all.
Suddenly there was a loud knocking at the big dining room window, and who should it be but Santa, who said he couldn’t find the door. He had a big bag, but before he would give out gifts, he insisted on hearing the younger children speak their Christmas pieces. Little James stood up proudly and spoke his:
I smoke my pipe,
I drink my beer
My stomach sticks way out here.
He put his hands in front of him to show how fat his stomach was.
“That was pretty good,” said Santa Claus, “but you’d better stop that smoking and drinking or you won’t get any more presents.”
“That was just in my piece,” little James explained, in a serious tone, and everyone laughed.
Santa Clause brought Jenny a nearly life sized baby doll wearing a white dress with pink ribbons on it, a white cap and pink knit booties. She was soft and cuddly, and Jenny thought she looked like her pretty two year old cousin Carol, and that became her name. Her doll opened and closed her eyes and said, “ma-ma,” when you turned her over on her stomach. Margaret got a doll about the same size as Jenny’s that looked more like an eight-year-old child. She had real dark brown hair and was wearing a green checked dress with matching bonnet, black patent leather shoes and white anklets. She had a tag pinned with a little gold safety pin to her dress that said, “Dainty Dorothy.” Together they got a small wind-up phonograph with three shiny black records that played, “I Had a Little Doggie,” “The Jolly Old Sow Once Went to The Sty,” and the story of, “Little Red Riding Hood.”
One twelve year old third cousin got a dress. She seemed happy enough with that, but Jenny thought it must be sad to be so old that you didn’t get a toy for Christmas.
On Christmas Day there would be a covered dish dinner at someone on Daddy’s side of the family. Daddy’s family wasn’t as prosperous as Mother’s side, so most of the houses were smaller, and the cooking wasn’t quite as delicious, but the aunts and uncles had a great sense of humor
and there were even more cousins, so it was always a happy occasion. One year the gathering was at Aunt Alice and Uncle Bob’s. He ran the drug store, and for a special treat. he went down town and brought back two boxes of brick ice cream. It was frozen in layers of strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla, and he quickly sliced it with a sharp knife and served it on pretty plates. It tasted as good as it looked. It was so hard you could eat it with a fork. The world was so full of amazing things.
Jenny was always a little sorry that Christmas was over, but after all the festivities, it was good to be home with just the family for the rest of the vacation and to admire and play with her Christmas presents, and eat the rest of the holiday food. Jenny could always relive the happy times in her imagination, and she knew that the fresh new year would have undreamed of surprises in store.
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