Last year's read for December -- well worth it!
I will be spending Christmas at my daughter's house, with my grandson, and this year, his father has flown in from Chicago to spend the holidays with him. Although I won't have Zaire with me this weekend, I am very happy he'll be able to spend time with a father he rarely sees. Plus, I plan to take many pictures of them together, for future posts.
This year, Zaire is comprehending the Santa Claus phenomena. He wrote a letter to the big red guy, asking for a bike, and we bought him one from Santa, which will go up under the tree later tonight, after he has gone to bed. Also for the first time, Zaire will be tracking Santa vis-a-vis the Norad site, which I find fun, and if you check out the links to last year's posts, I have a whole slew of things about Christmas, including the link to the Norad site.
Although traditionally, I have been taught to be thankful at Thanksgiving, I find I think more about these things at Christmas time. At a time when many are being laid off, the economy is fucked, and people are not going to have the best of times this year, I am thankful that I have a good job that is not going anywhere, a roof over my head (even if I am only renting), a loving grandson, a daughter finally coming into her own, and relatives that I may not see much during the year, but thanks to texting and email, am in contact with more this year (since my uncle's death), and most of all, that I am still alive.
I thought DJ Rix had a great post up about Christmas. Like him, most of my memories come from my childhood relationship with Christmas ... which mostly was horrid. One of my more painful memories was when I was six years old, and my sister and I had to live for a year (before either of us entered elementary school, although I could have been in kindergarten, but they decided not to put me in school until my sister was old enough to also go to school -- there was no "day care" back in that era) because my mother had a nervous breakdown and could not care for us. We lived in Baltimore, MD, and I only saw my mother once during the entire year, at Christmas. When she left, I must have cried for days. But, it was at that early age that I learned I was going to have to take care of myself because my mother was never going to be able to be a mom to me.
Most of the Christmases were spoiled because my mother got extremely drunk, and she was not a nice drunk (unlike me, who is a happy drunk - grinning). Once she knocked over the tree, one year, she pee'd in the refrigerator fruit/vegetable drawer (my sister and I refused to eat anything for like a year that was put in that drawer). One year, my mom, during her frequent mean phases, refused to get a tree. However, I was in junior high at the time, and my girlfriends chipped in and bought me a tree. It was like that sickly tree in one of those Charlie Brown television shows, but it was a tree nonetheless. I knew I could count on friends a hell of a lot more than I could ever count on my mom.
Christmas was also weird because my aunt and uncle, and their children, did not really celebrate it, being Baha'is, but they always came to either my mom's house or my grandparents' house (when the grandparents were not away, given that my grandfather was in the Coast Guard and stationed all over the world during most of my lifetime, and rarely home until the years after he retired) probably just to make sure that my sister and I weren't killed by my mother's drunken sprees. I have some fond memories of a few Christmases where the whole family was together, and some cool pictures. Next year, after I get a scanner, I'll start posting more of my family from the old days.
After I turned 21 and was married, I stopped attending family functions, being that both my husband and I were Baha'is and by that time, only my mom and my grandfather were not Baha'is, so Christmas was not really a big deal anymore, especially since all of us were grown up by that time, and the only little kid was my sister's son (she had a baby when she was 16).
I only rediscovered Christmas in my 30's when I was forced to have to get a tree when I lived in Oregon with my third husband and his daughter, and she was seven and still believed in Santa. It was weird, but I went along with it, especially considering that we cut our own tree from a tree farm, made our own ornaments, and strung real cranberries and popcorn on the tree. Again, once I get a scanner, I'll put up pictures. That year was special, and I found a relationship with the holidays that had nothing to do with religion, and I enjoyed it, especially giving gifts to others. My third marriage didn't last long, hell, none of my marriages lasted long, damn it! But my intrigue with Christmas started then, and as I have posted before, when the second husband (father of my only child) made a big deal of me not celebrating Christmas as one of the reasons why I was an unfit mother, in his never ending quest to try to legally take custody of her, I started buying trees, ornaments, and acquiring the music.
The music part of Christmas was something I always did like. Growing up in a musical family, I enjoyed all kinds of music. Funny, during the holidays, my family (all Baha'is) would sing non-Christmas songs at Christmas functions, like going to old age homes and hospitals and giving concerts, but just not singing Christmas songs. One of the songs we always sang was "It's A Small World," in many harmonies (laughing). But on my own, I liked and still like, Christmas songs, which is probably why I have this vast catalogue of Christmas music -- more than 1,000 song titles in mp3 format.
My favorite song is White Christmas, which was originally in the movie Holiday Inn (and years later reprised in the movie "White Christmas" -- not nearly as emotional as the original). When Bing takes his ever present pipe and hits the bells, I get goose bumps! Although I was raised in the Los Angeles area most of my life, we always went to the mountains during the winter, so I have been blessed to have seen and played in snow many holidays. Again, I have pictures (laughs) that I'll soon put up when the occasion arises, AFTER I GET MY DAMN SCANNER!
Anyway, I'll end this tome with my favorite, Bing, along with Ginger Rogers, from the movie Holiday Inn, singing White Christmas, and wishing everyone who reads my blog (and those that don't) a very, merry Christmas this year. Be happy, because 2009 is going to be a dreadful year, and Christmas next year may be one of the worst this nation, and the world, will have experienced since the Great Depression.
1 comment:
My mom was a controlled alcoholic when I was growing up, & for her generation that was considered a skill rather than an illness. I didn't understand it as alcoholism, which was supposed to be bums in the gutter. But she went out of control more frequently as she got older & had fewer disciplining routines. She was self-medicating depression, & the more her drinking screwed up her relationships, the more depressed she became. My dad had a great second marriage. He never became a teetotaler, but unlike mom, his life didn't revolve around needing social occasions that involved booze, or having to marry someone who would drink with him.
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