Christmas Potpourri 2013: Bikes and Turkey Soda and "Twains" (Err Trains)

"Christmas isn't a season.  It's a feeling."  ~Edna Ferber

Many of us in America start the countdown to Christmas as soon as the Thanksgiving leftovers have been stuffed into the fridge.  And so Christmas seemed to arrive early this year because just when we were waking up from the turkey and stuffing stupor and erupting cranberry flavored belches November was already rolling into December.

And now it’s upon us; quicker than a team of 8 tiny reindeer.  It’s panic shopping time.  Don’t know what to get the little woman?  Get her a fondue pot or a sheer negligee; one of those bright red things from Frederick’s that are meant to be worn for no longer than ten minutes and are in oh so bad taste.  Hell, get her a fishing rod.  Anything.  Just so she has something to open.  If she doesn't like it she can always return it.  

Cora tried to pull that with me.  She knows I've been looking at tablets and I tried to steer her off that path.

“Don’t get me a tablet.”

“Why not.”

“Just don’t.”

“I can get it and then you can return it.”

“So what you’re really planning on getting me is the opportunity of standing in a return line on the 26^th, is that it?” 

This year I got Cora something that got returned 10 days before Christmas.  It was a print of a Victorian painting that she fell in love with at a B&B we stayed at last summer.  I found it online and ordered a canvas transfer. A glance at the huge flat package that arrived brought two words to mind -“Oh-oh.”  I hustled it upstairs and opened it to find that Cora’s present was more mural and less print.  Well this was a problem.  The little girl in the Victorian print, err mural was immense.  I couldn't put the thing under the tree for Cora to open.  She’d have uncovered that elephantine face and keeled over.  There was nothing for it but to bring Cora upstairs for a consultation.

“It’s huge,” she said.

“No shit.”

UPS picked it up a couple days later.

When I was a kid the crown jewels of Christmas gifts were an electric train set and a bicycle.  I remember waking up one Christmas morning to a Lionel train circling the tree.  There were a couple of Christmases that brought me bikes.  One year it was my first bike and some years later a three speed.  For a kid nothing could shine brighter than a Christmas bike.

After the unwrapping we neighborhood kids could barely contain the excitement of showing off the Christmas loot.  We were bound however by the observance of the traditional waiting period; a vague, ill-defined period of time to let families complete their Christmas morning rituals.  Parents usually cut us loose about noon or so even though every family on the block had completed Christmas morning about 7 hours earlier when the kids rousted the parents.  When we were finally allowed to go out we’d gather at one of the houses to compare Christmas loot. Those of us who were Catholic were compelled to observe that other, more dreaded tradition – church.  Church – on Christmas morning.  What was the world coming to?  I was dressed in itchy wool slacks, a white shirt that had all the comfort of a straitjacket and a clip on tie.  We went to St. Bartholomew’s and joined the rest of the flock that hadn't seen the inside of a church since Easter Sunday.  It was always easy to spot those Christmas Catholics.  While the regulars knew when to stand, kneel or genuflect the bandwagon Catholics often double clutched and started to kneel when the Pope's playbook clearly called for sitting.  Every now and then some fool lost in the reverie of his Christmas gifts or simply bored stiff would be the only one standing while everyone else had seated; until the little woman tugged on his coat and, mortified and red faced, angrily gestured him to sit. 

And then there were the army men.  When I was a kid playing army was not yet on the PC police’s shit list.  After all we were the children of World War II veterans.  One Christmas I got what must have been the all-time greatest super deluxe WWII army man set.  It had tanks, vehicles, cannons and companies of German and American soldiers along with a destructible bridge for them to fight over.  Christmas Day and the living room floor looked like the planning room for D-Day; Eisenhower would have been olive drab with envy.  And then came the phone call from Father O’Shaughnessy telling mom he wanted to pay a Christmas visit.  WHAT??!!  The last person that mom wanted to see on any day was the preacher and why in the hell was he coming to the house on the Savior’s birthday with World War Two spread out all over the house?  Oh and did I mention the camouflage Tommy gun, poncho and helmet?  In a panic mom called all hands on deck to get the all the trappings of war picked up and stashed before the padre made the 10 minute drive to the house. 

Nowadays the Christmas crown jewel is a tablet – even for a four or five year old.  Have they gotten jaded?  I thought so until last year when I got an HO scale train to put under the tree.  We’d finished decorating the tree when my grandson Jackson caught a glimpse of the train still packed in the box.

“Can you set up the “twain” papa?  Pweeze.  Pweeeeeze.” 

