ALMOST

 

I'm whispering. Christmas is almost here. In my miserable, dire, gloomy situation here in the purgatory of physical therapy, I'm not in a celebratory mood. But let's expunge that for now. I won't trash Christmas as I did in my previous post.

What should I write about?

I don't have very many interesting holiday stories to tell. My parents celebrated Christmas when I was a small child. But......truth to tell......

....my parents were absolute direct opposites, but they agreed on certain things. Both of them disliked parties, social gatherings, and holidays. 

They eventually stopped indulging in Christmas when I was still a fairly young age. I suppose I was very similar to them. I didn't really care. They gave me things when I wanted them. They always remembered my birthday.

So there.

Tonight I'm remembering  Christmases so long ago that they seem to be in another realm.

When I was a young child in New Jersey, old holiday traditions still prevailed. People had real genuine pine trees.

(yes, I'm aware of the negative aspects of destroying trees just for a holiday.....artificial ones are much more convenient....but.....I hate artificiality, that's my preference).

The old tradition back then was to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve (usually during the day)....and take it down after New Year's Day.

Nowadays the tree is put up in early September....and reluctantly taken down after Easter....

Very slight exaggeration. Very.

Do we still treasure hand-written Christmas Cards?

Not when cards are $10+ and postage stamps are...what....$5.....??

I lost track when stamps were 50 cents.

Anyway, Xmas cards were a big deal when I was a child. And my parents strung them up in lovely rows across the walls.

What about Santa? I was an extremely gullible child. If I wasn't told that there's no Mr. Claus, I'd still believe in him.

I remember one snowy day, my Uncle Steve (Aunt Irene's husband) called up and pretended he was Santa Claus. I was about four yrs. old and fell for the ploy. I regurgitated the list of toys I wanted. Good ol' Uncle Steve did a plausible Imitation of the hohoho Claus fellow.

Those were blissfully golden years when I was adorably innocent.

You should see me now.

Jon 🌲⛄️❤️⛄️🌲

as far from innocence as anyone can get

Heck, I still luv my sweet AI creations.

Tidings of good cheer. More blogging ahead.....

PAGEANTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST

 

Note:
I wrote this several years ago and have been inflicting it upon my readers every holiday season since.
                                                               Jon


I never look back on those events with undiluted fondness. Through the long distance of years I still regard them with a twinge of humiliating disdain. I'm talking about the obligatory school Christmas pageants. Where innocent children are compelled to make fools of themselves on stage in front of parents, classmates, and faculty.

The only positive aspect I can ascertain is that those childhood days were simple, uncomplicated days - - when no one was offended by Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and front yard nativities were proudly displayed without any concern about being confiscated by the Neighborhood Manger Police.
It seemed to be a Norman Rockwell America.

Scene One:
Glendora, California. The Gordon Elementary School. Second Grade. I was six years old.

My teacher Mrs. Eisendise (whom I called Ice and Dice) came up with the grandiose idea of staging several scenes from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker ballet. I wasn't in the least smitten by her plan, but I did fall in love with the music. In fact, I forced my mother to buy a recording of it. A double LP album in those primitive days.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, I was chosen to be one of the waltzing flowers in (of course) the Waltz of the Flowers. My humiliation was lessened only by the fact that numerous other boys were also sentenced to being flowers in Eisendise's delusional bouquet.

 Four boys who became unwilling participants in Mrs. Eisendise's flower bouquet. I'm the one in the striped shirt.

The stage scenery was quite elaborate for a less than minor production. A serene rural backdrop with cardboard trees and shrubs. I can't exactly remember the flower costume that I wore, which - from a Freudian point of view - is probably a good thing. I can't attribute it to any pansy complexes I might have acquired twenty years later.

It's a fleeting thought. Don't ponder it for too long.

The dance started out splendidly but rapidly deteriorated. The music somehow seemed to be going faster than our twirls and leaps. In time, it completely resisted our efforts. Disharmony and vertigo ensued and soon it was every flower for himself. We had completely abandoned the music and were simply fighting to stay alive. I'm not sure which flower knocked down a cardboard tree, but trees suddenly began toppling like dominoes. Petals were crushed and the curtain was mercifully pulled. We waltzing flowers were far from a success.

