I mentioned in my Facebook virtual square that last year our eldest son came to us with questions about the Big Man Himself. Lenore is still ardent in her belief, but I can see cracks starting to form.
We have embodied the Christmas Spirit year after year by making the gift of giving a fun opportunity to remind people that we love them and that it can be fun to surprise others by showing them that they are well thought of.
The gifts are not the gift. The gift is the spirit of giving without expectation of something in return. The gift is helping others that need help. The gift is in spending time with people that you love.
We were able to navigate that conversation with our eldest, and it was evident to us that the promise we made to him by teaching him to give to others unconditionally is now part of his heart. The magic of Christmas continues on for him and I can think of no better advocate to teach others the lessons of giving than our beautiful boy. He’s already become a fierce ally in the cause when helping Lenore to have a few more magic moments before she joins our ranks.
Yes Atticus, and yes, my dearest Lenore, there is a Santa Clause! And now you hold that promise in your hearts and will forever touch that light upon others.
CPH
Open…
I BELIEVE IN SANTA CLAUS
As with so many things that add to the kismet I experience on the regular, here is another. Not soon after I had the conversation with my son about Santa, I heard the song below for the first time. The tears rolled down my cheeks and met the smile the slowly crept upward as Rob Thomas and Abby Anderson helped me to remember my promise to myself and my family to hold and cherish the spirit of Christmas in my heart. Christmas is not a noun in our house, it’s a verb.
And some juxtaposition to keep you all on your toes…
Also, for those looking for gift ideas for family and friends alike, please check out my brand-new holiday writing service…
Seasoned Greetings 25
Are you looking for the words to say, but can’t quite find them? Let us give you a hand during a busy Holiday Season. We specialize in writing Holiday themed poems, messages for your Christmas Cards, and even Holiday Toasts. We travel the road from holy to irreverent, but always tailor our content to meet your needs. Looking forward to helping spread some Holiday Cheer.
seasonedgreetings25@gmail.com
Seasoned Greetings 25 – Price List
Holiday Poem – $5.00
Christmas Card Message – $5.00
Christmas Haiku – $2.50
Christmas Limerick – $2.50
Christmas Party Toast – $2.50
Festivus Grievance – $1.00
Festivus Frenemy Insult – $1.00
To order an original Seasoned Greeting, either email me @ seasonedgreetings25@gmail.com or DM me with a few details about the recipient to whom you’d like to send a Seasoned Greeting to.
Welcome back Dearest Elves, Santa’s Helpers, and Giftee Giving Gifters,
I appreciate your patronage of my blog adventures.
In a season of merriment and mirth, sometimes the dark days of winter turn gray and deliver you to memories that are lukewarm at best. Life is a balancing act and part of the fun is in sampling the range of emotions associated with living it. Sometimes disappointment rears its ugly head, but we must remember to make an effort to make the best of any situation we find ourselves in. In a season that is imbued with anticipation, it is fair to point out what The Rolling Stones knew all along: “You can’t always get what you want…”
Also, for those looking for gift ideas for family and friends alike, please check out my brand-new holiday writing service…
Seasoned Greetings 25
Are you looking for the words to say, but can’t quite find them? Let us give you a hand during a busy Holiday Season. We specialize in writing Holiday themed poems, messages for your Christmas Cards, and even Holiday Toasts. We travel the road from holy to irreverent, but always tailor our content to meet your needs. Looking forward to helping spread some Holiday Cheer.
seasonedgreetings25@gmail.com
Seasoned Greetings 25 – Price List
Holiday Poem – $5.00
Christmas Card Message – $5.00
Christmas Haiku – $2.50
Christmas Limerick – $2.50
Christmas Party Toast – $2.50
Festivus Grievance – $1.00
Festivus Frenemy Insult – $1.00
To order an original Seasoned Greeting, either email me @ seasonedgreetings25@gmail.com or DM me with a few details about the recipient to whom you’d like to send a Seasoned Greeting to.
