Christmas Memories

Last night I was drowning my sorrows in a few hours of Hallmark sugary romance. In the final film of the evening, set in Paris, the male romantic lead in an attempt to get to know the female romantic lead asks her for her favorite Christmas memory.

At first, I was kind of stumped. Rather than a whole memory, or a ujit of narrative, I had a stream of brief impressions. The first that came was of Walnut Street and 6th Street in Philadelphia, 1964. I am in my dark green mohair coat, brown calf high cowboy style boots and I am freezing cold, walking up to Market Street to catch the bus home after work at W. B. Saunders Publishing Company on Washington Square. On that corner was a beautiful florist's shop and the window was filled with Christmas wreths, poinsettia, red ribbons and frosted around the squre corners from the cold. I was 18 yeqrs old and happy and Philadelphia then was beautiful. The people were all well dressed, especially at the holidays, the stores were all decorated magnificently - not modern and austere - but with an abundance, a kind of Victorian mixed with Post World War II exuberance. The big stores like Gimbels and Lit Brothers and Snellenburgs all had multilayered vilaes with trains and animatronic figures, Dickens style villages, Alpine landscapes with Swiss villages and snow, cosy luxurious fantasy American living rooms with fireplace, tree, snowy windows and well turned out families in matching Christmas Pajamas and robes. Christmas Wonderland was the overall theme. There were actually men selling roasted chestnuts on Market Street and they were delicious rich and hot and warming. People were happy, shopping, carrying red shiny store bags, wearing mufflers and hats and gloves.

That memory was quickly replaced by the Nuremburg Christmas Market in Germany at around the same period, a couple of years later. I was still the same optimistic, enthusiastic young woman, living in an illusion. I was married and we had an apartment in a courtyard in a small town called Heilbronn. We had a beautiful little tree decorated with real candles. My mother-in-law was visiting us. My husband drove us to the enormous Nuremburg Christmas Market. It was twilight and all the stalls were lit and steaming with the breath of the marketers and the hot drinks and hot treats they had to offer. They were piled high with beautifully carved little wooden figures, village houses, wooden trees, angels, reindeer, knitted hats and mittens and scarves, handcarved wooden Black Forest clocks, religious statuary, woven things, metal things, glass things, pottery things, everything! I remember my mother-in-law and my husband eating pickled herring. The signts the lights the sounds, the smells, all that rich and ancientm traditional swirl of Christmas celebration and my happy Christmas youth.

I also remember the one night madness bustle of my father and my god-father Neal Schmidt, building the Christmas platform in the emptied living room of our brick row house on Warnock Street i Philadelphia while my mother oooked for Christmas and made them food for the evening in the kitchen. Then the tree went up then the trains and the villages and the lakes of mirrors, the snow of cotton fluff and snow paper, the lights and decorations on the tree, all of it watched by two small children from surreptitious top of the stairs to the second floor bedrooms where we were supposed to be asleep. We were in our pajamas but we couldn't sleep with all that noise and excitement. Dad and Mom and Neal were all so young and happy and beautiful then. They would have been in their thirties, and Neal and Dad were home safely from the navy and World War II and Mom was in the midst of her dream of domesticity and a home of her own and family. It was all that one night. I still have a doll given to me by my god-father, Uncle Neal, the sweetest, kindness, gentlest man I ever knew.

If I spend time, more memories rise from the attic of my memory, surprisingly few from more recent years and most from my childhood. I think I can retrieve some from my daughter's childhood and from West Virginia family times, but now I am tired of it. Maybe later.

Happy trails (through the past as well as the woods, the day and the life) Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com