Christmas Night

Well, it's Christmas night and the revelry (for the day) has ended. We all were overwhelmed by the giving and receiving, the tearing of packages, the plastic garbage bags stuffed with the detritus of mass consumption. The food and drink was rich and plentiful and we all overindulged. (It's probably a bad idea to try on those new pants tonight --- they will be too small, I guarantee it.)

I listened to Christmas music on the ride home, until Mariah Carey came on, anyway. I don't know what to think of that. Should I be sick of it by now after listening to it every day for nearly a month, or should I feel desperate to listen, trying to stetch the season right up until the end?

Now that I'm home, I'm thinking about all the leftovers we brought home, despite the bloated, sleepy feeling I had just an hour ago. There's an NFL game on, though, so I suppose I should eat something, right?

Ah, what the hell. A ham sandwich sounds real good to me. I'll suffer eater's remorse later.

Christmas ‘68

 

Christmas 1968: pictured above are six of the seven Ramos kids (David wouldn't come along until 1972). In the back row, left to right: John (age 5), Matt (age 6), Mike (age 7), me (age 8) and seated, Mary (age 2 years, 11 months) and Amanda (age 1 yr, 8 months). I've often joked that my mother was pregnant for all but 11 months in the sixties. She doesn't appreciate the joke. My proud dad took the picture on his trusty Kodak Instamatic with the cube flash.

 

Christmas 1968 was singularly memorable yet filled with tradition. This picture was taken on Christmas Eve. My parents would always allow us to open one gift before bed and it was always new pajamas, robes or slippers. We'd rip open the packages and run upstairs to change and return to the living room for a picture. You can see our stockings hanging along the stairwell behind us. (Mine's the green one.) Funny thing is, that tradition has carried on all these years, and has been passed down to our own kids.

 

There are other pictures from this same roll of film but I don't necessarily need them to remember the details of that Christmas. My dad received a bright red terry robe that year, with white trim all around. He wore that every Christmas for years afterward, evoking Santa Claus in all those wonderful photographs. In 1968, I still believed in Santa, though I had my doubts. All the stories had Santa coming down the chimney. We lived in an apartment in the projects and had no chimney. My parents explained to us that Santa had a magic key to our front door. We bought that, sort of.

 

Like many kids, I always tried to stay awake as long as I could (in spite of the dire warnings about being awake during Santa's visit) but probably never made it past midnight. I woke up around 5 A.M. (my wristwatch had a glow-in-the-dark face). I woke my brother Mike in the bottom bunk and we whispered for a full half-hour, debating whether or not it was too early to venture downstairs. It was agonizing. We tried to guess what our presents were and whether or not Santa had really come. The excitement was palpable. The hands on my watch would not move. After another fifteen minutes, I took a deep breath and said, "Let's go."

 

I tiptoed down the hallway as quietly as I could. I stopped at the stairs and peered down. I could see two Speedaway sleds leaning up against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. Yes! Santa had come! I stepped onto the first step and listened. So far, so good. I took the next step and froze when it creaked very loudly.

 

"GET BACK TO BED!" It sounded like the voice of God, but it was only my Dad. I don't think my feet touched the floor between that step and the top bunk. There was a ladder there, but I'm sure I didn't use it. Mike, who had only reached the doorway as he followed me, was entirely under the covers, feigning sleep.

 

We lay there, whispering furiously, as I reported what I had managed to see before being caught. We agreed that seven o'clock was much more reasonable hour but the wait was tortuous. When the hour finally came, I knocked on my parents' door. "Can we go down, now?" There was a pause and some murmured conversation. "O.K.," came the reply and we were downstairs in a flash.

 

Besides the sleds, there was a Hot Wheels set (you clamped the track to a table with a purple plastic clamp, ingenious in its design); a Johnny Astro space station set (balloons that you placed in plastic baskets that you maneuvered around the room with a small fan), complete with a space helmet; a Hands Down game; Battling Tops and Kerplunk! The girls received a diminutive sheet-metal kitchen set (stove, sink and refrigerator) and dolls, of course. I'm pretty sure that was the year Amanda received her Mrs. Beasley doll (remember? The one Buffy played with on Family Affair). I also received a football helmet that Christmas. I remember it distinctly: it was white with three red stripes, flared ear-holes and a white facemask. I'm wearing it in several pictures taken on that same roll of film. Later, my Dad helped me paint silver and blue stars on it. Yes, I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan. But, geez, what a geek --- from the pictures, I must have worn that helmet the rest of the day!

 

As kids, it's all about the anticipation. You have no adult Christmas responsibility --- there's no shopping to do, no Christmas cards to write, no menu to plan. Now, as adults, we help write (and e-mail) the letters to Santa, shop for, wrap and hide the gifts, keeping the wondrous illusion alive for as long as we can. Tradition is important, even as change is inevitable. So do traditions evolve, as they are passed down. Our daughter, Sarah, was born December 27^th, so it's a doubly exciting time for her. As she's gotten older, she's able to understand more just how special her birth was and why we celebrate the way we do. I showed her this picture and, with some prompting, she correctly named her aunts and uncles. I explained about the tradition of the pajamas and she exclaimed, "We do that, too!" She studied the concept of tradition in school earlier this year, so it's nice for her to able to relate her lesson to life. So, we'll take the Christmas Eve picture of her in her new pajamas, like we do every year, save it to a CD-R and store it away, so she can download it to her kids on their tiny laptops, on Christmas Eve 2018, right before they open their new pajamas.