Welcome to a month of merriment and mirth. A period of looking backward, looking forward, and every now and then just staying within the moment. I am happy to share my thoughts and feelings with all of you during this special time. I encourage you to poke around the site to see what treasures might be waiting for those of you so inclined to seek out nostalgia, irreverence, mischief, and the very gladdest of tidings.
Each day this month I want you to pass through a door and see what is on the other side. Doors are interesting things, aren’t they? They serve as points of entry, they keep out the terrors of ordinary life, and they preserve the many comforts of a home. You simply have to make the choice to open the door and step over the threshold to learn what is inside.
My hearth is warm and waiting for all to come sit nearby and share in the stories, the conversations, and the music of the season during our month of merriment and mirth.
CPH
Open…
Doing something tonight that I haven’t done in a while.
Shhhhhhhh!
There, all the lights are out.
Except the Christmas Tree.
Magic lights, blinking dreams. Heart flutters and sugarplum fairies goading me to remember the short past or long past. It depends entirely on your perspective.
As a matter of convenience, I’ve located an app on my smart tv that plays Christmas Ditties. Years ago, it was cassette tapes, then it was CDs, then digital downloads. Now live streaming. Buffing along song to song, being carried down the stream of memories that connects me to this holiday season and all the holiday seasons that I’ve made my stake and found my joy within.
This is a truly magical time of year in my heart and in all of my actions. It always has been, as far back as I can remember.
I grew up in a standard household of four. Dad, Mom, Son, and Daughter. There was a dog (an Irish Setter, named Katie), multiple hamsters and goldfish which never lasted, and a two-bedroom second floor flat that held sway over my imagination over the formative years of my life.
We were poor but didn’t realize we were. That might have been the greatest gift of our childhood (of which we had many gifts). Running a house in today’s world gives me a respect for all that my parents sacrificed in order to provide so many good times, and great Christmases.
My Mom, after her mom, was the Major General of the production. It all started with her desire to create a happy holiday home. My cheeks turn red when thinking about all the things she lavished upon us. We were spoiled in these holiday moments, and graciously gifted many times over by two sets of grandparents and three doting uncles. We all lived within a square mile in those days, and the traipsing back and forth from home to home allowed for us to grow keen of different types of cooking at each home. as well as a nose for our favorites.
“288 Bunker Hill Street”
288 Bunker Hill was a home away from home. It was a respite from the limits of our second-floor apartment. It conveyed to us the idea that people did in fact live in structures of their own, with multiple rooms on multiple floors.
My cousin, Christy Merullo, once remarked after she purchased her first home, “I never knew what it was like to live in a house that wasn’t attached to someone else’s house.”
An idea I could definitely relate to but couldn’t articulate as well.
As I said, 288 Bunker Hill was a terrific fantasy and reality within the world of my childhood. We enjoyed my Grandmother Mary, in her glowing love, and we sat enraptured by the narrative voice of our Grandfather Al, as he held court. This was all punctuated by the mystery of our uncles moving in and out of the house filling their lives with the possibility of living. Visits from the Pearl Street Connolly’s widened our sphere and allowed us to understand that there were those that loved us outside of our immediate circle.
I’d be remiss if I forgot to mention how important the church was in our lives, our parish life.
All good things contained within the wilds of zip code 02129, “Chawles’town” to the locals. God, school, family, friends. Life! Holiday life!
My father, a fine accomplice in achieving my mother’s designs, was satisfied to use his artistic talents to create elaborate decorating schemes and turn our apartment into a Winter Wonderland. One year he used tin foil attached to the wall around the Christmas Tree to give the blinking lights an infinity effect, another year he made an entire village out of balsa wood to surround the train beneath the tree, and in yet another year he painstakingly carved snowflakes out of glossy white paper with an Exacto Knife and affixed glitter to them so they could be hung from our suspended ceiling by paper clips.
