This
Christmas will mark the twenty-second time we’ve celebrated the holiday since
my dad passed away at the age of sixty-six.
My family is big into holidays.
When I was a kid the house was decorated for every one of them, even the
minor ones. Christmas, though, was the
ultimate. No one got more into the
decorating than my dad. He turned our
home into Christmas Land, inside and out.
Christmas
decorating got underway once we’d returned from Thanksgiving weekend at my
grandparents’ home in Bennington, Vermont.
Dad was in a festive mood after several days of feasting and visiting
with a houseful of relatives.
First
the living room had to be rearranged.
Over the years Dad, an engineer by trade, developed a strategy for
furniture placement. One layout was for
Christmas, the other for the rest of the year.
It wasn’t just the furniture, either.
Knick-knacks and whatnots all over the house exchanged living quarters
with the Christmas decorations boxed and stored in the basement.
Once
the room was rearranged, the tree set securely in its stand and watered (until
we switched to artificial trees), the most difficult and least fun part began -
stringing the lights and garland. Extra
bulbs were kept on hand since if one went out they all went out. That meant
testing every bulb on the string until the culprit was found, replacing it, and
hoping that one worked. Heaven help us
if more than one bulb went out at the same time. Dad wasn’t much for swearing, but those bulbs
were almost guaranteed to elicit a few words more colorful than the lights.
My
sister, Cindy, and I endured the interminable wait in order to pounce the
moment Dad finished. It was our job to help
hang the tinsel and ornaments. We delighted
at seeing these old friends that had been out-of-sight, out-of-mind for a year,
especially the ones that hung on the trees of my mom’s childhood. My favorite was a set of three delicate, sparkly
silver shoes each with a tiny child inside representing Wynken, Blynken, and
Nod. Mom and Dad joined in the tree trimming
while we all sang along with the Christmas albums on the record player.
Once
the tree was completed, we moved to the rest of the room. The top of the huge black and white TV was
large enough to hold the snow village.
Each house and the church were painted cardboard fitted with a light
bulb making their colored cellophane windowpanes glow. There were decorated pine trees and elves
made of pinecones, pipe cleaners and felt.
Flimsy it may have been, but it was cherished. A tinkerer at heart, Dad kept adding to the
village. A mirror became a skating pond,
tiny lamp posts graced the “street”. The
village eventually outgrew the TV top and had to move to a new location.
A
gold bell that played Silent Night hung from one doorway, mistletoe from
another. A lighted church sat on the end
table on top of sparkly white cotton batting emulating snow and surrounded by
Nativity vignettes. Mr. and Mrs. Claus
stood on either side of the fireplace. The
last thing to be displayed was the crèche.
I loved the smell of the papier mache figures and the soft glow from the
blue light illuminating Mary’s robe. In
the weeks to come I would spend hours playing with the crèche as if it were a
doll house.
Not
a room escaped decoration. Every window
had a candle either on the sill or hanging inside a red wreath. Even the bathroom had a bubble lamp and a
candle in the window.
Then
came the outside. A large plastic
lantern, later to be replaced by a Santa, brightened the front porch. Dad strung colored lights along the porch
railing and throughout the hedge in front of the house. After a heavy snowfall red, blue, yellow,
green, and purple lights shone through giving the hedge an otherworldly glow.
There
was no such thing as too many Christmas decorations as far as Dad was
concerned. Over the years, he made tree
ornaments including drums and sleds with each of our names on them. He outdid himself the year he made a
perpetual calendar. The scene at the top
was attached with Velcro and could be changed with the seasons. Naturally, the Christmas scene was the
best. It was a miniature replica of our
living room right down to the same wallpaper and the clock and candlesticks on
our fireplace mantel.
With
the decorating complete, our home was transformed. Every day of the Christmas season I played in
the wonderland of my own personal Christmas Village. Every night glowed with colorful
splendor. The saddest for me was the
weekend after New Year’s when everything came down, packed away in the basement,
the magic gone, the house returned to normal.
It was like waking up from the best ever dream.
Since
Dad’s been gone, I decorate the house. Though
my taste is a bit different from my dad’s, I seem to have inherited his love
for holiday decorating. I still move furniture, to give the tree pride of
place. I miss the smell of papier mache
from the long lost crèche, my current one being made of sturdier material. I love to sit in the living room in the
evening, gazing at the lights on the tree, the one remaining Wynken, Blynken
and Nod ornament always prominent. I can
feel Dad’s presence in the quiet of the evening. Our styles are very different, but unlike me,
he was decorating for kids. His joy came
as much from the glee his efforts brought to us as from his own enjoyment of
the holiday. I think he is smiling with
me as I create my grownup version of Christmas Land. And I’m certain he would appreciate the
invention of pre-strung lights on the Christmas tree.
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