People Still Like Getting Christmas Cards in the Mail

Article first published as People Still Like Getting Christmas Cards in the Mail on Blogcritics.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas,
With every Christmas card I write.
-Irving Berlin

At this time of year there is so much to do, and it seems that one cannot find time to sit down and write Christmas cards anymore. Obviously it is easier and faster to just jot down some lines on the computer, use spell check, and hit the send button. Unfortunately, there is something inherently unsatisfying about the process for both the sender and the receiver.

Of course, if you have children and want to send a card in the mail, then you are now caught up in sending the picture card as opposed to sending a regular Christmas card. Certainly pictures can be slipped inside folded cards and sent, but invariably that is more time consuming, so the senders now opt for store created picture cards (easily made in minutes in places like CVS). They come with envelopes, so one only needs to have the message printed on the front of the card, something innocuous like "Love" and then Mom and Dad's name followed by the kids' names (I admit to falling into this category).

It is exciting, especially for kids, to get these cards. My daughter comes home from school and can't wait to rip them open. She gets to see how big cousins and friends' kids have grown in a year, and they are going to see the same thing when they get the card with a picture of her and her brother on it. There is something a bit old-fashioned about this custom, even if it is coming to you via the latest digital camera technology.

I do have a problem with these cards. They still lack a "message" because of their design. There is no place to write on the front, but one can turn it over and have an entire 4 inch by 8 inch surface to send a message. Sadly, no one seems to avail him or herself of this possibility these days (again, I admit I fall into this category).

Still, whenever I listen to Christmas songs these past few weeks, inevitably Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas" comes on, and when he gets to the part about writing Christmas cards, I get a little misty because we're sending them but not writing them anymore for the most part. Even the labels on the front of the envelopes get printed out courtesy of the computer.

Despite the impersonal efficiency these cards have wrought, the post office can take solace in knowing that people still like sending cards and receiving them. That is good news for the USPS, at least one month out of the year.

We have received a good many cards, and I'd estimate that close to two thirds of them are of the picture variety. Sadly, even the standard folded cards come with scant messages. People I haven't seen in years write something like, "Love and best wishes" followed by their names. I had no idea how they were doing before getting the card and nothing more after receiving it.

No matter what, I do enjoy going to the mailbox and pulling out all those cards in colorful red and green envelopes, and the picture cards certainly make the front of a white refrigerator door seem downright festive. Now, if people could just get back to writing something on these cards, then things would seem infinitely more personal, and wouldn't that make old Bing happy? Well, maybe next year.

 

Remembering Celebrations of St. Nicholas Day

Article first published as Remembering Celebrations of St. Nicholas Day on Blogcritics.

It has been many years since I enjoyed St. Nicholas Day parties as a boy, and with this being St. Nicholas Day Eve, I started reminiscing about this exciting time that my family sadly no longer celebrates each year.


My mother's side of the family is German, with a touch of French courtesy of my great grandmother who came from Alsace-Lorraine. They spoke a little German around the house, and I am left with a smattering of phrases I can still remember fondly like Das ist gut or Guten Morgen. One of my most cherished memories involves the day we called "Little Christmas," which fell on December 6th each year, which is the feast day of St. Nicholas.

We would gather at my Mom's sister's apartment when I was small. Aunt Margie would have the tree decorated and small gifts spread on the table. There would be snacks served like nuts, raisins, chocolates, and cream wafers accompanied by tall glasses of milk. She would put on Christmas records; usually Bing Crosby, Elvis, and Frank Sinatra were the chosen artists, and the room was filled with music, warmth, laughter, and love.

In those days my grandfather sat in a chair in the corner and smoked his cigarettes and drank whiskey, thinking nothing of secondhand smoke because no one knew about that then. We would each take our turns opening the gifts. They were always toys, and that was why we were most excited. There was a guarantee of no disappointments like the shirt or scarf we would inevitably get stuck with on Christmas morning.

It was the same every year. One year I got an astronaut GI Joe, another year it was Johnny West, and then General Custer. Another year I got a few small cavalry soldiers. These action figures were always a prelude to the bigger and more desired toys on our Christmas lists that Santa was no doubt feverishly working on at that moment up at the North Pole, even on his feast day.

I did understand that Santa went by several names: St. Nick, Kris Kringle, and Santa Claus. These were all one and the same person, but on this night St. Nick was all that mattered. Once the toy opening frenzy was done, my grandfather would tell stories about St. Nicholas back in Germany. Of course, Pop was a confidant of the jolly old elf (as well as the Easter Bunny, Jack Frost, and the Tooth Fairy).

