FOUR…THREE…TWO…ONE…HAPPY NEW YEAR!

How can it be possible that a year that started just a day and a wink ago is already coming to an end? 

It is said:  the older you get, the faster time flies.  I am finding this to be so very true.  It seems like just last week 2017 was a promise of so many hopes and plans coming true.  And now we find it is suddenly time to be exhilarated and rejoice over our accomplishments and/or to mourn lost dreams and opportunities and lick our wounds.  Yet, in just four days human nature will allow us to look at 2018 with as much renewed expectancy and anticipation, shiny-eyed hope and vigor as we did at the birth of this year that is drawing to a close.

New Years seems to be more of an adult celebration than one for children, since it comes when most children are in bed and fast asleep.  Nor was it welcomed with the fireworks that usher it in now-a-days—a happy welcoming that often starts in the early evening before the young-ones go to bed and sporadically lasts through the midnight hour.  Although, before we were sent off to bed, we were allowed to go out on the front porch and join the other neighborhood youth as we tooted horns, spun noisemakers, or banged on pots and pans and shouted “Happy New Year” as our participation before the cold would drive us back inside, glad to head for the warmth of our beds.  Later on in the quiet of the night, I vaguely remember the sound of cheering and horn blowing at Times Square in New York City being broadcast over the radio along with Guy Lombardo’s orchestra playing, “May old acquaintance be forgot…”

I also remember that we kids would get together, spending hours giggling and laughing as we tried to outdo each other with all the absurd “New Year’s resolutions” we would invent.  Even then, we somehow knew very few resolutions, many with good intent, would never be achieved.

My parents and three other couples would get together every now and then for an “adults only” time.  One of these events was held on New Year’s Eve at our house, and just after midnight Mother served a meal of pork and sauerkraut.  In our area of the country, that was traditionally the “good luck throughout the year” first meal eaten.  Although Christmas was not a time for our extended families to get together, often on New Year’s Day my maternal grandparents were our guests on January first for this traditional first supper of the New Year.  During our years of living in Florida, however, we learned that the southern version of this “good luck” meal was pork jowls and black-eyed peas, or maybe some liver and lights.

One thing that hasn’t seemed to change too much over the years, though, is that the first of January is the day for dismantling the Christmas tree and putting away all the decorations.  The whole family would participate.  Silver icicles would be as patiently and carefully removed from the branches as they were put on them and rehung over the cardboard insert that slid back into their storage boxes.  Ornaments were removed and wrapped in tissue paper before being slipped into their individual compartments in their boxes, or gently piled into a common box.  Each tree-light string was coiled and tied, hoping to eliminate the chore of untangling them next Christmas.  Elves and villages returned to their storage homes, and everything was assigned back to its place in the attic until next December.

Two noticeable things have changed through the years.  The trees, usually ready to shed their needles, were taken out to lay in rows along curbs of residential streets waiting for trash pick-up.  Now they are folded up and put in their own boxes and stored along with the ornaments they will wear again the following year, their needles just as fresh as they are now.  And secondly, instead of music or programs from the radio accompanying these tasks, it is the televised Rose Parade or one of the many football bowls.

New Years, like Christmas, has its own memories and traditions that somehow last throughout time, often old, yet ever fresh as they are remembered from our own childhood and passed down to the generations coming along behind us.

It will soon be time to say goodbye to the old year with nostalgia and look forward to a New Year with hope.

I wish you a Happy New Year filled with hope and blessings.

…PRESENTS UNDER THE TREE…

So goes a phrases of one of my favorite songs of the season. 

We are now in the final countdown to Christmas. 

For some, all the hassle of the season is over.  The house is decorated, both inside and out.  Gifts are bought, wrapped, and either hidden or mailed.  Baking is finished—with lingering odors promising an abundance of cookies, not to mention the nut rolls, pecan tassies, pies, and other sweets destined to tickle the taste-buds of family and friends.  Now it is time to sit back and enjoy a cup of hot chocolate or a glass of eggnog, soft music floating through the house or Christmas programs on television, a crackling fire in the fireplace…

For the rest it is the realization that there are only FIVE DAYS to get everything done!  It is a time of hastening to get all the above completed so that on the Big Day we can finally relax.  It is the rush of traffic or the crowded airports so we can be home with family.  Or that last trip to the store for eggs needed for that batch of cookies promised to the third grade teacher.  A time of pushing and shoving in the stores to get “just the right present.”  Or perhaps the harassed lament, “I’ll be glad when Christmas is over!”

In my early days, I remember that around the first of December, Mother would take down the summer window dressings and hang the winter curtains.  There were usually one or two of the couch pillows that were covered in the same print made from the left-over scraps when Mom sewed the curtains.  Window sills were usually adorned with candelabra and pine boughs with extra glass balls laid on the branches.  A lighted village was usually on top of some piece of furniture.

There were very few “fake” Christmas trees, so trees were not put up and decorated after Thanksgiving dinner, as they often are now.  About a week before Christmas, my dad would go to the woods and cut down a tree and bring it home.  It would sit on the front porch until a couple days before Christmas when he would bring it into the house and set it into a mop bucket filled with coal.  Sometimes string anchored to a window frame was needed to help keep it straight.  And we always had to remember to “give it a drink” each morning so that it would last to New Year’s Day.  Along with lights, we used the ornaments we three girls had made in school over the years as well as real glass balls to decorate the branches.  Then we’d hang several silver threads, or icicles, one-by-one on each branch.  When Dad would turn on the lights, we’d ooh and aah at the beauty of it all.  Then we would head out to see what our friends’ trees looked like.

