Merry Christmas 2025

Good morning and Merry Christmas whoever stumbles on this small and obscure corner of the mystery called the internet. So far, I have spoken with my sister on the phone as I will be going to her house at noon, and texted several old friends. My neighbor, John, walked my dog, as he does most mornings, and another neighbor sent me a picure from the local park where he was having a walk. He could smell someone frying bacon and eggs for breakfast. It all made me think of people throughout near history (the 20th century) and what they would be thinking or doing on Christmas morning. Women would've been making a list in their heads of all they still had to get done before the family came or they would be getting the family breakfast and getting the kids dressed to go and visit family. Throuhout my childhood, in Philadelphia in the 20th Century, that is what people did in our world on Christmas; they got dressed up and went to visit other family members, usually centered at a Grandother's house. In our case, we visited my mother's mother on 10th and Oregan Avenue in South Philadelphia. Sometimes we went to Ocean City to my father's mother and sometimes my father took us to pick her up and bring her to Philadelphia.

As Grandmothers got too old, my mother took over the role, especially when we moved to New Jersey and the old family network as we had known it was disassembled.

The old network was the Lyon's family, Grandmom Lavinia and Grandpop Joseph, their adult children, my mother, her brother Joe, and sisters Susan and Lavinia. Then the unit began to split and members moved, a kind of organic dispersion.

Whatever configuration the family unit was taking, the morning was the same. We kids, however many there were at any given time, would rush down to open our gifts under the tree! What a thrill - some new treasure. I was just thinking how I still have a doll saved from those long lost days. All my other Christmas treasures are long gone though I can remember a few, like my Paint by Number kits! I can even remember the picture that a I painted from one of the kits, a German Shepherd portrait.

The years in between youth and motherhood were like magazine pictures of Christmas. I had Christmas nightgowns, flannel with decorative prints, and I wrapped my purchases, bought with my Christmas Club money (a practice of the 60's whereby banking clients put a small amount of money into a Christmas account each payday) with extreme care. I can remember some of the gifts purchased with thoughtfulness such as the woxford shirts and matching sweaters that I bought for my brothers so that they could be dressed well over the holidays. In those days, I went back to the family home from my apartment for Christmas and watched my much younger brothers and sisters unwrap their gifts. My mother made a ham dotted with pineapple and cherries, potato salad, green beans, and we had fruit cake, except for one Christmas when my mother actually made a traditional Christmas plum pudding - flaming and all!

The days of my motherhood were so taxing it makes me sad to think of them. I was a beast of burden. So much stuff to carry all the time. I was alone in Philadelphia and had no car, and my family was in New Jersey and then in West Virginia. We only had one Christmas with my daughter's father and it was remarkable because it was one of the coldest Christmases in weather history and cars were freezing on the roads! We drove to his family's house in Chad's Ford, on Christmas Eve, which is when they celebrated Christmas and the whole way, with my newborn baby, I was afraid his (Karl's) old car would freeze up and my baby would be in danger from the cold. It didnt' and she is now in her 40's and in London, England for Christmas with her boyfriend.

Each year I tried really hard to get the gift Lavinia wanted for Christmas. We were pretty poor so she only really got two - one from me and one from Santa, and small stocking stuffers. Sometimes I made her gifts when she was really little,like one year a princess gown. There were always books, both for her and during my childhood.

One Christmas all she wanted was a Topsy Towers, which she must have seen on television because it was sold out everywhere. I had to beg a variety of friends to drive me in their cars to stores as far away as Philadelphia in my search for this toy, but it was sold out everywhere. In a sleet storm, I rode my bike to Capa's costume store on the White Horse Pike in Haddon Heights and bought her a red tutu and ballet shoes and tights instead. In the era of the cabbage patch doll craze, we got lucky because her Grandmother Jones made one for her. I could never have gone to the lengths people I knew had gone through for their daughters, such as camping out in the Mall parking lot to be first in line when a shipment was due.

Things got easier when my mother gave me her old car and I could take my paycheck before Christmas and go to a store, Penny's or Two Guys, or even further back, Korvetts, and in one swoop buy all the gifts I needed for my family in our trip to West Virginia and my daughter. I rmember many of her toys: Teddy Ruxpin, Chatty Cathy, all the Barbi's and their accommodations - recording studio, ice cream shop, hair salon, and then the American Girl Dolls and their accessories. all of which we still have in the attic. My father made a beautiful trunk for Kirsten, the first American Girl Doll. In her teens it was cothes and computers. Then she was gone.

Now, I am in my 80th Christmas. In a couple of hours, I will go to my sister's which is where I have spent the past Christmases of the 21st century, with my sister and her son, my Godson Archie, and Bryson, Sue's grandson.

Generally my brother, also old, 78, drives up from W.Va. but not this year. He didn't anticipate it with joy, but with anxiety - too much traffic, too many hours for his bad joints and back, and bad weather predicted on top of that.

I don't mourn for the past. It was so hard for so many years, the endless lists of things to do, the fear of driving long distances in bad weather with unreliable cars, the exhaustion of all these extra demands on top of a heavy enough work life - two jobs working 6 days a week. It is so easy now. Everything is done well in advance, less to buy and less to spend so less anxiety about money (though still plenty of that). It is a burden on my sister now, but she is young, twenty years younger than I am, and she has energy and accepts the burden with calm and generosity.

Just recently I was looking at a book that I have loved so much and given away and bought again about 3 or 4 times, OUR TOWN, the play by Thornton Wilder. The protagonist goes back from the grave, for one day, to look at the past, but it is too beautiful and magical and fragile and lived with too much obliviousness to be endured. The others in the graveyard warn her not to go back, but to acdept with peaceful resignation the eternity and peace of the afterlife. But she does go back for that one day and it is too much to bear. And that is how I feel now about remembering. It is too much to bear.

Thank heavens for writing - a place to put the thoughts and memories - to move them on like the books and clothes I no longer need and give away. The practice is to BE HERE NOW. This is the moment to be lived, and fortunately for me, it is one of beauty, peace, comfort and a kind of happiness.

Merry Christmas 2025!

wrightj45@yahoo.com