Pop's stories were sometimes a little scary, with St. Nick not coming down chimneys but through windows and doors. Instead of a jolly old elf, their was a bit of mischief in Pop's version of the man. While he was ostensibly looking for children's shoes to fill with small toys, candy, and chocolate, this St. Nick could get very angry. Each story featured his little malevolent streak, leaving coal in the shoes if a kid didn't believe in him, sparking the rear end of bad kids, and giving a hot foot to misbehaving adults. It got me thinking that I better be good or I could not only miss out on toys but also get a little hot in my pajama bottoms.

We had this party every year even if it was a school night until my grandmother passed away. This is when Aunt Margie moved in with us to help my mother care for my father's father. The parties shifted to our house for a time, but as we got older and lost the belief in the jolly old elf who came in a sleigh, they sadly ended.

I do recall this night with such happiness, as I do going to see Aunt Margie and getting hugs and kisses from her. She loved all her nieces and nephews so much, and though she never had children of her own, she was like a second mother to all of us. I remember her being filled with joy, so thrilled to see us happy and excited about the party. I have never been able to think of Christmas and not associate it with her, and though she is gone now, I still do because the "spirit" was surely in her and it was quite contagious.

Now that I am older, I am back in the fold and a believer again. I keep the tradition of Santa Claus alive with my children, and whenever I am asked if I believe in the man known as St. Nick, Kris Kringle, or Santa Claus, I remember the spirit of those "Little Christmas" parties at Aunt Margie's house and I say, "Yes" because that spirit is transferred from generation to generation, and that spark I feel as I find that special toy for my kids is surely the proof that Santa Claus lives, as Francis P. Church once told little Virginia O'Hanlon so many years ago, "forever" and will always "make glad the heart of childhood."

So this year I have decided we will have our own "little Christmas." I will tell my children one of the stories my grandfather told (without scaring them like he scared me), give them little treats, and stoke the fire of their imaginations, preparing them for the Christmas morning to come when all their visions of gifts and more will be realized. After all these years, I think it's about time this family recognized St. Nicholas again, for is he not the one who started it all?

Whether we realize it or not, after all this time he is inspiring us to emulate him year after year. Take a look in a mirror when you are in the store and putting yet another toy in your cart, and you just might get a glimpse of the jolly old elf dressed in your clothing. Happy St. Nicholas Day to all, and to all a Gute Nacht.

Thinking About Thanksgiving During the Great Depression and Now

Article first published as Thinking About Thanksgiving During the Great Depression and Now on Blogcritics.


Somehow the great idea of a "day to give thanks" has been lost these days to the commercial hype for Christmas that starts around Halloween and does not let up until the 25th of December. I find Thanksgiving to be the perfect holiday, situated a month before Christmas and in, at least here in the Northeast, cold enough weather that cooking a great meal radiates throughout the house and hits visitors like a warm fragrant kiss as they walk through the door.

Unfortunately, although there is a great parade here in New York City, and people do gather around tables and enjoy meals together, Christmas still seems to be lurking at every turn. I turn on the radio and Christmas songs are being broadcast on seemingly every station. The decorations have been up in the stores for weeks already, and even individual houses and apartments have strung up lights and stuck up trees well in advance of the first day of December. This omnipresence of Christmas in November is annoying and, if you are a parent, also disturbing because it only stokes the kids' excitement and desire for the toys and games that are sought after as presents for under the tree.

Alas, it was not always this way. Speaking to my father, whose memories about seventy years ago are stronger than mine about yesterday, I get grounded in a different reality. He speaks vividly about many things from the past - a man ninety years plus who is sharp as a razor - but he can also tell me who won the competition on Dancing with the Stars or who sacked Mark Sanchez in the last Jets game.

Dad's memory of the Great Depression always gives me chills because the images are so stark, the reality so bleak, that I wonder how anyone today can compare the two times and think people had it better back then. Yes, you could get a whole pizza for a quarter and see movies for a nickel, but the average person (if he was lucky enough to be working) made less than $3,000 a year. As he always says, it is about "perspective" and he is able to give me that.

He recalls Thanksgivings past living here in Queens as being "out in the country." His father and brothers "built our house in the 1920s," and it stood on a block (off what is now called Springfield Boulevard) where other houses were slowly rising, and kids were moving in and they became his friends. My father and his brother had a wonderland of streams, woods, and ponds behind their house that seems impossible in the urban reality of Queens in 2010.

