Memories of Christmases past and the people who made me

The opening notes of Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” make me unstuck in time. 

Like Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, I’m transported to the past.

Christmas at 2200 Carlisle Avenue in Racine, Wisconsin.

The home of George and Dorothy Holtz, my paternal grandparents.

Nat King Cole crooning in the background, the hiss of a needle on vinyl barely audible as the 78 spins on the Zenith cabinet stereo.

The scent of vanilla frosting wafting from the cutout cookies, a recipe I have tried to duplicate without success, mingling with the aroma of ham or turkey and the scents of the perfumes and colognes worn by the adults. 

Side note, I’ve also tried to replicate my grandmother’s freezer cookies and Lebkuchen, her German molasses cookies. It can’t be done. Similarly, my mom’s poppy seed torte and my mother-in-law’s pumpkin pie cannot be created by anyone else but them. It’s just not possible. It has to be the love.

Now, back to our story:

On the floor of the living room, partly under the Christmas tree, a bit of childhood heaven: an O-gauge train set, Christmas village, forest and tunnel beautifully laid out on a full sheet of plywood covered with cotton batting to make it look like a snow covered world.

The layout took up half the room. Papiere mache tunnel. Paper houses with colored cellophane windows that glowed from the string lights pushed through tiny holes in the back. 

The train blew proper smoke from pellets that were dropped into the stack. 

With the control panel in hand, the driver could adjust the speed and blow the horn. 

My brothers and I were captivated and often didn’t hold our patience as we took turns running the train.

The stereo drops the next record: The Harry Simeone Chorale. “The Little Drummer Boy.”

Scene shift.

Christmas Eve was the big event for my family. George and Dorothy came to our house, their sleigh laden with gifts. 

Piles of presents. 

My dad was an only child so my brothers, my sister and I were their only grands. They lavished us. 

Clothing, shoes, toys, electronics, games. Whatever we could have wished for. There it was.

I’m not sure we recognized at the time how blessed we were. George and Dorothy’s generosity, though, colors my life today. 

I love giving gifts. To friends, to family, to help someone in need.

Gift giving is definitely one of my love languages.

The lovely Sarah and I love to spoil our nieces and nephews when we have the opportunity. Black Friday shopping excursions. Dinners at “fancy” restaurants. Tickets to Dollywood with a fistful of cash. 

Giving brings me — us — joy.

And if it makes the recipient happy, all the better.

A new album drops onto the turntable. “Silver Bells” by The Ray Conniff singers.

Side note: is it just me, or was Christmas music just loads better back in the day? There is some “modern” Christmas music I love, but I’d rather take a sprig of holly through the heart than listen to Mariah Carey sing “All I Want For Christmas is You.”

Scene shift.

My unstuck-ness takes me across Carlisle Avenue to the home of Edward and Virginia Baranick, my maternal grandparents.

I didn’t know them as well as I could have. When I was seven my grandfather retired from the Racine Police Department and the grandparents moved to Sarasota, Florida. They split time between Sarasota and their “cabin” near Hancock, Wisconsin.

Their house on Carlisle had a wet bar in the basement, and my grandparents observed cocktail hour every day. Grandpa usually drank a Manhattan (this being Wisconsin it was probably brandy; I prefer bourbon myownself).

Bars figure prominently in many of my memories of Edward. Summers at the Hancock cabin were always a blast, especially when the entire extended family was gathered.

There were summers we got one-on-one time with the grandparents. Ed would shoo us into the car and take us to a bar where he would enjoy a beer or a cocktail and give us quarters to play whatever random game machine was in the back corner.

Sweet memories.

One of my favorite Christmas photos is of me, my brothers and my cousins (my youngest brother and my sister weren’t yet a glimmer in my dad’s eye) gathered in front of my grandparents’ Christmas tree.

The big Christmas gatherings on that side of the family tree were held at my great-grandparents farm in Franksville, just a short drive “to the country.”

Dozens upon dozens of people gathered in the farmhouse. Hilda, my great grandmother, cooking up a storm in the tiny farm kitchen. A dining room table that, I swear, was 100 feet long.

Through the eyes of a child everything is extra large.

Clarence, my great-grandfather, was a bit of a merry prankster around his great-grands. The quintessential “pull my finger” figure.

Our aunt Joyce worked for Western Publishing, home of Little Golden Books. There was always a gift from the publishing house for each of us: coloring books, chapter books, games.

Virginia, my grandmother, was an active volunteer for much of her life, and a hairdresser for a good bit of it. She was always (and I mean always) busy crocheting or crafting something. She crocheted for family, friends, church, a women’s resource center, Toys for Tots. She even made chemo hats.

I didn’t know that until after she died.

She loved that I became hyperactive in the cancer advocacy space after my diagnosis. I’d like to think in some small way I’m following in her voluntarism footsteps.

Two of my most prized possessions are the ivory afghan she crocheted for our wedding, and a blanket she made in colors that matched our bedding at the time using a “Swedish Weaving” technique.

I hope also to follow in her footsteps with the maker thing. I have giant meat hooks, so it might not be crochet, but I want to give it a try.

See, my church has a prayer shawl ministry that I make heavy use of. I keep a bunch of prayer shawls at hand to send to people I meet facing cancer. I want to help keep the church in good supply.

But that’s a story for another day.

My grandparents have been gone for a long time, and I miss them. 

George was perhaps the most important male figure in my youth. 

He fostered my love of music. That Zenith stereo cabinet held a huge collection of 78s and 33s. Jazz, classical, show tunes, standards. He loved it all, and he passed that on to me.

I played trombone and tuba in middle and high school. He and my grandmother attended every single one of my concert performances.

He called the classical selections we played “long-hair music,” he loved every minute of it.

George and Dorothy also had a big hand in my becoming a writer — as a journalist, public relations practitioner, blogger and author. 

They bought my first computer. 

Their refrigerator held every letter to the editor or op/er I got published in the paper. 

They kept copies of my high school newspaper during the year I was editor. 

That I have a website with my name on it, wrote a book, published my first white paper, and host two podcasts would send them over the moon.

Ed and Virginia were supportive too. They encouraged my career aspirations to become a journalist. Gram surreptitiously slid cash into my hands during the college years to pay for “necessities.”

When I achieved my goal of becoming a community newspaper editor and hated it (seriously, 80-hour workweeks and shit pay) and moved into public relations, Virginia had just one question:

”What will this have to do with your writing?”

“Everything, but in a different way,” I started to explain.

I can’t replicate Dorothy’s Christmas baking recipes but when I bake, like the 46 dozen salted caramel thumbprint cookies I recently baked for a fundraiser, I think of her. 

The whir of the mixer. Flour dusting the countertop. Heat billowing into the room when I open the oven door.

My grandparents baked dozens upon dozens of cutout cookies. Stored in Tupperware containers on the stairs leading to the attic, where it was cold during the winter. 

We enjoyed those cookies for weeks after the holidays. 

When I hear the right Christmas song, I can almost taste them.