Category Archives: Christmas

Anna Remembers Santa Claus

Advent Calendar, Christmas, memories,
"Grandmother Cleage's Christmas"
Christmas 1968 at my Grandmother Cleage’s house in Detroit. Gladys far left. My father’s head front left, Maria, Blair and Anna front and enter. Henry on the couch. Winslow laughing and Louis smoking in the back.

I remember Santa from my childhood but it wasn’t an important part and I don’t have any memorable memories.  My cousin Anna did though and here is one of hers from our family newsletter, the Ruff Draft 1991.  In the photograph above Maria is the child on the left and Anna is the child on the right.  Their father, Winslow is behind them at the door smiling in profile.

Christmas Memory

Anna  writes, My memories aren’t all that clear, but there is one that shines bright in my mind.  It was one Christmas Eve, when Maria and I were about six and eight years old.  We had just tucked ourselves into bed for the night.  Suddenly we heard a tinkling, jingling sound.  We both looked at each other with mouths open wide and eyes sparkling with excitement.  We knew it was Santa for sure. We scrambled out of bed and raced for the steps.  We got to the landing, almost tumbling down the stairs in our haste, and there he was…NOT Santa Claus, but DADDY!  There he was, grinning from ear to ear, holding a glass, hitting it gently with a silver spoon.  If we had had our pillows we would have pelted Dad right there, but instead we just laughed hilariously.  It was and still is a great memory.

Christmas Cookies – 2009

Advent Calendar, Christmas
"Jim and Kylett make cookies."
Granpa making cookies with Kylett.
"Hasina and Abeo"
Hasina and abeo examining Christmas cookies by Ife.

Christmas Cookies

I am so behind in my Christmas calendar posts but today I realized I do have something to say about most of those I skipped so I am going on a posting binge today .

I do not remember making Christmas cookies when I was growing up.  When my children were growing up they would often bake cookies to give to the extended family for gifts and to eat, of course.

My grandchildren have joined this tradition and last Christmas  cookies were baked and given and eaten.  I expect the same will happen this year.

 
"Eating Christmas Cookies."
Playing cards, talking and eating cookies Xmas 2009.

Blog Caroling – We Three Kings

Christmas
"Blog Caroling logo"
We Three Kings

I chose We Three Kings for my contribution to footnoteMaven’s Blog Caroling Event 2010. This carol was written by John Henry Hopkins in 1857 and first preformed in 1863 in New York City.   I liked this version done with hang drums.

We Three Kings 


We three kings of Orient are;
Bearing gifts we traverse afar,
Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following yonder star.

Refrain
O star of wonder, star of light,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect light.

Born a King on Bethlehem’s plain
Gold I bring to crown Him again,
King forever, ceasing never,
Over us all to reign.

Refrain

Frankincense to offer have I;
Incense owns a Deity nigh;
Prayer and praising, voices raising,
Worshipping God on high.

Refrain

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom;
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone cold tomb.

Refrain

Glorious now behold Him arise;
King and God and sacrifice;
Alleluia, Alleluia,
Sounds through the earth and skies.

Refrain

Buying Gifts for Christmas

Advent Calendar, Christmas, memories,
"Kris at Old Plank about 1962"
Me at Old Plank in 1962. I was 15, the year after the memory.

Another memory from Ruff Draft 1990, this time mine.

I remember the first year I was old enough to try and buy presents for all my relatives.  I must have been about 13 or 14.  I just had my allowance.  I saved up and got presents for several great aunts, seven or eight cousins, parents, a sister, numerous aunts and uncles and my grandparents.   There was a dime store in Milford, Michigan where we used to go when we spent time up at the farm on Old Plank Road.  There I bought several perfume atomizers for the great aunts and a set of wooden alphabet blocks for little Blair and a cast iron trivet with a country snow scene for my mother.  I bought something for everybody.  I don’t know why I didn’t make cookies or something.  I don’t remember how anybody liked their gifts but I worried a lot about if they would or not.

Henry’s Christmas Memory

Advent Calendar, Christmas, memories
"Barbara, Hugh and Henry Cleage"
Barbara, Hugh and Henry Cleage

This is another memory from the December 1990 Ruff Draft, a family newsletter we put out for 5 years.  My daughter Ayanna interviewed my Uncle Henry and wrote this from the interview.  The photo was probably taken several years earlier than the memory.  It was taken by the house on Scotten on the old west side of Detroit about 1925.