One Thanksgiving, 1933, stands out in his mind particularly. The Depression was in full force, and my grandfather was a NYC policeman. Dad's friends told him he was lucky his father had a job because most of the other boys' fathers had lost theirs. Dad remembers Pop coming home about once a week with some meat (mostly chicken), courtesy of Krauss the butcher whose shop was on the beat where he worked. Pop wasn't always that lucky though, and the Thanksgiving of 1933 looked like it would be one without any meat.


My grandmother had flour and some vegetables and planned to make a big vat of soup and homemade bread, but Dad and his brother wanted more than that. As they walked around the woods they went up along a ridge and saw Miller's farm, where a chicken coop stood under a starkly gray sky. My Dad had a plan to steal a chicken, but my uncle was older and wiser, telling him they couldn't do that. They went down to a stream and picked some berries; at least they figured their Mom could use those to make a pie.

At this point they saw a turkey running through the woods. Dad said he had never seen one before, and it looked like it was lost or something. My uncle picked up a big rock and tiptoed over, hoping to crush its head and bring home the prize, but Dad said the "turkey was faster than Jesse Owens" and shot off into the brush.

The next day after school, my uncle and father took their father's shotgun from the closet and some shells and went off into the woods on a hunt. They went to the place where they had seen the turkey, waiting for hours in the cold until it was getting dark. Having no luck, they started home and saw the bird crouching behind some flaming red bushes. My uncle raised the shotgun, pulled the trigger, and the force of the shot sent him onto his back. Both boys looked to see the bird running off merrily into the woods.

When they got home, Pop was waiting on the porch smoking a cigar. They looked at each other, thinking "we were going to get the belt." Pop asked them why they had taken the gun, and the boys explained that they had seen a turkey and wanted to surprise him for Thanksgiving. Pop said, "There have been no turkeys around here for many years." He seemed to understand them though and took the gun and rubbed both their heads affectionately. "It won't be so bad, boys, Krauss gave me some chopped meat. Your mom is making meatloaf for tomorrow."

Dad said he went to bed that night and dreamt that he woke up and saw his mother cooking the turkey from the woods in a big pan. He got up in the morning and the house was filled with aromas, and he rushed to the kitchen and saw his mother basting a big bird in the oven. He screamed, "Mom, where'd you get that turkey?"

She smiled as she closed the oven door and put two steaming pies on the windowsill. "Why don't you ask your father? He's out in the garage."

My father went outside in the cold air and raced into the garage. He saw some big sheets of the butcher paper Pop got from Krauss spread all over the workbench covered with blood. Next to the bench was a bucket of bloody parts, and Pop was cleaning his shotgun. "Pop," he asked, "where did you get that bird?"

Pop said, "You and your brother got me thinking that there was a turkey out there, so this morning at dawn I went out to where you said he was, and I saw him running around. He had a broken wing; that's why he was stuck out there."

"You shot him?" Dad asked. He kind of liked the idea of eating turkey for Thanksgiving, but the killing part didn't seem real until that moment.

Dad and his brother and parents sat down at the table, held hands, and gave thanks for their blessings. Pop said something about them being lucky, and Dad remembered looking around the table, smelling all the good food, and feeling that this had to be not only the best dinner in Queens that day, but in the entire USA. They ate well that year, and Dad never forgot that, even though the times were hard, life was good in his family.

Looking back on it now, he said it really makes him think about what has happened to Thanksgiving. "It's not the same anymore," he says. Well, that's true about a lot of things, but I wonder if he is right since Christmas seems to have encroached on this day and made it just like the opening door to the "holidays" instead of being an important holiday in and of itself.

Today I will sit down with my own family. My mother is gone now, and this is our fifth year without her. Dad's parents are gone even longer, but I remember them and he says that he thinks of them everyday. As we light candles and enjoy our feast, I will think of how easily we came by it. We went to the store where frozen and fresh turkeys filled an aisle, bought vegetables and fruits and desserts with no effort except to put them in the shopping cart, and drove home in the warmth of a car to a house surrounded by other houses, with the only streams and woods far off on Long Island.

As we eat I will look at my children and give thanks that they eat well and live well, but the memory of Thanksgiving 1933 will be in my thoughts too. It puts things in perspective and, even though times may seem rough now, we have an abundance that is overwhelming. I'll ignore the Christmas songs on the radio, the decorations in stores and on houses, and I will give thanks for what I have and for what my Dad once had as well, because this is the true reason why we celebrate Thanksgiving.