Senior Beat
by Carol Higgins Taylor
Special to The Weekly
Christmas is timeless. The ghosts of Christmases past rise and bring with them the memories of youth, and a time when the holidays were brimming with anticipation and wonder. A time when our biggest concern was composing the perfect letter to Santa and finding the perfect Christmas tree.
Reliving the memories with family and sharing them with friends over a plate of red and white frosted cookies is a new memory in the making for Christmases future.
One of the best gifts you can give yourself is to listen to an elderly person reminisce about what life was like “back in the day.” This is my gift to myself and to you.
“My first Christmas memory was of my sister Lillian [Davis, who passed away a few years ago] and I going into the woods to pick out the Christmas tree with our father,” said my mother, Margie, 87. “We were only 6 and 7 but always picked out a round, full tree. Usually it was big enough to fill a town hall so after we scaled down and chose a smaller one Daddy would cut it, and Lillian and I would hang onto the top part, and Daddy the bottom, and we carried it out of the woods in the snow.”
Times were lean in the 1930s and children learned to get creative with decorations.
“We didn’t have many ornaments back then so Lil and I and the smaller kids [Mom is the oldest of seven] would use milk caps, the cardboard ones that came on a quart of milk, put tinfoil on them and hang them with string,” she said. “At that point, we did not string popcorn because we kids would eat it all, but we made garland by coloring strips of paper and pasting them into a chain.”
Always the mischievous older children, Aunt Lil often told the story of the attempts she and my mother made to see the tree first.
“Christmas mornings Marge and I would creep ever so softly down the front stairs so we wouldn’t wake Mum and Dad, to peek at the tree,” said Lillian. “I remember Mum’s command, ‘Get back in that bed,’ which we did as we knew what would happen if we didn’t. We’d have to stand to eat.” Lil always laughed at the memory.
After having the tree, everyone would climb into the family’s old Model T pickup and head to their grandmother’s house to have her tree and dinner. Ah, Christmas dinner.
“Grammy would cater to us kids,” Margie said. “She’d call us into the kitchen, telling us she was going to feed us first so we would get the good stuff. We were delighted. Then when we were finished, we all went outside to play.”
Years later, the children realized the early dinner was simply a ploy to keep them occupied so the adults could enjoy their meal in peace.
And let’s not forget the special gifts.
“The most memorable present I ever got was when I was eight,” she Margie. “Mom and Daddy bought me a guitar. It was “The Singing Cowboy”, a Gene Autry model. Lillian’s favorite was a 10-inch doll, dressed in pink with blonde hair and blue eyes. Occasionally we would get ice skates.”
Sharing memories is sharing a part of yourself.
Juanita Taylor, 61, has vivid memories of a very special gift, as well.
“I was about 11 or 12 and I loved to ice skate but I always had used hockey skates,” she said. “Then I saw the most beautiful pair of ladies’ white figure skates in the world, but I knew they were way too expensive for Mom and Dad to buy. That Christmas Eve a knock came on our door and Dad said ‘I’ll take care of this.’ We kids went to bed. And Christmas morning there was a beautiful box under the tree with my name on it and inside were the ladies’ white figure skates. I wore them for years until I just couldn’t get my feet into them anymore. But I can still remember how excited and amazed I was.”
The spirit of Christmas, past, present and future, is alive and well in our hearts.
Carol Higgins Taylor is an advocate for seniors and Bangor. Email her at 4chtaylor@gmail.com.