Monday, October 21, 2013

CAN FALL 2014 BE FAR BEHIND?


The other day I was watching the TV morning news, when suddenly it broke away for a commercial. Now this was October 15, so Halloween has not arrived yet, and what do I see, but the Rockettes of Radio City Music Hall. And what are they selling but the Christmas show! I have seen the boxes of Christmas and Holiday cards in Wal-Mart back in August as they were planning their space for the holiday rush.

I can’t blame anyone for getting excited about the holidays, especially when there is such terrible news all the time. The guns killing, the rapists and the politicians, all spewing their evil as they do all year long, we can all use some joy in our lives.

As a child, growing up in Brooklyn the holidays meant Christmas. All I knew was that I was going to get a present, that I needed to express out loud that desire and it would become a reality brought to me by the unreal Santa Clause. For all you adults reading who believe in Santa, disregard the last sentience.
 
The whole world was transformed immediately after eating the last morsels of Thanksgiving dinner. It started on the radio with the playing of Christmas songs on the Arthur Godfrey show, and continued throughout the day with a jaunt on Broadway under the el where the stores would decorate, toy stores in particular with a train set that my mother had difficulty pulling me away from as I dreamed against the glass partition that separated me from the dream.

In Our Lady of Lourdes School, the pastor: Father Lacey would visit each classroom and give a little talk not more than 5 minutes and distribute a box of candy, hard sugar candy that had a little white string on it and was gaily decorated with red and white striped candy inside. This was a traditional occurrence.

Perhaps the best memory was when Mom shopped for the Christmas dinner. In those days there were not too many supermarkets and everything was sold in a mom and pop store. Vegetables by Sloppy John or Louise, butcher shops and bakeries all were the source of our food supplies and helped foster the spirit of the holiday. Coming in from the cold and into a bakery, with the bread fresh out of the ovens, or standing in the cold picking over the vegetables and fruit, we had brown paper bags filled with the goods that meant the holidays were here.

The anticipated fish dinner of Christmas Eve and the get together of family heightened the excitement of it all. Then came Christmas Day, and my older sister Tessie (much older) and I would be up at the crack of midnight, (we weren’t waiting for dawn with our presents in the house) chased back to bed by Mom as she returned form mid-night mass and then her giving up even trying.

Of course the Church had a hand in it too. Yes, they pulled me away from my stuff and made me sit in church for an hour when all I wanted to do was be home and playing. Getting all dressed up for Mass, we trudged off to church in the cold wintry morning, the sun out but not helping much and into the huge church going to our assigned area and sitting through the rituals that made it all possible, but for a 7 year-old, unappreciated.

1 comment:

Jim Pantaleno said...

Takes me back, Joe. As I recall, Father Lacey was a tough cookie who could have given Bogey a run for his money.