If nothing else, the entire ugly ordeal robbed me of any future desire to have a career on the stage.

Scene Two:

Covina, California. The Charter Oak School. Third Grade. I was seven years old.  

My teacher Mrs. Rollins was unusually weird. She had heavily dyed black hair - parted severely in the middle - thick tortoise shell glasses, a generous  application of rouge, and more red lipstick than Bette Davis wore on a bad day.

Mrs. Rollins also had a very strange habit. At the end of every school day, she had the class line up by her desk and would kiss each of us goodbye. Sometimes I was able to duck out and avoid being branded by her crimson lips.

Fortunately this caused no known ill effects on my future psyche - - although to this day I still become completely impotent at the sight of tortoise shell rimmed glasses. 

Mrs. Rollin's Christmas pageant was no less unnerving than Eisendise's waltzing flowers had been. I and two other boys were chosen to sing We Three Kings (I never figured out whether we were technically kings or wise men).

Rollins handed us the lyrics and demanded that we learn them within a week. I still don't know where the hell she got those lyrics, but I'd never seen so many pages for one Christmas song in my entire life. There were at least ten choruses.

We three boys wore cardboard crowns, makeshift capes, and had to carry empty gift boxes wrapped in Christmas paper. The pageant went off without a hitch, until we began singing....

We three kings of Orient are, bearing gifts we traverse afar...

we sang....and sang....one excruciatingly long chorus after another.....over and over.....and....over....

The audience would begin to applaud - hoping it was finally the end - and we'd suddenly sing another chorus.

It was the longest frickin' song in Christmas pageant history. I was seven years old when we started. I think I was pushing thirty by the time we finally finished.

Despite trying for years to expunge the event from my mind, I can still remember every chorus and every word from that ghastly song.

 

 

TALE OF A CHRISTMAS TRAIN

If I wasn't the most gullible child who ever existed, I certainly ranked in the top ten. I wholeheartedly believed everything that I was told. If my parents didn't finally reveal that there wasn't any Santa Claus (when I was six), I would still believe in him today.

The above photo was taken when I just turned three. I looked older because I was unusually tall.

I have two Christmas tales to tell, but I'll save the second for another post. I should probably warn you that my  Christmas tales are neither particularly uplifting nor happy - but that was a normal aspect of my childhood. 
Ancient memories are crowding my mind at this sentimental time of year....


When I was five years old, I received an elaborate train set for Christmas. It was one of the most magnificent things I'd ever seen.

The train tracks were mounted on a very large platform, with an entire village - including a train station, church, school, shops, houses, etc. - all with lighted windows. There were tiny people and animals, electric lamp posts, even advertisement signs and telegraph wires. A huge snow-covered mountain was in the center, with a tunnel where the train went through.

The Gilbert train was equipped with electric lights, a whistle, and real smoke coming from the engine (liquid smoke from a bottle was utilized).

I was completely fascinated and could hardly believe Santa would present me with anything so fantastic.

What I didn't realize was how incredibly big the village was. We lived in a small place and the train set covered the entire floor.

The day after Christmas I leaped out of bed and ran into the living room to see my train village.
Imagine my shock when I discovered it was gone! Nothing was left but the train in a box and a few of the tracks.

I was curtly told that the train village was too big and Santa had to take it back.

I didn't cry or put up a fuss. At that early age I was docile and compliant. I was extremely disappointed, but Santa had to do what he had to do......  

The train was quickly put away and I didn't see it again until I was twelve. My father took it out, set it up, and we (mostly he) messed around with it for a few days. Then he put it away again (deciding that it was too much trouble to maintain and annoyingly in the way).

So, I've kept the train in mint condition for over fifty years - in the same box that it came in at Christmas when I was five years old.

After I moved to Tennessee, I put the boxed train on a top shelf in my bedroom closet and nearly forgot about it.

