KEEPING IT REAL
by
Frizzy Lizzy
Well, Sarah, the coffee's done. Care for another cup? How about one of these Christmas cupcakes to go with it? Oh, sure, it's OK, I won't tell Santa Claus! If you feel that badly, you can tell the nice lady at Weight Watchers about it in January!
Here we are, six sleeps until Christmas 2014, and how things have changed in so many ways since we were children. Is it me or is Christmas no longer the joy and fun that it once was? Has everything gotten so electronic and materialistic that the "peace on Earth and good will toward men" has been forgotten and replaced by expensive toys and text messages?
Speaking of Christmas past, I have a few that I would just as soon forget, but the ones from when I was a girl, there are a few of those worth remembering.
The ones that I remember the best come from the mid and late 1960s. My mom and dad sure put a lot into celebrating Christmas. There were six children and my grandparents available for eating, and did we ever eat!
The kitchen was small by any measure. All of us could not fit around the table at the same time so my folks would feed the youngest children first, then they and the older kids would have their meal. On Christmas Eve no one sat because that table was just too full. No one except my grandmother. She always got a seat!
On that table there was ham, sausages, cheeses. wine, poppy seed bread, nut roll, fancy cookies, rum punch, coffee, and tea - and that was just the table for getting together after midnight Mass! But then, in those days Mass would go for almost 3 hours and by the time you got the last blessing, you were hungry!
So everyone of age to be awake at that time of the night got together for some socializing and went to sleep for a few hours to rest-up to prepare the Christmas dinner.
My dad lived through the scarcity of the Great Depression. I'm not sure why they call it "great" because he thought damn little of it. For him back then, Christmas Day might have been a complete meal in the sense of having some sweets in the house. For his family in 1965 there was no hint of scarcity. I can recall seeing a turkey in excess of 11 kilos in the kitchen. It was so huge to me that I marveled at how such a thing could fit inside the oven!
There is so much more to Christmas than food and drink and I miss all of that, too. Do you remember writing and receiving greeting cards, Sarah? Almost no one does that these days. We got so many of them that my mom would put a basket on the porch rail, under the mailbox, to hold all that the letter carrier would deliver. We got hundreds of them. And so did most of us. It gives me a warm feeling to think of that. No, Sarah, I didn't pee myself, you twit!
Now I send out fewer than 10 cards because so people just don' take the time or go to the expense to mail a happy thought to a fellow human. It's all done by clicking a few keys and sending the same card to everyone on your e-mail contacts list.
It didn't take long for my folks to figure out that I was not a little girl fond of dollies. I was pretty good with other things, like puzzles and games and bolo bats. Yes, a bolo bat. You know, Sarah, that wooden paddle thing with a ball on a long rubber band? Yes, that's it. No, that's not what I called it. The thing was a bolo bat in my neighborhood!
I played Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, and moved on to Barbie, Queen of the Prom game, but my favorites were Monopoly and, believe it or not, chess. My friend, Diane Paranisi, taught me how to play chess. She learned from watching her brother.
Eventually I got a lot of story books and my folks saw that I loved to read. Well sure, I did. It was an escape, but that's for some other day. Then they tried a few books on science for kids. They were on the right track. I took to them very well. When they bought a set of encyclopedia, I was off in a corner, looking at every page.
Christmas was decorating the house and yard like my mother wanted it. My dad was not a real handyman but my brother had a mind that could figure out almost everything, so he did the decorations. He got up on the ladder and did the blue spruce that my dad had planted in front of the house and the shrubs on the ground. I decorated the windows from the inside with tiny lights.
The realization that MY Christmas had truly arrived came to me when I was 17 and very much in love. It was snowing like there was no tomorrow and the one I loved came to my home to pick me up and take me to midnight Mass with him.
He was a very special guy. He was as honest as the rain; sincere, gentle, loving, caring, generous - yes, he was a Boy Scout at one time in his life, too, Sarah, you nut!
He and I, we were an item. We were always together and we wanted it to stay that way forever. So on that Christmas Eve he gave me a ring. Not a diamond. I was a bit too young for that, but a star sapphire. A blue star sapphire!
If you can imagine me turning into a puddle right before anyone's eyes, you will know how I felt when he put that ring on my left ring finger.
I held him so closely and we kissed and hugged for a bit longer, then we went out to face what was a blizzard to go to the church where we planned to be wed in about three more years.
And Sarah, nothing can beat that Christmas for me. Never before and none since. How about you? What are your finest Christmas memories?