The magic was real. When the lights went out and the tree came on, we were transported to another world.
This was our normal. We didn’t know any better. We never knew of the amount of time and effort that was dedicated to achieving the proper effect. Halls decked.
Mom and Dad, a formidable Christmas Duo, raising bars and setting precedents that I still aspire to each and every Christmas.
The music continues to play, and each verse and chorus puts me in the frame of a wonderful memory.
Recounting is fun but remembering past warmth in the grinning comfort of a glowing Christmas Tree room is sublime.
I look forward to some deep dives back in time and to bringing some gems to the forefront. Keep measure in coming days, as I plan to elaborate on all that I found good, curious, and magical.
Also, for those looking for gift ideas for family and friends alike, please check out my brand new holiday writing service…
Seasoned Greetings 25
Are you looking for the words to say, but can’t quite find them? Let us give you a hand during a busy Holiday Season. We specialize in writing Holiday themed poems, messages for your Christmas Cards, and even Holiday Toasts. We travel the road from holy to irreverent, but always tailor our content to meet your needs. Looking forward to helping spread some Holiday Cheer.
seasonedgreetings25@gmail.com
Seasoned Greetings 25 – Price List
Holiday Poem – $5.00
Christmas Card Message – $5.00
Christmas Haiku – $2.50
Christmas Limerick – $2.50
Christmas Party Toast – $2.50
Festivus Grievance – $1.00
Festivus Frenemy Insult – $1.00
To order an original Seasoned Greeting, either email me @ seasonedgreetings25@gmail.com or DM me with a few details about the recipient to whom you’d like to send a Seasoned Greeting to.
My advent calendar project hit a buzzsaw called Christmas Present. Christmas 2018 swallowed me up, and I couldn’t spare the creative space needed to close out my project. I back ended some pretty important memories to the end of the calendar for dramatic effect and because it is emotionally hard to write about these things. It leaves me exhausted, yet grateful for such heavy lifting. Please forgive an ambitious man for a late delivery. Sometimes when you let something marinate and breathe a bit, it becomes better for it. I certainly hope so.
I am blessed to have lived through many treasured moments in my life, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t express how very warm and full of heart I become when I recall these times, our times. Merry times, happy times, unknowing times, taken for granted times. Holding short moments for a fraction of time.
We simply inherited a sense that tradition is and always has been important. It is a gift from those that came before us. It is a gift full of wisdom and righteous remembering, and the action of choosing to be together. Blending family and the precious commodity of time creates magic.
The town where I grew up was small, but seemed large to me as a child. It is full of history, and I could walk to any of my near relatives homes within 3-5 minutes. This reality provided me with a false sense that I would always have this convenience of access throughout my life. It wasn’t until I set out into the world that I experienced how small my world truly was and just how lucky I had been to have had such access and time with my closest relatives growing up. It’s not the kind of thing you become aware of, until it changes.
Life moves, life breathes, nothing stays forever, and that is why upon reflection of the holidays of the past, I warmly remember Christmas Eves spent at 28 St. Martin Street with the special people you see in the photograph above.
Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, a Christmas Card/Invitation would come to us from Uncle Mike, Aunt Donna, and Cousin Christy. It would invite us up to their place at 28 St. Martin Street, to celebrate Christmas Eve. Festivities would begin promptly at 6ish. We’d meet, eat, make jolly, and tell stories of the past year. It was a great pre-cursor to Christmas Day celebrations.
Much of the revelry would take place in the kitchen, as it generally does in Irish-American households. Never entering through the front door, but only through the back door, which you would arrive to after you had to walk down a short walkway abutting the house.
Generally, those visiting knew to come to the back door. If they didn’t, we knew they were strangers.
Many great Christmas Eve’s were spent in the company of the Hickey’s, the Lane’s, The Connolly’s, The Warner’s, The Blakie’s, The Dowling’s, The Merullo’s, and any and all that I may have neglected to mention. I’m so grateful that we were a part of something so memorable, that has sustained the fire of memory in my heart. The ghosts of Christmas Past are never too far away.
