Our family's 1940 Season’s Greetings card (Dave with Santa, V.A.L. photo)
Dear George,
I’ve written about our family
Xmases on a couple of occasions.
Those childhood celebrations have to be among the most thrilling times
of our lives. But post-childhood
Xmas holidays are important too.
Some elements remain stable over the years, e.g., Santa, gifts, the Xmas
tree, “Jingle Bells”, eating too much fruitcake. But other aspects of the holiday season change
dramatically. Once you reach that
post middle-age era, you’ve accumulated a lot of Xmases. Here are a few personal tales that
illustrate the striking discrepancies in holiday experiences that can occur as
one moves through the life course.
I started college in
September 1955, so Xmas of that year was the first time that I’d been living
away from home. My freshman
hallmate Newt, who was from Walla Walla, traveled to Menominee with me from Yellow
Springs. I arranged dates for us for the Holly Hop, the annual holiday dance
held at Menominee High. We all
went to dinner first at the Cholette Hotel in nearby Peshtigo. When Newt tried to pay his bill with an
American Express Traveller’s Check, the clerk had never seen such a thing and
refused to honor it. None of us
had sufficient cash in hand. After
a lengthy, heated negotiation, the clerk finally reached the hotel owner by
phone and reluctantly accepted a twenty-dollar traveler’s check. Newt, disgusted, decided he had truly
entered the wilds of rural America.
After the dance we went and parked under the light of the moon in Henes
Park. A police car pulled up
behind us moments later. Nervous
because we were under-age teens with open bottles of beer in the car, I started
the car, slowly backed up, and crept through the park at its ten m.p.h speed
limit with the police car following closely behind. We managed to escape without further incident.
My younger
brother Peter and I in our driveway with my first car (circa 1957)
December 1957 was the first
time that I didn’t come home at all for Xmas. I was on a coop job in New York City. I lived on 163rd St. in Washington
Heights, and I decided to spend Xmas eve at an Irish bar in the neighborhood. After three or four shots of whiskey, I
called home to exchange holiday greetings before my speech got too slurry. A little while later some of the men in
the bar decided from my newly acquired accent that I’d recently come from
Ireland. Another guy disagreed
saying I sounded more Scottish. I
admitted to being from Scotland rather than Ireland, and, as the questioning
from my barmates unfolded, we determined that I had jumped ship in New York harbor
and was in the country illegally.
Two of my new Irish friends said that they had contacts in the criminal
underworld and that they could arrange to get fake papers to keep me in the
country. At that point I decided
that I’d enjoyed enough Irish Xmas cheer and bid my farewells.
In 1958 my college friend
Arnie P. came to visit our family.
Arnie was from White Plains just outside NYC, and he was curious about
visiting the U.P. He’d jokingly
referred to me for some time as coming from Menominee, Mishigas (Yiddish for
“craziness”). A major winter storm
moved in as we drove north from Chicago.
Shortly after we’d passed through Milwaukee we were stopped at a state
police barricade shutting down Highway 41, the main highway to the U.P. A policeman explained that the roads
were impassable, and all the roads heading north from Milwaukee had been closed
except one county highway. He
cautioned us not to risk it, but we decided to try it anyway. With at least two feet of freshly
fallen snow on the ground, we couldn’t see the roadway at all, so I just steered
the car straight ahead through the open space between the trees. We rarely saw
a house with a light on, and we didn’t see a single other car between Milwaukee
and Green Bay. It was a long,
tense, probably dangerous trip, but we did eventually make it. I think Arnie enjoyed his Mishigas
visit. He and my dad had a
spirited debate about the military.
Arnie described his Army Reserve military experience as a thoroughly
unpleasant waste of time, while Vic considered his experiences in the Pacific
in World War II as the most meaningful of his life. Their discussion may have marked the beginning of the
generation gap.
Arnie P. at
river house in Menominee
Though we’d been dating for
two years, Katja didn’t make her first Xmas visit to our house until Xmas of
1959. Vicki was 12; Peter, 14;
Steve, 18. They and my parents
took to Katja immediately, and she to them. She remembers Peter getting a barbell set for Xmas and
embarking on his teenage body-building career. We went with my dad to cut down
an evergreen tree on our back lot and then take it to town to have it
spray-painted (perhaps yellow or red) at Van Domelen’s auto body shop. Katja and I walked across the river to
Pig Island and spotted a mud puppy through the ice lying on the river bottom,
looking like the prehistoric creature it was descended from. All our extended family came for dinner
on Xmas eve, Uncles Kent and Ralph distributing cosmetic samples from the
Menominee and Marinette drugstores and bachelor Uncle Karl bringing extravagant
gifts from Neenah-Menasha. As she did each year, my mother made a delicious
turkey Xmas dinner, topped off with her famous cherry, pineapple, whipped cream
molded jello salad. Katja couldn’t
get over the parade of wonderful friends who came through our front door
throughout the holidays. All in all, it was a memorable Xmas.
Katja playing
cards with David, Vicki, and Peter (circa 1959)
Katja and I graduated from
college and got married in 1960.
That year was our first Xmas in Menominee as a married couple. The main thing I remember is that my
parents turned over their bedroom to us, and I was totally embarrassed to come
out in the morning, having spent the night there with a strange woman. Thanks to my parents subsidizing us, we
started flying up to Menominee for Xmas on North Central Airlines, the line of
the Grey Goose. North Central had
smallish, propeller-driven planes.
On one of our trips Katja had a bad cold and her ears felt like they
were going to explode. She asked
the stewardess if there was anything she could do, and the stewardess
recommended swallowing deeply.