And how about you, the nice people reading this? Please share your Christmas memories, wonderful or not-so-good. They all count as being a part of your life.
I hope that you have enjoyed this poem. My Merry Christmas to you. Thank you again for reading, and do share your thoughts with us. have a great rest of the week
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Speaking of Christmas past, I have a few that I would just as soon forget, but the ones from when I was a girl, there are a few of those worth remembering.
The ones that I remember the best come from the mid and late 1960s. My mom and dad sure put a lot into celebrating Christmas. There were six children and my grandparents available for eating, and did we ever eat!
The kitchen was small by any measure. All of us could not fit around the table at the same time so my folks would feed the youngest children first, then they and the older kids would have their meal. On Christmas Eve no one sat because that table was just too full. No one except my grandmother. She always got a seat!
On that table there was ham, sausages, cheeses. wine, poppy seed bread, nut roll, fancy cookies, rum punch, coffee, and tea - and that was just the table for getting together after midnight Mass! But then, in those days Mass would go for almost 3 hours and by the time you got the last blessing, you were hungry!
So everyone of age to be awake at that time of the night got together for some socializing and went to sleep for a few hours to rest-up to prepare the Christmas dinner.
My dad lived through the scarcity of the Great Depression. I'm not sure why they call it "great" because he thought damn little of it. For him back then, Christmas Day might have been a complete meal in the sense of having some sweets in the house. For his family in 1965 there was no hint of scarcity. I can recall seeing a turkey in excess of 11 kilos in the kitchen. It was so huge to me that I marveled at how such a thing could fit inside the oven!
There is so much more to Christmas than food and drink and I miss all of that, too. Do you remember writing and receiving greeting cards, Sarah? Almost no one does that these days. We got so many of them that my mom would put a basket on the porch rail, under the mailbox, to hold all that the letter carrier would deliver. We got hundreds of them. And so did most of us. It gives me a warm feeling to think of that. No, Sarah, I didn't pee myself, you twit!
Now I send out fewer than 10 cards because so people just don' take the time or go to the expense to mail a happy thought to a fellow human. It's all done by clicking a few keys and sending the same card to everyone on your e-mail contacts list.
It didn't take long for my folks to figure out that I was not a little girl fond of dollies. I was pretty good with other things, like puzzles and games and bolo bats. Yes, a bolo bat. You know, Sarah, that wooden paddle thing with a ball on a long rubber band? Yes, that's it. No, that's not what I called it. The thing was a bolo bat in my neighborhood!
I played Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, and moved on to Barbie, Queen of the Prom game, but my favorites were Monopoly and, believe it or not, chess. My friend, Diane Paranisi, taught me how to play chess. She learned from watching her brother.
Eventually I got a lot of story books and my folks saw that I loved to read. Well sure, I did. It was an escape, but that's for some other day. Then they tried a few books on science for kids. They were on the right track. I took to them very well. When they bought a set of encyclopedia, I was off in a corner, looking at every page.
Christmas was decorating the house and yard like my mother wanted it. My dad was not a real handyman but my brother had a mind that could figure out almost everything, so he did the decorations. He got up on the ladder and did the blue spruce that my dad had planted in front of the house and the shrubs on the ground. I decorated the windows from the inside with tiny lights.
The realization that MY Christmas had truly arrived came to me when I was 17 and very much in love. It was snowing like there was no tomorrow and the one I loved came to my home to pick me up and take me to midnight Mass with him.
He was a very special guy. He was as honest as the rain; sincere, gentle, loving, caring, generous - yes, he was a Boy Scout at one time in his life, too, Sarah, you nut!
He and I, we were an item. We were always together and we wanted it to stay that way forever. So on that Christmas Eve he gave me a ring. Not a diamond. I was a bit too young for that, but a star sapphire. A blue star sapphire!
If you can imagine me turning into a puddle right before anyone's eyes, you will know how I felt when he put that ring on my left ring finger.
I held him so closely and we kissed and hugged for a bit longer, then we went out to face what was a blizzard to go to the church where we planned to be wed in about three more years.
And Sarah, nothing can beat that Christmas for me. Never before and none since. How about you? What are your finest Christmas memories?
And how about you, the nice people reading this? Please share your Christmas memories, wonderful or not-so-good. They all count as being a part of your life.
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM ME, FRIZZY LIZZY
✿ڰۣ❤In Loving Light from the Fairy Lady❤ڰۣ✿
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