Although, we’ve lost some of fellow travelers in this life, our family still sustains. We are so lucky to still have opportunities to gather, and we make great use of the examples of living revelry that are evidenced in the photograph above. I look at all of our eyes in that picture, and I see a million different stories and thoughts. I never knew I would be where I am now, but I know for certain that it was a damn wonderful thing to be there then.
Merry Christmas to Uncle Mike, Aunt Donna, and Cousin Christy. Thank you for sharing your home with all of us, and for creating a lasting tradition. Whenever I look at this photo, I know how perfect a moment can be, and how very precious it is to capture it.
Be careful what you wish for. The holiday shopping days are disappearing quickly. Let me bring you down my memory lane and recount the time my Mother fought in earnest to make sure that a certain toy was under a certain tree on a certain day.
Open…
MOTHER CHRISTMAS VISITS THE CABBAGE PATCH
My Mother was a woman of vernacular. She had ways of saying things and words to say them. Over the course of our lives together, it became apparent that not everyone shared these words and expressions. In conversations with others, I’d often say things that would get puzzled looks, or giggles.
The Boston “dropped R” only enhanced and amplified the effect of conversing with her. You might get something like “Hi! Howahya? You comin ovah tommorah? Jaysus Christ, it’s wicked hawt. Christophah! Christophah! I saw a patient at the hospital last night with a broken leg, bone sticking out. Skeevatsah!”
I grew an appreciation for the cadence and dance of conversing with her over the years. She “nevah” used punctuation, but ended most phrases with a “ya know?” Which was pregnant with reflection, concession, and a hint at sought validation; though mostly rhetorical.
My Mother doted on my sister and I to an extreme. Most especially, at Christmas. We were spoiled. It was her thing. It is one of the lasting memorable characteristics of her personality, along with her speech patterns that I remember fondly.
Well, a story she was particularly fond of retelling, or enjoyed hearing others tell of it, was that of “The Great Cabbage Patch Kid Doll Carnage of 1983”
The Cabbage Patch Doll Craze of 1983 was a national phenomena. My sister had it in her lusty child sights. I didn’t care so much about it, except a passing acknowledgement that it was “a thing”, G.I. Joe was more in my wheelhouse. I really don’t recall how it became known to us, but somehow without internet, the message got out. Stores didn’t have them to keep up with the demand. Clandestine shipments, ravaged shelves, my Mother had contacts everywhere, searching high and low for one of these damn dolls. I repeat, this was before internet, yet she managed a network of contacts through landline telephones, a calendar date book, and the yellow and white pages. I’m pretty sure she also enlisted help from the Hood Milkman, Meyer the owner of the Family Shoe Store where we got our bobos (generic shoes mocking name brands), and the entire St. Francis de Sales Parents Guild Association.
As days fell from the calendar, so did my Mother’s hopes of presenting the perfect Christmas morning for my sister.
She was wicked desperate.
I don’t know how, but one of the many leads she had, developed into her taking a bus to Manhattan with my father sometime in December before Christmas 1983. It was a precision operation that involved getting to the correct store, waiting in line, and having the right money for the purchase.
When I think of my father being dragged from his weekend slumber to traipse down to Manhattan on the chance of a hope and a prayer that they might get a doll for my sister, I heartily laugh. I don’t think he was a believer. Ma was, though. My sister’s Christmas joy depended on it.
His only consolation was perhaps a few hurried stops at a bunch of New York Street Hot Dog vendors, so he could stuff a Sabrett’s Hot Dog in his restless maw. Not my mother, she was not to be distracted from her mission.
The Blues Brothers were told by God that they had a mission to complete. Conversely, my Mother told God, she had a mission to complete.