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Henry Cleage remembers when his Aunt Gertrude won a nice new shiny bike.  He just knew she would give it to him for Christmas.  On Christmas Eve he was sitting in the living room with his father after the younger kids had gone to bed.  His father said, “Henry, go over to your Aunt’s and get that bike … for Hugh.”  Henry thought he would never enjoy Christmas again, but that after seeing Hugh so happy with the bike he decided it was all worth it.  Even so he said that Christmas was never the same for him.  It had lost some of the magic.

Mary Virginia Graham Elkins – Christmas Memories

Christmas, memories

From 1990 until 1996 we put out a family newsletter called the Ruff Draft.  In December of 1990 we solicited Christmas Memories from our readers, who were mostly relatives.  On the days of the Advent Calendar series when I don’t have anything to say I’ve decided to run one of these memories.  Here is the first one from my mother’s older sister.  In the photo is my little mother Doris (1923-1982) and her sister Mary V. (1921-2009).  It was taken in their backyard on Detroit’s east side.

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I can remember Poppy waiting till Xmas Eve to go and get our tree.  We (Doris and I) usually went with him…and bringing it home to decorate.  He had a stand that he made himself.  We went up to the attic to haul down boxes of decorations that had been carefully put away.  Some very old.  I can remember one little fat Santa that Mom always put in the window, he had a pipe in his mouth.  Doris and I shared a bedroom which had the door to the attic in it.  When we were at the “believe in Santa Claus stage” we thought that once we went to sleep he would tip down the attic stairs and put our toys, etc, under said tree.  I think I laid awake waiting for the old boy to show up.  Of course I never saw him ’cause I went to sleep, but the stuff was always under the tree.  Mom was always busy in the kitchen getting stuff together for Xmas dinner and the house would be full of wonderful odors.  If Xmas fell on a Sunday, we would go to church. And we used to have lots of snow.  Although we came up during the depression, we always had something to eat and something under the ole tree even if it wasn’t what we asked for.  It was a tradition that Xmas dinner was at our house and Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma Turner’s.  Daddy cooked the ole turkey and made the most delicious stuffing.  He could cook.  Mom learned from him.  She couldn’t boil water when they got married.  Dad taught her cause he had worked in restaurants as a young man.

We never had outdoor lights

Advent Calendar, Christmas, Cleages, memories
"Chicago Blvd. Parsonage"
The parsonage

When I was growing up in the 1950’s lights were rare in my neighborhood.  I remember the first lights I saw.  My family moved into the huge house above in 1952 after a church fight in which my father, a pastor, and 300 parishioners left St. Marks Presbyterian church to organize Central Congregational Church.  During the time before a new church building was found and purchased the church met at Crosman School on Sundays while all other activities were held at the house above.  We lived on the second floor, church activities were on the first floor and in the very large recreation room in the basement.  My sister and I shared the bedroom marked with the red X.  On the side was a window (marked Z) that we could look out of at night and see a house in the next block outlined in multicolored lights.  We called it the gingerbread house and thought it was beautiful and unique. 

I don’t remember ever riding by when the lights were on.  We lived on the west side of Detroit while one set of grandparents lived on the east side.  Driving from one house to the other we would be coming home after dark and I remember looking at people’s lit Christmas trees through the windows, I don’t remember any outdoor lights.  In later years that changed.  I think my west side grandparents eventually had lights and some plastic lit up carolers out in front.  My youngest son always wanted to put lights outside our house but since we lived at the end of a dead end road in the middle of the Manistee National Forest at the time, it never happened. Thinking back, I should have let him do it.

Christmas Cards

Advent Calendar, Christmas, Cleages, Grahams, Williams

Card made by me long, long ago

My family did not send out Christmas cards when I was growing up. Probably because all the relatives lived in Detroit and we saw them during the holidays. We usually had a good number of cards to display across the mantle though because my mother was a teacher and she brought home all the cards her students gave her. I did make some cards in elementary school that I found in my mother’s things. My grandparents aka Nanny and Poppy received cards from friends they kept in touch with from the days they lived in Montgomery. Often these were photograph cards. Because they kept the past years cards in a brass Chinese bowl on a table in the front room, under the table actually, I watched some stranger kids grow up from year to year.

When I grew up and moved out of Detroit I started sending and receiving cards. When we didn’t have a mantle we displayed them across the top of the bookcase that ran across one side of the living room. The years two of my daughters had paper routes we had lots of cards. For some reason I’ve saved these along with the family and friend cards. Every year when I go through them I think I should glean these but I don’t.

