I'll Be Home for Christmas

I’ll be home for Christmas,

You can count on me.

Please have snow

And Mistletoe

And presents under the tree.

Christmas Eve will find me

Where the love light gleams.

I’ll be home for Christmas,

If only in my dreams.

I remember singing this song on my way home to Illinois for Christmas soon after I was married and living far away in Maryland. After our family got to a certain age, we opted to not make that trek between Thanksgiving and Springtime, due to the potential of treacherous weather; not to mention the need to establish holiday traditions for our own young family. However, every year my memories still turn to the pleasures of spending Christmas back “home”.

As with many things in the Smith family, our Christmas was humble. This was a necessity, as we didn’t have much money to spend on big ticket items. But our Christmas was still very special, as each year added traditions in the way we did things. Decorating the tree was always exciting. At least once Aunt Katie and Uncle Lloyd came over to help decorate, and someone had the idea of making garlands of popcorn to string on the tree. This necessitated popping lots of popcorn, and then my aunt and uncle took up needle and thread to make the garlands (we used to have a picture of them doing this). The fact that I only remember this happening one year is probably due to the amount of labor involved. The special part was that Katie and Lloyd spent the evening at our house.

Decorating the tree was a ritual of opening boxes of much-loved ornaments, which I remembered from year to year. Some had belonged to my mother as a child; others were newer and fancier.

We always had big tree lights that generated a lot of heat, and probably posed a fire risk. When we started getting artificial trees (due to Yours Truly’s allergies), those hot lights melted into the artificial needles of the tree. The big tree at the Methodist church had bubble lights. It was always a much taller tree than ours at home, and the bubble lights were beautiful, covering the entire tree.

We always put tinsel on the tree. This was a good thing, since the trees we got were scrawny, and the tinsel hid the big gaps. Once the tinsel was on the tree, it looked magical.

Each one of we three kids had our own Christmas stocking, made of felt and decorated by Mom, and they were hung underneath the stair railing where there was just enough room for three stockings. One looked like a black train engine; one was white with holly on it; and the other one was red and looked like Santa.

There wasn’t much financial outlay for Christmas because not much money was available. In other words, we never got a bunch of toys. Generally, each of the kids was assured of getting three Christmas presents (not counting the little things in our stocking). One present would be a toy; one would be something handmade; and the other would be... well, something else that we needed. Although sometimes we got clothing, at least we never got the dreaded gift of underwear.

Special gifts that I remember were:

·         A bike, when I was nine years old.

·         Pepper, our Boston Terrier, given to my sister Jo Ellen that same year. Technically he was her dog, but he essentially belonged to the entire family.

·         One year, my mother knitted a set of mittens and a hat. The hat was “basket stitch,” and the dark blue yarn was iridescent. They were very beautiful, and although I would have preferred toys to clothing, I loved them. 

Grandma Chamness always gave us a new set of pajamas, complete with matching bathrobe, and sometimes slippers as well. This gift was always opened on Christmas Eve so that she could see us wearing them as we went up the stairs on our way to bed; and of course, we would be wearing them on Christmas morning.

In my earlier years, when I still believed in Santa Claus, I would go upstairs in my new jammies and try my hardest to fall asleep; for I understood that Santa wouldn’t come if we children were awake. I would look out my bedroom window, scanning the sky for the red light of Rudolph’s nose. But the only glow I could see was from the blue lights of the Christmas cross, which stood in front of the Methodist church.

In later years, my parents acquired a new stereo, enclosed in a fine maple case which matched the rest of the living room furniture. A local chain of gas stations had a promotion where, if you filled up your tank, you could buy that year’s Goodyear Christmas anthology LP for a pittance. Or maybe it was free. (Back in the day merchants did give things away for free.) We collected a few of those albums and would listen to them as we opened our presents on Christmas morning, and as we ate a special breakfast.

Mom had a talent for making a meal classy. She dipped the rims of our crystal water glasses in egg white, and then dipped them in sugar, so they appeared frosted with snow. She put a maraschino cherry in the bottom of each glass, and then poured in the orange juice, to make it seem like a fancy drink – or as fancy as a drink could be for a family that never indulged in an alcoholic beverage. She had the knack of making a good hollandaise sauce, and I remember her making eggs hollandaise (which probably accounts for my love of that dish). We would enjoy our classy breakfast on Grandma Chamness’s good china, which had yellow roses and gold rims. In the afternoon we would migrate across town to Grandma Smith’s house, where the festivities continued.

One notable Christmas stands out in my memories, from my early adult years – the Christmas of 1981. By this time my parents were divorced, and my mother had remarried and moved to Champaign, Illinois. In the days immediately preceding our trip, I started feeling a little sick to my stomach. By the time we started our drive, I had a strong suspicion that I might be pregnant. But it was too early to tell, and the first day that a home pregnancy test would be possible was Christmas Day. Eric and I devised a plot – involving waking up at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning and doing a pregnancy test. I can’t remember how long you had to let those old tests sit before you could see a result, but that morning it seemed like an eternity. It wasn’t merely a matter of peeing on a stick and watching for a plus or minus sign to appear in a few seconds, as it is today. A chemical reaction to a pregnancy-related hormone would create a circle on the bottom of the test tube, and you had to wait for a while – maybe as long as an hour or two. So, I did my business and put the test tube in its holder on the dresser and climbed back into bed with Eric. We were too nervous to fall back asleep as the minutes crawled past. But lo and behold when the time had elapsed there was that circle, and we knew we were giving my parents the best Christmas present ever – their first grandchild.

By that time, it was a tradition in my family that everyone had Christmas stockings – even the adults – so I made labels for each of them: Daddy and Mommy for Eric and myself; Grandma Weezy, Uncle Charlie, and Aunt Jo for my mother, brother, and sister. Then we waited for the stockings to be passed around, and great fun ensued. The rejoicing was such that we almost forgot to open the rest of the presents. When the local excitement calmed down, I called Dad in southern Illinois to share the news. Before I could tell him what it was, he guessed: “You’re pregnant!”

Prior to having a baby, Eric and I never had a Christmas tree of our own. The apartments we lived in were very small; and in those days we would be spending Christmas Day in the home of one of our parents. But with a new baby, we needed to start our own traditions. Jeannie was four months old on her first Christmas, and neither Eric nor I were employed full-time. (We were the resident managers of our apartment building, and Eric was working freelance jobs.) So, we didn’t have two nickels to rub together. I went to Hechinger’s, a local hardware chain, looking for the cheapest and smallest artificial Christmas tree they had. I hit the jackpot with a $35 tree that was just the right size to put on top of our small dining room table. It was the last one they had in stock – the floor model – and since it was used, I obtained it for less than its stated price. And because the clerk said he didn’t feel like taking the lights off, we got a free string of lights to boot. I bought a dozen shiny red Styrofoam apples covered with red shellac, and those were our only decorations. It was simple, but when it was the only light in our small apartment, it looked very festive. And little Jeannie loved the lights. Eric’s sister, Beth, was living near us in Gaithersburg at the time, and she made us a set of cookie-dough ornaments, which lasted for years.

Since those early times, our family grew to include three daughters and two beloved sons-in-law, and our own Christmas traditions have evolved. But there was something special and irreplaceable in those long-ago times when our family didn’t have much in material possessions; yet every Christmas was special in its own way. Those dear parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles are no longer physically present with us, but their spirits will always be near us, in the holiness of Christmas Eve and the warm and cheerful celebration of each Christmas morning.