Yesterday, ancient Christmas memories inspired me to look at the train again. When I retrieved it from the closet, I was horrified to see that mice had gotten into it and ripped the top of the vintage box to shreds. They even chewed the cellophane on the little boxes that the train cars are stored in.

My move to Tennessee has resulted in many disasters. The movers "lost" or stole an enormous amount of my most cherished possessions.
And most of the things that I still have were destroyed by dampness and mice.

I've been told (by well-meaning people) not to worry so much about "mere" possessions......
.....but I'm a sentimentalist, and possessions are all I have left....

Anyway, today I took a few photos of what's left of the train.

 The top of the box was chewed by mice

This is what happened to the lid when I opened the box.....I'll eventually try to tape it together.

The train is heavy and made of metal - - not like the plastic stuff they make nowadays.

Jon

(originally posted in 2020)

 

CHRISTMAS EVE, HAUNTED MEMORIES

Why is Christmas Eve such a haunting time, filled with the persistence of undefinable magic? Most likely because it resurrects dormant memories and stirs raw sentiments that wouldn't dare intrude our lives at other times. The sweet mingles with the bitter, just as a tender universal kiss of remembrance lingers before life's final breath.

There are Christmas Eves from my past that I cherish, and many more that should be permanently expunged. In my present passage of life, in the blessed solitude of this comforting wilderness, I feel far older than my years and uncomfortably ill-prepared for the enormous strength required to endure future battles. 

My life has been a never-ending battle, but so indeed have all our lives.

In the reverie of this magical night - my thoughts revert to times so distant that they seem to teeter as half-remembered dreams on the mists of  horizons....fleeting fragments of what was and what will never be again......

I remember a flurry of Christmas Eves in Southern California - when life was deliciously young and energetic, when it brimmed with constant adventure and surges of purpose.

The concerts, the parties, the gathering of friends.....
performances of "The Nutcracker" ballet and Bach's "Christmas Oratorio".... 

...when I was the piano accompanist for a singer at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in the L.A. Music Center....and I met Dorothy Chandler at a Christmas Eve cocktail party afterwards......

And yet - despite the gold and glory - there was always the tarnish of my dark side.
I remember a Christmas Eve when I was the harpsichordist at a performance of Handel's "Messiah" and after the magnificent event I got drunk, wandered the all-too-familiar Hollywood streets and spent the night with a stranger (nothing new - - it was only one in an endless purgatory of such nights).

Even in the blissful warmth of success my feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing were monumental obstacles - - and my need to be desired and loved was profound.

I remember Christmas Eves shattered by my father's rage and marred with  a terror so great that any semblance of holiday normalcy was completely expunged.....
..... Christmas stories of desperate struggles for raw survival - - when the problems with my father's maniacal violence were so intense that even the remote possibility of peace or of a caring God were non-existent.

I alternately prayed to God for mercy and cursed Him for the agonies I endured.

These are not grievances, they are merely memories on this haunted magical night.

In a later time of aimless wandering and quests for escape from myself, I remember a Christmas Eve somewhere in the sacred solitude of the Sangre de Christo Mountains of New Mexico (a place that my mother loved and once lived).

Midnight Mass in an ancient adobe church.....gentle snowflakes drifting in a frosted night. The deafening silence of the mountains, the air so crisp and dry that it intoxicates the senses.

Inside is a transitory respite of warmth and the false possibility of redemption. The altar is a great sea of candles shimmering in red cups, almost as burning reminders of all my sins.
I am immersed in this gentle sanctuary of peace and purified poetry.

The room wavers in the surrealistic glow of a quasi-symbolic dream: 
Jesus in agony on a tarnished cross, an archaic array of gleaming silver, the smooth white marble of weeping saints frozen in eternal prayer....accompanied by the drone of ancient chants and time-worn recitations....
redemption, salvation, forgiveness

Forgiveness.

Candlelight flickering in windows of colored glass and in the eyes of this small congregation - - reflections of troubled nights and unquiet souls.

I eagerly absorb the warmth inside, but the sanctuary is only a temporary antidote.

The outside cold awaits me, in a swirling frenzy of ice-dusted snow and the great shroud of eternal darkness that shivers in the whispering wind.