By Mary Duggan
My folks did it up right at the holidays with their Christmas Eve gathering of cousins, aunts, uncles, assorted friends, their own eleven children and yes, at the appointed hour, a live appearance from Santa. It was magical. When cousins gather now, a half century later, we all still relive those memories.
But the winter of 1960 found me sick. Really sick. I am only going to give this a few more days, was the prognosis from Mom’s cousin, the doctor. If she doesn’t make a turn-around I am going to hospitalize her. Pneumonia. I would not be in attendance for Christmas Eve. I was 7 years old and crushed.
Dad used his skills from a career in advertising to create our Christmas Cards. 1961, with Annie, Jim and Clare still on the horizon, baby Patrick’s arrival was the big news.
I lay in the big double sleigh bed upstairs, listening to my enormous clan gathering below. Each family bearing casseroles and holiday treats. Uncles slyly stowing bags of gifts in the garage to be “delivered” by Santa later in the night. My mom and my aunts wearing starched holiday aprons. Each aunt bringing her own apron, carefully folded atop her contribution to the holiday buffet. My uncles tending bar. The adults clinking rocks glasses of highballs and Manhattans; toasting and teasing each other in a way that was different from the rest of the year. Nieces helping with the final table setting; despite days and days of preparation we were never completely ready. Mom’s prized Wedgewood on full display. Kids’ tables made up on card tables everywhere. Everyone shooing our old border collie away from the coffeetable overflowing with appetizers. Grandma Liz presiding over her cookie tins filled with our holiday favorites: gum drops mixed with peanuts or dates stuffed with pecans and rolled in powdered sugar. The highlight of the evening, still some few hours away, would be the marvelous Santa suit she had designed and sewn. The drapes would be closed, the carols to attract Santa would be sung, and then the sound of sleigh bells as Santa Ho Ho Ho’d at the front door, the entire porch filled with pillow cases of gifts, my uncles helping Santa as the elves were busy with last minute gift production. It was enough to make a kid pee her pants.
Aunt Pat, in her holiday apron, as beautiful as Liz Taylor, said my Mom.
Aunt Pat, with a sense of fun that matched her movie star beauty.
Blasé teens in the family would snicker behind their hands as they conjectured who “Santa” would be this year. Many neighbors and distant relatives had been called to service over the years; as the adults were very careful to have no one inadvertently recognizable as Santa. And yet, beneath the wiser than thou demeanors of the teens – the lingering still of holiday excitement. The center of it all – the tree that my dad would have fussed over days earlier – drilling holes and plugging extra branches until it was just right. His perfectionism making my mom crazy; but the end result charming and homespun with red glass ornaments and garlands of popcorn and cranberries. It was magical. Even all the hard work of getting ready thrilled me and made it all the more fun. But I was sick this year. Really and painfully sick. Everyone was told to stay away as I remained quarantined and alone in my bedroom.
