Some of My Own Answers #2

1. What is your earliest Christmas memory?

It is probably spending Christmas with my relatives. We never stayed home on Christmas. When I was small we would do some visiting on Christmas Eve, but I was abed early. Christmas was spent, after opening the gifts under the tree and having eggnog for breakfast and then getting dressed to the nines in a little dress with one of those itchy net petticoats under it and warm leotards and little patent leather shoes, at my Papá's house.

We'd all go upstairs to see the tree, of course, with its old fashioned lead-foil tinsel and old ornaments, some dating back to World War II, and the crechè under the tree, and of course there was the usual long toil up the steep stairs to "use the facilities," but the afternoon would be spent downstairs in the roughly converted cellar, where the big cast iron wood stove converted to gas made dinner and then kept copious pots of coffee warm. Aunts, uncles and cousins would come wandering in and out, bringing in wintry breaths of cold and proffering chilly cheeks as you kissed them. Papá would serve his homemade wine and brandy and anisette to whoever wanted some, but mostly everyone drank coffee and the other kids had soda and I had milk. :-) Everyone, including the kids, would have a stash of pennies and we'd all play Pokeno, then the men and some of the more adventurous of the girl cousins, like my cousin Kathy, would settle in and play poker while everyone else talked and I could sneak upstairs and lie down under the Christmas tree and look up into the colorful wonderland that was inside the tree.

Behind the board wall that separated the proper part of the cellar from the boiler was a more fascinating world. There was the oil tank, of course, and an old icebox, and some type of old kitchen dresser, and a set of shelves where Papá and Uncle Guido kept their tools, nails, and screws, and the rows of ropes where the summer clothes lived in the winter and vice versa, since upstairs had no closets except in one room. You could sneak in the back and peek at the grownups talking and playing cards through a knothole in one of the boards and pretend you were a spy.

Later in the afternoon the poker players dispersed and Aunty would serve coffee and pie and cookies, and more aunts and uncles and cousins might show up. One year when Kathy and I were young enough to follow directions and yet old enough to follow directions, the older cousins staged a Christmas pageant that we put on in one half of the cellar, using a rope and a blanket for a curtain.

The other early Christmas memory is going to see Santa Claus at the Outlet Company in downtown Providence. Other stores like Shepard's also had a Santa, but we in the know understood the Outlet's Santa Claus was the Real Thing. We stood in long lines to see him in the Toyland in the basement. One year the Outlet people went all out and made a wintry path for the kids to wind through and all the children received a story and activity pamplet with mazes, games, and puzzles which I kept and cherished for years. The Outlet Santa was always big and genial and gentle--nothing like the manic Santa in A Christmas Story--and I always remember it being a fun and exciting experience.