Christmas with Oney and Gwindae

Lawrence, me, Denice (nicknamed Niecie by me), Rodger on Christmas morning @1965.

Denice got to be the baby Jesus and later on her baby brother Dennis assumed the role. There were lots of snickers at the time, but it was most likely closer to the historical truth.

I dream about this house still. It affected me so deeply. It was my grandmother's chef d'oeuvre. She decorated every square inch and it was quite lovely. It was also quite grand and is probably the reason that to this day I feel I should be rich.

I found out this week that my daughter, her husband and my grandsons are coming out to visit right after Christmas through the New Year. While I'm greedy and would love them here during Christmas, I'm so excited to have them out during the holidays -- it's the first time after two years off, I don't mind (too much). With Lindsay pregnant with grandchild no. 3, I started thinking about my Christmases when I was growing up.

I went digging through some old pictures my Aunt Anne gave me shortly after my grandfather died and scanned some of them and uploaded them to Flickr and put a few here.

Christmases at my grandparents home in Greenwich, Conn., were magical. My grandmother would buy some kind of giant blue spruce that she special-ordered. It would take up the entire front foyer part of their house -- a place that was meant to double as a dance floor. The tree reached to the ceiling, which was at least 14 feet. My grandmother used only blue lights and tinsel, along with the decorations. I especially remember silver cornucopias filled with candy. There was a music box dealie with kids singing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" under the tree. I found one years later very similar made of ceramic, but unfortunately it was destroyed.

My grandparents were very religious, so our Christmases were replete with observations of the Christ child's birth. We would do a Nativity play each year and I got to play the virgin Mary. My brother Rodger was Joseph and Lawrence was a shepherd or a Wise Man or whatever. A couple of years we enlisted the aid of the caretaker couple who lived in the house and cleaned up after and served my grandparents, to everyone's snickering amusement.

Even as a young child I had trouble getting my mind around the fact that David and Ethelyne would share in our Christmas morning then they had to put on uniforms and wait on us during Christmas dinner. One year I angrily accused my grandfather of having slaves when he told me they didn't pay David and Ethelyne, they gave them free room and board -- which meant they lived in the half-finished attic and took care of the house. Eventually David and Ethelyne moved out. They had two young children and felt it would be better to raise them in their own apartment rather than in some rich people's attic.

I remember Christmas mornings. We would get up way too early and be sent back to bed a zillion times. We weren't allowed downstairs by the tree until my grandfather checked to see if Santa was there. We were told if we caught Santa he would leave and take all of our presents with him, so my grandfather would have to shoo him away if he were still there. Actually, we realized years alter, he just wanted to turn on the tree lights.

Most of the adults went to midnight Mass and then we would go to mass on Christmas morning. My grandmother always put the orange juice in the blender which created an orange foam. I still do this with my orange juice. She also served Sara Lee coffee cakes, which I till serve.

After my parents divorced, my dad would come and get us on Christmas day and drive us to his house in Binghampton, N.Y. Everyone would always make a fuss about it and my mom would go on about how my dad just picked us up on Christmas because he was selfish and stubborn. Looking back I realize that for him to interrupt his Christmas to drive three hours each way to collect our bratty little asses, was a huge act of love.

Even through my dad's trees were never grand and there weren't always as many presents, we always would have a great time. My dad and stepmom were so poor their first few Christmases together that they would get the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve because they often could get it for free or close to it. Dad would tell us how it was traditional in some countries to put up the tree of Christmas Eve. Then they would decorate it with all-edible ornaments. That way they only bought lights.

Dad would make sugar cookies and gingerbread men. There was candy ribbon (It's the cheapest candy you can buy and it looks pretty) candy canes and popcorn balls. Then dad would go crazy and make his toffee and his soft candy. He would toast nuts and put them all over the place. There were always bowls of stuff to nibble on. Dad is also not religious at all, so there was little mention of that. There was, however, lots of TV because my mom never let us watch it, so we were TV addicts when we got to my dad's house. Of course the fact that we were insanely destructive when we weren't watching TV meant that we were allowed to watch as much as we wanted.

There was only one year it snowed too much for dad to make it and we spent Christmas day sledding on the front hill at my grandparent's house, the only time I remember doing that.

Now it's my turn to make Christmas memories with my grandsons. Although we get a tall tree, it will never compare with my grandparent's tree, but then I will never be as wealthy as my grandparents. What we lack in money we more than make up for in real, unpretentious love. We decorate the house from top to bottom and our Christmas meal is as good as you'll find anywhere, but we don't have anyone serving us.

I have always enjoyed a more spiritual Christmas than the ones we have now, but my problems with my faith run deep and I have trouble reconciling my beliefs with the teachings of the church. This doesn't stop me from singing Christmas carols and fulling embracing the day. I have a much more pantheistic view of things anyway, so our traditional walk on the beach with the dogs serves that purpose, although last year there were high winds and a sandstorm that lessened the joy of the experience considerably.

I want my grandsons' memories of Christmas with grandmom to be ones of warmth and joy. I can't wait until we can have our traditional Christmas Story, White Christmas and It's a Wonderful Life with Rob complaining the whole time about all of it. I want to give them our stocking traditions and feed them a breakfast of whipped orange juice, Sara Lee coffee cake and ham and eggs.

We always have so much fun with Courtney and Dave and I love to watch them relax and enjoy themselves. We have a bunch of fun things for the boys to do -- after all it is Southern California, the Entertainment Capital of the World. I can't believe how happy and excited I am to have a chance to give these boys holiday memories to cherish as I do mine.