December 20, 2012 (Thursday)
There’s today, tomorrow, the weekend, and then..Christmas Eve! And you know what the following day is called. So here we are. Again.
My first Christmas was in 1931; I was 3 months old. I have no memories of that Christmas, but I know where we were living and I have a baby picture taken around that time.
In 1934, when Santa came to our house, he brought gifts for my 7-months-old twin sisters as well as for me. While I have no memories of Christmas that year, I do have memories of my sisters. I remember seeing them in the bed on either side of my mother shortly after their births, even though I was not yet three years old at the time. Yes, I definitely do remember that. OK, I can’t prove it in court.
The first Christmas I remember is the one that came when I was five years old. I remember that one because we had fireworks. I probably was forbidden to touch them, much less hold them, but I did both, and had the very unpleasant sensation that comes when one explodes while still being grasped by fingers. Yep, I remember that one. Would you believe, as I tell you this, my fingers are actually throbbing?
The first Christmas gift I can remember receiving was around that same time. I got a wind-up train that ran on a circle track. I got one of those every year for a few years. I kept dismantling them, and so needed replacements. My sisters always got dolls, the kind that went to sleep when you put them on their backs and they also cried “Mama.” I dismantled those, too, but usually I waited until they had been left outside in the rain and were abandoned. The little mechanism that made the eyes close had two lead weights in them–unacceptable by today’s toxin standards.
Somewhere along the way I got stuff like a little red wagon, a kiddie car, tricycle, skates, and even, when I was 9, a movie projector (16mm, Sears, $8.95, complete with short films). The next year, I got a bb gun (didn’t shoot my eye out, but put a hole in a neighbor’s kitchen window. In exchange for my promise to be more careful, she promised not to tell on me).
So far I have lived through 81 Christmases. When I was 5 or 6, one of my little friends told me he stayed up late and actually saw Santa Claus. He said it with such sincerity and passion that he made a believer out of me. (Click Santa’s hat for poem).