I’ve said this before: Christmas in California is weird.
When I lived in the Midwest, the holiday season always coincided with the weather, starting with Halloween, when the leaves change colors. By Thanksgiving, the leaves fall off the trees, and it gets chilly. And by December, it’s full-on winter coats and snow.
But here it’s hard to get in the mood, what with all the sun. Not that I’m complaining – sun is good. But I’ve got some great memories of Christmas in Chicago.
For many years, my family would congregate with other family members — most recognizable, others as familiar as little green space men — at my grandparents’ house in the city. While hairdos would change every few years and, perhaps, a newborn cousin might join the foray, things pretty well went according to the script.
First, our nuclear unit would arrive fashionably late, thereby allowing us to cut down on the obligatory discussions about who’s just had major surgery and whose boy had a trombone solo at his last junior high assembly. After stacking our coats, scarves, and Tweetie Bird mittens on a small mountain of clothing, we would stack our presents and sit around the tree, where the youngest relatives would normally be seen playing with Wisemen.
“When do we get to open presents?” was a popular question among the kids.
“After we eat,” somebody — usually a mother — would answer.
As long as there were a few people who hadn’t arrived, my grandfather would work feverishly to secure parking spaces near the house, a tactic that was cleverly achieved by strategically placing a chair where cars normally go. No one ever wanted to park far away from Grandpa’s house — especially around Christmas time in Chicago, when something as simple as a windshield wiper or a set of mismatched Michelins could theoretically represent a unique gift idea for the criminal element. (One year, my relatives got my grandfather a bullet-proof vest for Christmas, and it was only half a joke.)
Finally, around 7:30, we all gathered around the table, where an odd-looking assortment of food awaited us. Frightened of the unknown, I usually stuck with edibles I recognized: turkey and mashed potatoes.
“Is that all you’re going to eat?” someone would usually ask..
“Oh yeah,” I would say, hoping no one heard my stomach growl. “I’m not very hungry today.”
Food was, of course, irrelevant, for every kid in attendance had something else on his mind: namely, that skyline of gift-wrapped boxes that had tormented you since you arrived.
After being compelled to sing the “Twelve Days of Christmas” — a tradition only two percent of the family wanted to keep intact — the time arrived.
While several boxes were neatly adorned in fancy wrapping paper, the kids were impervious to decor as we tore through the paper like Tasmanian Devils.
When opening gifts, as every individual under the age of 18 knows, there is one steadfast rule you must follow to maximize pleasure: Start with the Big Daddy. That’s the biggest box you have, which, you hope, contains something especially cool — like a motorcycle.
More often than not, it has something to do with crayons, but you hold out for something different each year. Alas, just like the circus, Christmas at grandpa’s seldom changed. Hence, the gifts were normally predictable: a button-down shirt from Grandma and Grandpa, Brute cologne from my aunt, and a pair of gloves from someone whose tag you lost during the rush to disembowel every box.
When it’s over, you discover that out of about ten gifts, you now have two that might avoid the doldrums of your closet when you get home — one of which has something to do with crayons. The others are, by and large, a variation of the gift you received from the same people last year. Fruit-o-the-Looms, for example, but maybe blue instead of white. And a size bigger.
So not only did you not get a motorcycle, but you didn’t even get the next best thing: a Big Wheel.
It would be a disappointment if it weren’t for the fact that there were other gifts at home. The real gifts. The ones you’d been pestering your mother about since, oh, the Fourth of July.
And, if you were smart — as I was — you had pretended you still believed in Santa Claus, even though your friend Bobby had set the record straight two years before. Hence, not only do you get presents from mom and dad but also from that corpulent maker of toys, the boss of the elves: The Big Man.
You know, I really don’t miss all that snow and cold. But there’s a part of me that will always long for Hamlin Avenue in December.
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The video, in case you’re wondering, is of my family from the late 60s through the early 80s. Sadly, it doesn’t include footage of Christmas at my Grandfather’s in Chicago because the camera belonged to my other grandparents. But there’s some great old images from the Chicago area and Indiana.
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