Five minutes later, the stewardess came back and asked Katja if she were
feeling better. She said she was,
and the stewardess explained that the pilot had dropped the plane’s elevation
by 3000 feet. We decided North
Central was the best.
Our son J was born in
September 1969, and we made a big deal about Xmas from the outset, even though
J was only three months old. Once
he reached two or three we’d take him to a big local toy store to look over the
merchandise (in order to get clues for Santa). J would get very excited seeing all the wonderful things,
but after twenty minutes he would invariably wind up in tears because of the
over-stimulation. I always enjoyed
Xmas morning at least as much as J because I got to play with the new toys
too. Usually I was more of a
playmate than a dad. One December
I went to the Digby tennis courts and cut down a sumac tree on the forested
hillside. I made dozens of paper
mache ornaments over balloons with painted faces, hanging them from the sumac’s
branches. It started out as our
Xmas tree, but became a permanent year-round decoration in our dining room. As J got older we began making snowmen
in our side yard each Xmas, then switched over to snow rabbits. They were the hit of the neighborhood.
J in his Xmas
cowboy outfit (circa 1973)
With our families living in
opposite directions, we decided in the early 70s to go to Menominee each summer
and to Katja’s family in Philadelphia and New York City each December. Katja’s parents, Helen and Buck, lived
on Sherwood Road in west Philadelphia, and her sister Ami and brother-in-law
Bruce lived in Manhattan. We’d
drive the turnpike to Philadelphia four or five days before Xmas. We’d typically do the Art Museum, the
Franklin Institute, the Italian market, Philly cheesesteaks at Pat’s, the
Wanamaker tearoom, supper at Howard Johnson’s, a great G.I. surplus store,
Bookbinder’s downtown bookstore, Katja’s shopping expedition to the suburban
Lord & Taylor’s, sometimes a visit to the zoo, sometimes Independence
Hall. Bucks’ relatives would have
a big family gathering at Aunt Miriam and Uncle Moe’s, along with Aunt Beatrice
and Uncle Joe, Aunt Sophie and Uncle Nate, Katja’s aged grandmother, and
various cousins. Katja’s parents
didn’t celebrate either Channukah or Xmas, so we were always eager to move on
to New York for Xmas eve.
Buck and Helen
enjoy a holiday hug in their kitchen on Sherwood Road (ca. 1972)
We’d set off on the New
Jersey Turnpike on the morning of Dec. 24th in order to exchange gifts with Ami
and Bruce at their Upper West Side condo.
Bruce, J, and I would go out on Broadway and bring home a Xmas tree
(always over-priced by Cincinnati standards). Katja and Ami were both extravagant gift-givers, and they’d
shower us all with numerous presents.
Ami would usually invite friends for Xmas eve or Xmas day dinner, and
we’d get together with Bruce’s Bronx family as well. We’d go to the Met, to MOMA, and to the Whitney or the
Guggenheim. Ami and Bruce would
treat us to dinner one night at a cutting edge Manhattan restaurant. We’d do Rockefeller Center, St. Pat’s,
Soho, Canal St. and Chinatown, the East Village, sometimes South St. or the
Battery, Madison Ave. galleries, Times Square (mostly of interest to J and
myself), the Metropolitan Opera, and one or more Broadway shows. As J got older, he and I would spend a
lot of time walking about the city while Katja and Ami went shopping at
Bloomingdale’s or ABC Carpets and had lunch at the Grand Central Oyster
Bar. J loved the city so much that
it was the only place he wanted to go to college, and he wound up at Columbia
as a result of our Xmas trips. On
one of our visits our car trunk was broken into and all our Xmas gifts were
stolen. We went to the district
police station to report the theft.
The officer on duty explained that they didn’t investigate car
robberies, saying simply, “Welcome to Fun City.” Another time J and I were walking along the edge of Central
Park East in the 90s, talking and laughing, and I noticed an attractive woman
in a fur coat watching us and smiling.
I looked more closely, and it was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. I blushed a bit and looked away, but
was privately pleased that Jackie seemed to be enjoying our father-son
camaraderie.
Ami at Xmas in
NYC (ca. 1973)
When Katja’s parents moved to
Cincinnati in 1992, we began staying home over Xmas vacation. Our son J and daughter-in-law K would
join us occasionally, but more often they were away in Michigan, New Orleans,
or California, and we’d communicate by phone and electronically. When we’ve
been in town over the years, our long-time friends Eleanor and Sam Minkarah
have made us a part of their family for the holidays. Their son Jay and his kids and daughter Randa and her spouse
come in from New Hampshire and Washington state, and it’s a festive gathering
with a Xmas eve cocktail party and a family dinner on Xmas day. This year Randa held a 50th birthday dinner party for her
brother at the Cincinnatian Hotel.
Jay was ten when we first started sharing Xmas with their family, so it
was a noteworthy and nostalgic occasion.
Katja with the
Minkarah women: Maria, Randa, Grace, Katja, Eleanor (2011)
Looking back, Xmas has been a
significant event every year since we were teeny kids. What amazes me on
reflection is the enormous changes that we’ve experienced over this time span –
running the gamut from being little kids in the family awaiting Santa to being
young adults, honeymooners, then parents, empty nesters, and now grandparents
ourselves. I’m glad we’ve hung
around to enjoy it all. Despite
the constant change, I’m pleased to say that all our Xmases have been good in
their own way. That’s what the
spirit of Santa will do for you.
Love,
Dave
G-mail Comments
-Donna D (12-27): how
wonderful!
-Linda K-C (12-26): What a great great letter.
-Gayle C-L (12-26):
DAVID, AWESOME AS USUAL. HAVE A GREAT HOLIDAY. LOTS OF LOVE !!!!
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