 

The Christmas "twain" 

This year I expanded the train set, added extra track, a couple of track switches, a tunnel and a snow scene.  Jackson watched as I laid out the track and then worried over me when one of the switches kept derailing the cars.  “I’m sowwy the twain won’t wun papa.”

I did some minor surgery on the offending switch and he was elated when the “twain” was up and “wunning.” 

His joy was surpassed only by his pride when I let him actually run it.

My seven year old granddaughter visited last weekend.  “Awesome,” she said when she saw the train.  Jackson made sure to give his older cousin a complete course in how to “dwive the twain.”

A half-century later, an electric train is still magical. 

Christmas arrived so fast this year that we haven’t had time to take in all the traditional Christmas movies.  Most of them I wouldn't give a second thought to were it not for the Christmas theme.  I watched Home Alone 2, two nights in a row with my oldest granddaughter.  A few nights before that, I watched the Jean Luc Picard version of A Christmas Carol.  It was pretty dreadful.  I can’t say it’s the worst version ever made but then I haven’t come close to scratching the Christmas Carol surface.  There have been 22 film adaptations and 18 versions for television and I’d wager that 99% of them would have Dickens, that distinguished old ghost of Christmases past rattling his chains in despair. Or maybe he would have found Bill Murray acting like a dick both before and after the ghosts somehow entertaining.  I remember the first version I saw as a child was Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol, with Jim Backus doing the voice of Mister Magoo/Ebenezer Scrooge. 

 

My first "Scrooge"

This year I also watched The Homecoming: A Christmas Story.  Those old enough will remember that it was the pilot for the television series, The Waltons, which might earn me some titters and outright guffaws of derision.  “You watched The Waltons?”  Well yes I did and I particularly liked The Homecoming.  While it is admittedly syrupy and schmaltzy it takes us back to a time that is incomprehensible to most Americans today – the Great Depression.  A time when a simple homemade doll or even an apple and a few pieces of candy were cherished gifts; when, unlike today there was no sense of entitlement to receive a tablet or a big screen TV. 

In his essay A String of Lights for Christmas Robert Hastings recalls a Great Depression Christmas and the gift his dad sent to his sister’s family in St. Louis. 

“About December 22, Dad would kill one of his fattest yellow hens.  The next morning Mom Would dress her, then lay her out on dish cloths to dry.  Next the hen was wrapped in cloths to dry, then in waxed paper or leftover bread wrappers.  Finally she went into a box, with wrappings made from paper sacks, and tied it with odds and ends of string saved from grocery packages.

Shortly after dinner, Dad would set out for the post office to mail the hen, and the home-baked goodies packed with her in the box…So, rather than gifts of clothing or toys, a little chicken that had scratched in the spring grass in a l quiet little Southern Illinois town found its way to the table of my sister in the city.  We sent what we could, and I always sensed that the package was tied by cords of love.” 

 

Great Depression Christmas

Bing Crosby may have crooned about a White Christmas but here in Northern California we’re dreaming of a wet Christmas.  It looks like a drought year again.  I remember many of the holiday seasons of my childhood in San Mateo when we were pelted by fierce rainstorms.  My bed was next to a window and at night I would peek outside as the wind howled and sent sheets of rain against the glass and I would see the Christmas lights hanging above along the dripping gutter and feel the warm comfort of Christmas.  In those days we did our holiday shopping at the Hillsdale Mall.  It was an outdoor mall, where, bundled in overcoats, we dashed between the stores, huddling beneath wind strained umbrellas and sloshing through puddles.  I was actually saddened when malls became big sterile, temperature controlled indoor edifices.  In an area where snow is rare there was something Christmassy about battling the rainy elements to go shopping.  But on this Christmas Eve the hills that would normally be emerald green are brown and dry and we've been admonished to spare the air.  Wood burning is off the holiday menu and the local populace is up in arms.  One indignant fellow declared that a totalitarian government is hassling Christians.     

It’s almost time to start cooking Christmas Eve dinner, the traditional Catholic fare of seafood.  Today is a holy day of obligation and meat is forbidden fruit, uh, so to speak.  My son was in violation early today with a Double-Double from In and Our Burger.  One Christmas Eve we went all out with the seafood theme and did a feast of seven fishes.  While shopping for seafood at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco we stopped by the nearby Cost Plus and picked up a pack of Jones Soda holiday flavors that included turkey and gravy, green bean casserole and cranberry.  They were, needless to say, nasty.  This year we’ll be feasting on cioppino with crusty bread, along with seafood salad and oysters.  And we won’t be toasting this year with a bottle of turkey and gravy.

Turkey and gravy soda - I'll have beer thank you

Merry Christmas to all.