"Cards in Chinese Bowl."
Cards in brass bowl
"Ruff Draft Christmas Card"
Ruff Draft Nov/Dec 1994

For five or six years when we were homeschooling our family put out a monthly newsletter. It gave the kids a chance to use their writing skills and gave the family and friends a chance to see that they weren’t growing up illiterate. We would add a Christmas message on the back page. That is about as close to a Christmas letter as I got.

The most meaningful card I’ve saved over the years is the last one my mother-in-law, Theola Davenport Williams, sent me the Christmas before she died. It included a letter on the inside. I re-read it every holiday season. I wish we had traveled to St. Louis that season to visit but we didn’t.

"Inside Theola's card"
"Last card from Theola Williams."
Christmas Card from Theola Williams 1980

Making Christmas Ornaments

Advent Calendar, Christmas, Cleages, Williams

When I was growing up we had the ornaments that my mother bought over the years.  I don’t remember making decorations in school.  Maybe because the elementary school I attended was mostly Jewish or maybe in the 1950’s we didn’t make decorations.  I don’t know.  We didn’t string popcorn or cranberries.  Wait!  I think i remember a construction paper chain my sister and/or I made.  It was short in length and in use.

"Painting Christmas Decorations"
Daughter and granddaughters hard at work

In 2008 my sister and I decided to get our children and grandchildren together and decorate ornaments for the Christmas tree.  I ordered clear plastic bulbs and craft paint and brushes.  My sister offered her house.  On the appointed day we gathered for pizza, eggnog and decorating.  The table in the dining room was covered, another table was set up, t-shirts and aprons went on over clothes and the fun began.  Everybody, including interested adults, painted several ornaments.  They popped open and the insides were painted then the ornament was popped back together.  You can see in the photo that they were bright, clear, colorful.  Unfortunately what you don’t see is that the paint never dried.  It puddled on the bottom of the ornament and if there were multiple colors, which there often were, the puddle turned a muddy brownish/gray.  We hung them on the trees anyway and packed them away hoping they’d look better the next year.  They didn’t, although I think they were dry.  I wonder what the grandchildren remember about it.  I’ll have to check this year.

The finished ornaments before they melted.

We ate more turkey

Advent Calendar, Christmas
"Christmas Turkey"

This is the Dec. 2 entry for the GeneaBlogger Advent Calandar.
Did your family or ancestors serve traditional dishes for the holidays? Was there one dish that was unusual?

For Christmas we ate the same thing we ate for Thanksgiving.   When I was younger we always went to my mother’s parents for dinner. My mother’s sister and her three daughters would also be there, usually they rode with us.  My mother’s parents were from Alabama and we had  a pretty traditional southern meal of turkey with corn bread dressing with side dishes.  My grandfather taught my grandmother to cook when they married and he always cooked the turkey himself in an old gas stove in the basement.  It was one of those with the long legs.  With the turkey, we had candied sweet potatoes (no marshmellows!), rice, turnip or collard greens, corn pubbing and green beans.  My grandmother made her salad, which was great but I would never make.  She cut up lettuce and onions very tiny and added lots of mayonaise.  There was a relish plate with carrot and celery sticks, olives and tomatoes and always fresh, hot biscuits.

They ate an early dinner and when we left there we would go to my paternal grandparents and have desert.  There would be sweet potato or pumpkin pie and mince meat pie and fruitcake.  The pies were homemade.  The fruitcake was store bought.  These were served with store bought eggnog and lots of political discussion.  My other cousins would be there and we had another bunch of gifts to open.

For several years we ate dinner at home and we had the same things except no greens and no Nanny’s salad or biscuits.   We also had macaroni and cheese and brown and serve rolls.  My mother was a teacher and we did not have lots of Christmas baking.  Perhaps a pie or two. I almost forgot the box of chocolate cherries and the large box of Sanders Miniature Chocolates.  Wish I had a box coming this Christmas!  Above is a shot of me, my mother and my sister posing with the remains of a turkey. Probably taken around 1962.  I remember one traumatic Christmas when the oven was broken and my mother had to cook the turkey in a stand alone oven.  Somehow a wire in the top touched the turkey while it was baking and left a greenish mark.  My mother said we might all be poisoned and threw the whole turkey out!  We “borrowed” some turkey from my grandmother and dinner went on but no leftover turkey for snacks.