The Christmas season is supposed to be “the happiest time of the year.” That may be true for secular carols heard on radio and seen on TV for the weeks between Thanksgiving and December 25, but in real life, at least my real life, this has not always been my perception. When I was very young, I did have hope and happiness, but they disappeared as the years dragged on.
I do recall with nostalgic fondness a few Christmas Eves of my very early childhood, that time before I recognized what family life actually held for me. The evening of December 24 was celebrated with a gathering at the Moransky farm in Mineral Ridge, the place where my mother had lived and where I was born.
The evening began with a dinner in the family dining room; a second dining room, the formal dining room, was seldom used, even if it held a table and chairs that would accommodate a medium sized gathering for a meal. That formal dining room was used only during a wake or for very special occasions. The real dinners were served in an informal, slightly larger room between the front parlor and the kitchen. This was more of a “commons” room, one where relatives gathered for coffee and conversations, or if a sewing or other craft project was underway.
For holiday meals, my aunts would bring casseroles from home. The main course would be prepared by my grandmother in her own kitchen. For Christmas eve, there was, of course, no meat to be served. Well before the modifications of the Second Vatican Council, December 24 was a major day for fast and abstinence. The fasting obligation ended with the Christmas Eve dinner, but the abstinence from all meat products remained firmly in place. Thus, my grandmother would prepare something with fish, but there were usually sufficient alternatives so I could always find something that was edible.
I do remember the straw. In commemoration of the stable origin of Christmas, a Polish dinner table always had bits of straw tucked under the tablecloth. A few pieces always stuck out as a visual reminder of the event. We were a very happy group of relatives smashed together around the one table. Unlike at other events during the rest of the year, there was no separate eating location for children. Somehow, chairs brought from every room in the house could be placed around the dinner table, thanks to the two new “leaves” added to increase its length.
The meal would end with the sharing of the oplatek (pronounced: opwatek) which was a wafer-thin bread that looked like a large communion host. It would be passed around the table and each person would break off a piece to be consumed together as a blessing prayer was recited by all of us. And then, for some mysterious reason, my Uncle Chuck would ask for his shaving mug; it seemed he had a sudden urge to shave! As I grew older, I recognized that the shaving mug looked a lot like a handbell.
While Uncle Chuck shaved, the rest of us continued to nibble on cookies and sip coffee or milk. Then we heard Santa ring his handbell from the second parlor, the one next to the formal parlor used only for wakes and special occasions (like that other dining room!) This was the signal that we could leave the dinner table and enter that second parlor where the decorated Christmas tree was located. Now there were presents under it. Santa had left his early gifts, one for each of us. The night ended with carols and sleepy kids packed off in cars for their trips home.
Christmas Day, itself, would begin with an early Mass for my mother and me. In the afternoon, we would head “up-the-hill” for Christmas dinner with my father’s family. It would be followed, as usual, with card-playing. There was no difference in a Christmas gathering and the one for Thanksgiving.
Shortly after I turned seven, the Moransky gathering was no longer held. Until I left for college, my parents and I continued to “go-up-the hill” on Christmas Day. During those remaining years before college, Christmas, itself, was a dreary time. A few days before Christmas, my mother would give me her annual present, usually clothing of some sort. I would give her another bottle of Evening in Paris cologne. For my sophomore year of high school, I received a desk for my bedroom. For my first year in college, I received a reel-to-reel tape recorder.
My Christmas season was not a time for happy exchanges among relatives. There would usually be a family argument about putting up and taking down the tree a few days before and after December 25. It was also the annual time for other blowup, as my father would pronounce there would be major changes for the new year, with the implication that there would be less money for anything except absolute necessities.
Later in life, with great effort, I introduced significant changes in my personal celebration of Christmas with my own family. Over the years, the Day became a major time for a newly formed family gathering. I looked forward with pleasure, and not with dread and anxiety, to happy hours with all of our offspring.
Later, as the family expanded into another generation, I truly enjoyed our rooms filled with active kids in our home on Christmas day. There were times I would have preferred those gifts be unwrapped with some sense of order, but no matter how sedately they started, the event usually ended with everyone tearing open packages at the same time.
The days prior to the twenty-fifth we tried to keep guesses about packages under the tree to a minimum. Each year, there was a different coding system devised to lessen the chances of knowing who was receiving which package(s). Our bright youngsters usually deciphered the code within a few hours of the presents being placed in view under the tree.
Over the decades the sequence of events has varied. The Christmas Eve mass, once attended by all of the adults, now has a limited gathering. Often Karen and I have gone, after an early mass, to Chris’ home for dinner.
The Chinese lunch on Christmas Day has disappeared. (Strangely, we found that only Chinese restaurants were open on December 25.) However, attempts have been made to hold a Christmas lunch for as many as may be able to attend sometime the week before, or a few days after, Christmas Day. The venue has varied between Oriental Gardens and the Brookwood Cafe.
In these last retirement years, our apartment can no longer accommodate three children, their spouses, our eleven grandchildren and our eight great-grandchildren. Since they have their own families and a need for their own celebrations, our expanded family now assembles at Ken’s home, with his large clan, a few days after December 25 for the exchange of gifts. Yes, now the Twelve Days of Christmas are, indeed, the “happiest time of the year.”