I hope everyone — all of you who celebrate or observe, I mean — enjoyed a warm and rewarding Christmas.
Christmas is a nostalgic time, so it’s understandable that in the days leading up to the holiday, I found my thoughts drifting, often involuntarily, to memories of Christmases of yore. I remembered the early Christmases, when I lived with my grandparents, and their grand, stocky tree with its prehistoric decorations — being fixated on the large, dangerous-smelling colored bulbs with cloth-encased cords that filled the air with the scent of imminent combustion; the little lead skaters on the frozen pond (actually a mirror) beneath; and the fake snow, created out of Lord knows what, spread over everything. How many environmental hazards we were exposed to back then. And let’s not forget the tinsel. Tinsel everywhere — hanging thick on branches, snarling the platform train tracks, eaten by dogs and passed with their stool. World War II-era grandparents must have basically aspired to have a tree like the one in “The Bishop’s Wife.” Why even have a tree, when it was mostly tinsel anyway?
Surely, the American Dream found its most extreme expression in the wholly aluminum trees of the 1950s and ’60s. What was that all about? Thankfully, we didn’t have one of those. Well, for a couple of years in my 30s a friend and I did, but it was a legacy tree, then accepted with a blend of nostalgia and irony, but for me never love. It’s hard to love a metal tree with no life of its own that basically reflects light from a rotating color wheel. It made me long to prick my fingers on the natural needles of my grandparents’ firs.
I remember gazing into those trees, lost in fantasies of Christmas and dreaming of Santa’s munificence. What would he bring, finally? Would my hours of poring over the Sears Wish Book to continuous replays of Andy Williams on my mom’s stereo work their charm? Mostly, yes, they did.
I did love my grandparents’ glass ornaments. Nowadays, it seems most trees are adorned with resin, wood, or wool. Sensible alternatives if you have children or pets, to be sure. But I will always have a soft-spot for the glass ornaments of old. Inevitably, a few would drop and shatter during the season.
All that said, for some reason, it’s the Christmas when I was 12 that most occupied my thoughts this year. As I was walking out to fill the birdfeeders a couple of days ago, snow packing underfoot, my thoughts lit on the set of “The Lord of the Rings” paperbacks my parents gave me, in the gold foil box, in 1978. Now THAT was a Christmas. The toy manufacturer Kenner, caught unawares by the sensational popularity of “Star Wars” in 1977, was finally up to speed. Also, “Superman” was in theaters. There were calendars and books and action figures and playsets and games. Not all “Star Wars,” mind you. There was always a nice variety under the tree. And then my aunt and uncle would come over, and my uncle would be down on the floor with me, as much into my Christmas loot as I was. On New Year’s Eve, we took the best of it over to be played or played with at their house until midnight.
In 1978 (seventh grade), I formed my earliest lifelong friendships, all my relatives were healthy and vital, and my mother and grandparents were still alive. Every day was full of laughter, comfort, hope, and fun.
Christmases are different now — pleasant enough, at times, but not as resonant and seldom as rich — unavoidably poignant, with those of my youth still seeming to exist somewhere, like drifting islands in a thousand lakes, perhaps somewhere near the North Pole, to be revisited only in dreams.
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