I Still Believe in Santa Claus

Three years ago I started to write a blog once in a while. I had sworn I never would, but after getting thrown into Facebook jail for alluding to Trump as a fascist (“hate speech”), I figured I needed another venue. Guess what? The world had caught up. Now if you’ve ever read a book about fascism (trust me, there are lots: I can make recommendations), you know Trump is indeed a fascist, quotes Hitler, and still pulls a third of the American electorate with him. Surprise! Within the sound of your voice, you’ve probably got a fascist sympathizer, if not an outright fascist-in-itself. Lucky us. We get to see what the Greatest Generation fought against before we forgot why Nazis aren’t Nice. But I digress….

My first post was about Christmas music, which was fun, if a bit naive. I said everybody had a Christmas album. Little did I know. I should have said everybody has at least one. I have quite a collection. That bespeaks a certain fondness for the season, right? Yup, I still like Christmas (I’m not into Festivus, Kwanzaa, Eid or anything else. I don’t care if you are: Merry Christmas) But I can never approach the day without mixed feelings, because I have very clear memories of Christmas past. They most involve people and places I’ve written about over the past three year. Family, Philly, Harrogate Road. Mostly, they are amusing, which is why I find them poignant. Sorry, I had a happy childhood.

If I go back to West Philly, it’s like an old movie. On Haverford Avenue, our front porch sort of became magically transformed into a Christmas cave from one day into the next. None of this 12 days of Christmas crap. Boom. One day it was a front room with some two chairs and a little sofa, a couple of knick knacks. Next day there was a tree, a real one, festooned with old fashioned glass decorations (man, do I wish I had some of them), incandescent lights, tinsel (remember tinsel). It sat on an old fashioned base that took water, and the whole thing was set on a green platform with snowy-chimney crepe paper bordering it. This clearly happened overnight, thoughtfully engineered by Santa before he took off for Thailand. I mean, like who else? Dude the whole thing was magic. No wonder I miss it. I guess nobody but me got much sleep Christmas Eve, God bless my family. True, there were a squad of them there, but Grandmom was probably pulling kitchen duty, but the Christmas Day dinner was better than anything Dickens could have conjured up. With all the brothers and sisters there, presided over by John Facenda and Channel 10 (the TV was on all day), sneakily injecting some religious programming (no, not Perry Como, but fare like Amahl and the Night Visitors). Como came a bit later.

That photo is probably from 1956 or so, but you can see the platform and me firing away at some Nazis (why do I think my childhood prepared me Trump). There was an American Flyer train (which I still have, rescued from my parents’ home) which I guess my Dad got. It was a total surprise to me. Nothing elaborate. It went in a circle around the tree and puffed some acrid smoke. I dug laying tinsel across the tracks and watching the fireworks–which was a no no, but I was incorregible even then. God only knows how many hours I spent there between Christmas and New Years. Never got bored. And with the family around, it was inevitably a party, Christmas Day or no. We used to know how to do it, even if there were rifts between x or y or z. Somehow we canned it for the day, something I wish people could learn to do all over again. A valuable skill, believe me.

What renders that setup even more incredible was the night before (Christmas Eve) I was usually ensconced by the front window (that same porch) looking for Santa. Yup. Nothing there. In fact, one year I remember a flat bed truck with some lights and a loudspeaker going by with one of Santa’s “helpers” giving a shoutout to the locals on Haverford Avenue. Boy was I ever excited. I mean the Christ Child and Bethlehem and the oxen and that stuff were cool and everything, but here was The Man (probably worked for the Philly Streets Department) validating our true faith: in Santa Claus. I liked Jesus and everything, but he never brought me a howitzer. More likely socks. First thing first.

All the rituals that went on in that extended family around Christmas were cool, and there was a lot of visiting, eating, and otherwise enjoying the life of an immigrant family. You know, it was what I’d call a good ghetto, and I think the ache I often feel when
I look at photos from them (or run movies in my head) is hearing them blackened by someone like Trump, or even some of my “friends” who never tire reminding me of my privilege. Yeah. It was a privilege to have a caring family who managed to sustain the illusion that life was good even when some of them were dying inside. Or getting crap at work. Or having to take a sabbatical from life every once in a while to cope. You want to know why they remain my heroes? Well, there you are.

Christmas did lose something when we moved out into Montgomery County and Penn Wynne in search of the great middle class dream. Readers of this blog know that I wasn’t exactly nuts about life in the suburbs, or some of the other riffraff escaping from the city to lord it over their less fortunate paisans. But today I pass over the cafones in silence. I’m sure they had their own Christmas. Tacky. With aluminum trees and color wheels. And spray on “snow” in the windows. Never had a Hell of a lot to do with them.

It was in Penn Wynne that the run up to Christmas became more a part of the ritual, maybe just because I was getting older. The great markers were always the Como Christmas Show, maybe Disney (less so in my home), and by high school, Dean Martin. Hey. Don’t laugh. I knew good things were coming when Perry and Dino started warbling White Christmas, because in those days, you might actually get one.

This is from a bit later, but when Como told you was Christmas, it was Christmas.

Not White Christmas, but this was when the Itais ruled the airwaves. Tough. Remember Frank was in the mix too. And you wonder why I miss this. Vafff……

Anyway, my Mom, who was never big on stuff that made a mess, like live trees, opted for this acquamarine thing set on a white sparkle base that she decorated with gold balls and put out in the alcove where the Dutch windows were facing the street. I’ll be damned if it didn’t actually look nice, although I think my aversion to artificial trees must have started then. And I can remember trimming it with her, usually with some Christmas music in the background–one year Sammy Davis Jr (grin). These rituals were usually punctuated by runs to 69th Street or to Korvettes in Springfield to buy some kind of late gift or something. Cause, you know, Upper Darby half a century ago was a different place, and you didn’t have to duck live rounds if your were off to visit Santa. There were also Gimbels and Lit Brothers, all trimmed for the season and ready to provide you with stuff on something called a lay-away plan. In retrospect, they were probably attempts to get around Pennsylvania’s usury ceiling, but who knows?

Anyway, Christmas midnite (modern spelling) Mass was a big deal. The altar boys missed plenty of school learning the moves and driving the various prospective celebrants crazy by taking a wrong turn in the sacristy. But the girls got to practice singing the mass in Latin–which provided a nice opportunity for socializing under cover of piety. By the time we got to Christmas Eve, somebody usually had a new hearthrob (or lost one), and everyone was stoked for a service that actually began at 12:00 AM. By my recollection, we usually got home around 1:30 in the morning and, if we had been good, got a late supper of Silver Star ravioli from Springfield, PA. None of this Seven Fishes crap. You got pasta or something, and it was a kick. Christmas Day for my Mom was a turkey. She was not really into cooking, but she somehow always rose to the occasion for Christmas. I’d sneak into the basement with a beer, that was the extent of my misbehavior.

But, dammit, it was ritual, and family ritual especially was comforting. If it was cold, even better, and snow (you remember snow) was literally the icing on the cake. I usually enjoyed every damn minute of it, and was always sorry to see the season end.

So here I conclude on a purely personal and honest belief. I remember this stuff as being very nice and comforting and enjoyable because it was. It was comforting and enjoyable and nice to have relatives around in those days, especially guys like Stan the Man and my Mom’s parents, who were lovely people. You don’t believe me? I don’t care. It was better then, for me, at least, and I wish I could bring some of that back for my kids, so they can feel a little naively what America was before it really ran off the rails, a process that was underway even then. Remember the Christmas Moon Launch? I do.

Merry Christmas?