So after the long bus trip, the long city blocks, the foot long hot dogs smothered in relish, they finally arrived at the correct place at the correct time. The line was long, but not impossibly long. Somehow, others knew about the shipment, much to my Mother’s chagrin. They padded along. advancing another few steps. At the pace of one complaint and anxiety at a time. My Mother spent her time in the line giving the gooch and stink face to anyone coming back down the line with a sizable box like brown paper bag in their mitts. Each person coming down the line displayed a satisfaction that my Mother hadn’t tasted as yet, and she grew antsy.
Down the line. People in. Bags out.
Blood pressure rising.
After what must have seemed an eternity to my parents, they finally crossed the threshold and made their way to the counters.
Behind the counters were little brown men screaming and yelling at a fevered pitch. New York was and is the melting pot of America, so it stood to reason that my parents would meet up with some people they were unfamiliar with, having spent most of their lives in an insular community.
So the moment of truth occurs:
Sales clerk: So whatchoo, want, lady?
Ma: How much ah, fah the Cabbage Patch Dolls?
Sales clerk: one hundred dolla.
My Mother turns to my Father, “did he say $100 dollars?”
My father nodded. She didn’t intend on paying $100 dollars for a doll she thought was could be bought for less. Although, desperate times called for desperate measures.
She turned back to the sales clerk and said:
Fah each? Awhr fah two?
The clerk looked stunned, then started talking to his associate. My mother, thought she was not heard. Both sales clerks looked bothered and started gesticulating at my mother. Again, she said:
Fah each? Awhr fah two?
Well that just about did it. The sales clerks said:
Get out, of our store, filthy lady! How dare you talk to us like that!
My father getting a hold of what was going on realized what my mother had said, and put together that they thought she was offering “favors” for the dolls.
Dad: They thought you said you would eat them for two dolls, Kath.
After a good laugh, and some explanations, my Mother reluctantly paid the $100 dollars for the doll.
So 1983 was one of the best Christmases ever for our family. My sister got her doll. My Mother got to see the expression of joy that came of my sister receiving the doll. We all got a story to tell, and two Indian/Pakistani gentleman in Manhattan who had a harder time understanding my Mother’s Boston accent than she had in understanding them, were canonized saints for not having thrown my Mother out of their store before she had the chance to drop her r’s, and some cabbage on some Cabbage Patch Kids.
In my Mother’s version of the story, she believed that the gentleman got it wrong, but if you knew my Mother, you would have heard what they heard, as she had a phenomenal Boston accent. It was wicked pissah! Ya’ know…
I stand in solidarity with you. It is tough to have a December Birthday. I know because my sister suffers from the affliction. It’s a champagne problem in some measures, but it can really get to you if people don’t keep the Birthday and the Christmas Holiday separate. Each has it’s own distinct joys and reasons for celebrating attached. So I implore any of my readers that try to double-up on Birthday and Christmas gifts to kill two birds with one stone; don’t do it. It’s not nice. And Santa is taking notes about who is naughty and nice. Give the people in your lives that have a December Birthday all the special attention a Birthday deserves without any association to the Jingles or Merries.
Open…
Happy Birthday to my kid sister. She is still fresh, full of mischief, and a great all around character. She’s true blue. I just want to make sure that she knows how special her birthday is to us, even though having a birthday in December can sometimes be tough. I hope she had a great day.
Also,
Alexander Ignatius Connolly, or Bubba
My maternal grandfather, Bubba, was born on December 23, 1914. Another relative with a December birthday. I wonder how he found that. There are so many memories to touch upon that one post won’t do it justice. I’m happy to say that this gentleman was a driving force of good in my life, and one hell of a storyteller. He used to rivet us with tales of Sean-Sean the Leprechaun, as well as intriguing war stories about his time as a Marine in WWII’s Pacific Engagement with the Japanese. He loved his sports, and his cop shows, but most of all his family. He is sorely missed. I gave my first born son his middle name in honor of his great-grandfather.