Not only Christmas, but all holidays at that time were usually an individual family event.  I do not remember at any time there being a huge influx of relatives to help celebrate the holiday.  And that went for all of the families in our neighborhood.

I do not remember my mother doing an excessive amount of baking for the holiday, either.  Of course, as a child, unless you were involved with the actual cutting out of the cookies, the licking of the bowls, or the snitching of raw dough, you didn’t have much to remember.  Mother usually did the baking when we were in school or out playing.  All we did was the enjoyable eating!

Over the years we back off on the decorations, and reason that no one is around to enjoy all that baking, but the presents are still the things that are important. 

But we find our priorities in present giving change, too.

When I was a kid, there was usually one big gift and maybe a couple small ones.  Of course, our big gift was not an IPod, or a computer, or even our own cell phone, or any other gift that could put our parents in the poor house for the rest of the year.

Our big gift might be a doll, a game, a sled, or—if we were very lucky—a pair of ice skates.  The little gifts might be a pair or two of socks, a hand-knit scarf, or some other piece of clothing.  And we were thrilled to get what we got.  If it was a toy, we actually treasured it and played with it for a long time—often several years…not just for an hour or two until it was broken.  Our parents did not have the luxury of a plastic credit card, they used cash.  And often that cash was gathered over the year as a weekly or monthly deposit at the bank into a “Christmas Club.”

After we opened our gifts and had breakfast, we would go out prowling the neighborhood to see what our friends had gotten.  By afternoon, we had congregated at someone’s house and were playing one of the new games or were putting together one of the new puzzles.  In the evening, if we were lucky enough to have gotten a book, we were reading it while half-listening to the radio with the rest of the family.

When my husband and I were first married, also long before “plastic money,” the gifts we gave the family were hand-made.  We could not afford to give anything store-bought.  That year, I crocheted many inserts for pillowcases.  There were two patterns I used.  One was a young girl wearing a hoop skirt, and the other was butterflies.  We saved for a long time for the pillowcase tubing that, at that time, could be bought by the yard.  I cut it to length, sewed one end, then put a pair of butterflies or a pair of girls on the open end of each case and finished it with a crocheted edging.

I felt very humbled (another word for ashamed) that all we could do was a hand-made gift, although those who received the gift said they really liked it because it was handmade.  It wasn’t until several years later when I, myself, received handmade gifts and prized their value that I understood.

As we celebrate this season, I hope we remember the greatest present we have ever received… the gift of God’s own Son.  He not only came to us as a baby to grow up and experience our lives as we do, but He came to show us God’s love for us.  And you can’t get any more “handmade” than that!

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING CHALLENGE

I went Christmas shopping last week.  Believe it or not, we actually had some snow!  In fact, we had two short spells of near white-outs:  once when I was driving from store to store and mall to mall, once when I was driving the twelve miles between the shopping malls in DuBois and home.  Can you believe, the snow actually melted between the two white-outs!

Made me think of doing my Christmas shopping as a tween or young teen.  I walked in the snow the mile and a half to shop in downtown DuBois.  Not only was the white stuff coming down, but also  snow was laying on the ground and even piled up where the sidewalks had been shoveled. The town and the shop windows were all decorated so festively for the holidays.

Nope, there were no such things as malls at that time—at least in our area, and very few, if any, vacant stores.  The department-type shops and the five-and-dimes were on both sides of the street within four blocks of walking distance.
 
The Kroger market was on one corner if the block leading toward the center of town, with the Montgomery Ward next to it.  The Montgomery Ward was three-stories, if you counted the basement.  It smelled of the oiled sawdust they put on their wooden floors in the evening before sweeping them after all the customers were gone.  The display cases were mostly square table-like bins with stacks of clothing or household linens, such as sheets and towels, piled on them. 

On the second floor the furniture department and business offices resided.  That was where I went to get my free copy of the new booklet that had just come out, Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  I had that booklet for years, and remember it was one of my favorites.  I wish I knew what happened to it.

I don’t remember too much of the basement area, because I didn’t go there any more than I had to.  But I think that is where the kitchen needs and the handyman tools were kept.  It is also where, in a little cubby at the bottom of the steps, Santa Clause was usually enthroned.

The next store was one of my favorites: Troutman’s Department Store.  There were two separate front doors to enter this store…one on the left side and one on the right side…and between them, next to the sidewalk, was a free-standing enclosed display case.  There were display cases to either side of the display island leading to the doors with a walkway and another large display case situated behind it between the doors.  Once you went through the doors, you were in a little entry area and had to go through a second set of doors to actually get inside the store.  The perfume and make-up area was stationed just inside the doors on the right hand side of the store.  It was heavenly just to stand in that little entry between the sets of doors—to be out of the cold and wind and just to smell that wonderful odor from the perfume counter!

Beers Music Store was next followed by one of our three movie theaters, and the Pershing Hotel ended the block.  JC Penney’s and Sears and Roebuck were among the stores on the other side of the street.  

The rest of the main stores were around the corner to the right and filled both sides of the street for the next three blocks.  By the time you were done shopping and carrying your packages, you were beginning to dread the idea of the walk back home.  Of course you could take the bus, but it cost a whole nickel!  It was easier just to walk.

I compared those days to how I did my Christmas gifting this year:  a little actual shopping in the malls, bought some things on the computer and had them shipped directly to the recipient, other items I actually handcrafted.  The away gifts are now all mailed, and I’m still waiting for the local gifts I ordered to be delivered.  Although I still have to do the wrapping, I’m marking “gifts” off my “to do” list. 

Guess it’s time to turn my thoughts towards Christmas baking.