Reflections on Christmas Past

Men's Time Topic Discussion for Tuesday, December 7th

Welcome Men of the Village! It is December and all over town nobody could wait to dress their houses, trees, and bushes with many colored lights. Others dragged out those blow-up figures of Santa, reindeer, snowmen, and all the many Santa’s helpers! We even have fake snow on the lawns to delight the Californians who never had a rusty shovel in the garage. And every few blocks, a house that celebrates what it is all about, the little babe in the barn, Mary and Joseph trying to keep the farm animals from licking the little one so fresh from heaven!

So, Christmas is another year in the making, and we have all cherished memories from childhood of what it meant, the preparations, the food, the gifts, the tree, the anticipation, perhaps the disappointment, perhaps also the worship, the crib, the little playlet where we were the cow, the goat, the sheep, or just an ole dog, standing around worshiping the little baby in our song.

In our house we always went to 5:30 a.m. Mass, and then home to open our presents, which were pretty much clothes or new shoes, and then one special present, like a baseball glove, or a tennis racket, or for my brother (boy, was I jealous!) a new bicycle! And then we decorated the tree…I was of the opinion that icicles should be thrown from 3-5 feet…otherwise it could take an hour putting them on one at a time. I lost that argument every year…that’s the way it was for the baby of the family!

Midday was Christmas meal, turkey, homemade stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, and then the piece-de-resistance, Mom’s Irish puddin’, which had hung in the kitchen for a week or two to “age”! That was as close as I got to Brandy as a kid! What a feast!

So, let’s tell our story of the Christmas Carol. Remind us of things we haven’t thought of for sixty, seventy years. Tell us what it was like at Christmas at your house…or perhaps at Hannukah!

John Tuite

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