That's Life: Family Memories of ChristmasBy Phyllis McGuire
iBerkshires Columnist
07:43PM / Monday, December 08, 2008
"The best of all gifts around my Christmas tree is the presence of happy family all wrapped up in each other." — Burton Hillis
It has been 16 years since either of my children, Christopher and Jennifer, have been in my home in the holiday season. And I was beyond elated when my son called from his home on Long Island the other day and told me that he, his wife, Cathleen, and their children Jack, 3, and Mary, 1, would drive up to Williamstown and stay a couple of days with me at Christmastime.
In the past, I have been the one who has traveled, driving to New York City and Long Island, so we could be together at Christmas.
As soon as Christopher and I ended our conversation — saying I love you — questions popped into my mind: Should I decorate the Christmas tree before Christopher and his family arrive, or should I leave it bare so Jack can help decorate it?
 And if Jack or Mary like one of the animated Santa Claus figures or snow globes I display in my living room so that they want to take it home, would it be OK for me to say, "I'll put it with your gifts so your Daddy won't forget to put them in the car?" Or would my son and daughter-in-law object, because they are trying to teach their little ones that they cannot have everything they want?
Later, as I resurrected tree ornaments from the closet where I store them, I found myself on a sentimental journey to the land of Christmases past.
I selected the oldest of those ornaments more than 40 years ago to trim the fir tree my husband, Bill, and I put up in our apartment in New York City on our first Christmas as husband and wife.
On Christmas Eve, Bill strung the lights on the tree and then asked me to give him the tree topper. "Oh, no!" I gasped, as I realized I had forgotten to return to the store to buy one of the two tree toppers I liked. When I had been in the store earlier, I had been unable to make up my mind which to buy, so I decided to give it some more thought and then return. Perhaps my forgetfulness was because I was expecting our first baby.
Because it had been snowing since noon and I was pregnant, Bill insisted I stay home while he searched for a tree topper. "I really want an angel or a star," I said, as he put on his overcoat.
When Bill came home, his overshoes were white with snow, but the first thing he did was hand me the bag he was carrying. Opening the bag, I saw a tree topper that fulfilled both my wishes: an angel nestled in a star.
These many years later, preparing for Christmas, I unwrapped an ornament that is a stained-glass replica of a Nativity scene, which I keep with other extremely fragible ornaments in a silver-tinted box. I found that ornament beckoning to me when we were browsing in a shop in Connecticut during our first vacation as a family. At that time, Jennifer was in the stage of babyhood in which she was able to pull herself up and stand while holding onto the bars in her playpen, and Christopher was a 3-year-old whose ability to carry on a conversation with adults was beyond his age.
As tots trimming the Christmas tree, Jennifer and Christopher wore red cobbler aprons on which "Santa Elf" was embossed. They put candy canes and a box of ornament hooks into the deep pocket pouches of their aprons. (I wonder if any stores carry such aprons nowadays. I would like to get two for Mary and Jack.)
When Jennifer and Christopher attended pottery and ceramic classes held at a craft store not far from our home, they created a number of Christmas items.
 The Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus salt and pepper shakers Christopher produced were perfect in every way. But the coat of a Santa Claus tree ornament he created next was only partly colored. "I ran out of red paint," he explained.
The nurse ornament Jennifer proudly presented to Bill and me a few days before Christmas might seem a strange choice for adorning a tree. That is, if you did not know that Jennifer hoped to find a nurse's kit beneath the tree on Christmas morning. Her wish came true and, by dinnertime, she had used most of the toy medical equipment in that kit.
Nurse's cap on head, earpiece-less spectacles perched on her nose, stethoscope dangling from her neck, Jennifer applied "antibiotic ointment" to her new doll's imaginary boo-boos, slipped a thermometer into my mother's mouth, and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around Bill's arm. I played the part of a patient who had sprained her ankle, so Jennifer wound a bandage around it. 
Now here in Williamstown, I ask myself, "Where did I store the strings of white and blue tree lights?" I will not use the icicle lights this year. I bought them years ago when Christopher was away at college, and the day he came home for Christmas break, he looked at the Christmas tree and frowned. He did not like the icicle lights. But, would Jack and Mary think they are pretty?
Oh well, what really matters is that we will be together to celebrate the birth of the Christ child. |
