Category Archives: Cleages

Happy Birthday to all!!

Advent Calendar, Cleages, Williams, ,
"December Birthdays"

Photos starting from the top left:  Jim getting ready to blow out the flaming inferno that was the candles on the cake in 2002.  Jim and Warren celebrating together at a surprise party in Idlewild about 1990.  The cousins around the table to celebrate Cousin Warren’s (wearing the lai) birthday about 1958.  That is me at the far end of the table.  On the bottom row we have another table full of cousins (children of those in the previous photo) celebrating the combined party of Jim and Warren.  Jim successfully blowing out all those candles.  Last photo is Jim last year opening his gifts.

When I was growing up my cousin Warren celebrated his birthday with a family party after Christmas on December 30.  There we cousins are on the upper right getting ready to eat cake.  There was always punch, cake, ice cream and chips.  Maybe hot dogs?  Plus balloons and birthday presents.  Being close to Christmas didn’t seem to impact his birthday.  My sister Pearl’s birthday is December 7, which doesn’t seem that close to Christmas.  We didn’t do parties but had a cake and she received presents just like I did for my august birthday.

My husband, Jim, comes from a family with 12 children.  Three of them were born very close to Christmas.  Milton was born on Christmas Eve, Catherine was born on Christmas day and my husband was born on December 30.  He says everybody always had a birthday cake and nobody every got many birthday gifts so that wasn’t different.  Over the years we’ve been together his birthday has become an important part of the Christmas celebratory season.  We have cake, gifts, dinner, a gathering.  Now that the children are grown, some with children of their own and most of us are in the same city we gather for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Jim’s Birthday, New Years Eve and New Years day.  By January we are ready for a break!

Advent Calendar – December 11 – Kwanzaa

Advent Calendar, Cleages, Newsletters, Williams,

"Atlanta Kwanzaa Table"
The Kwanzaa table, minus the fruits and vegetables and plus a globe – 2009

When I was elementary school age our neighborhood was majority Jewish.  We never celebrated the Jewish holidays but we learned about them.  I remember singing the dreidel song in school and learning about the menorah.  I didn’t realize Kwanzaa was in the “another tradition” category until today, so here is my late offering.  Once again I bring you a reprint from Ruff Draft 1991.  We didn’t celebrate it when I was growing up since it didn’t begin until the late 1960’s.  Our children grew up celebrating either at home or in community celebrations.

Kwanzaa

By Ayanna Williams

Kwanzaa is a Black holiday started in the U.S.A. in the 1960s.

This year on the last day of Kwanzaa, which was New Years Day, we had a big to-do and invited Henry over.  We dressed up.  Tulani and I in sarongs.  That is material draped around your body and hung over your shoulder.  James and Cabral wore baggy pants and African print shirts.  Jilo and Ife, who were home on winter break, wore long skirts.  All the girls but Jilo, wore geles (head wraps).  Jilo didn’t want to cover her dreadlocks.

When Henry got there we were downstairs in our regular clothes so we ran upstairs and after much losing of skirts and falling off of wraps, we finally went down.  As we went Tulani played the drum, James used the shakare, Cabral strummed the ukelele and I had to use two blocks.  We chanted “Kwanzaa, First Fruits!” as we came. We giggled a little as we went through the kitchen.  Black eye peas, sweet potatoes and rice were simmering on the stove for us to eat directly after the ritual.  When we got to the living room, all the lights were off except one.  By that light we, in turn, read the seven principles in Swahili and their meanings in English.  The introduction was read by Daddy.  Nia/Purpose was read by Henry. Umoja/Unity was read by Tulani.  Kujichagulia/Self determination was read by Ayanna, Ujima/Collective Work and Responsibility by James.  Ujamaa/Cooperative economics by Ife, Kuumba/Creativity by Mommy for Cabral and Imani/Faith by Jilo.

Then we read the meanings explained in plain English that Jilo had written.  After we read the principles and lit all seven candles, Jilo read a story she had written about Kwanzaa with all of the principles included.  We then ushered everybody into the dining room while chanting the principles and their meanings.  Well, that was the plan, but nobody but us kids knew so the adults just sat there and watched us.  So we finally just got up and told them to come to the table.

After dinner Henry told tales about when he was a kid and about his uncles and cousins.  Some how the conversation went from reminiscing to the state of the world today. He and Jilo had quite a discussion that lasted for hours.  At the end Henry went home and we all went to bed.

Winter of 1949 -Springfield, Mass

Cleages, Photographs, sepia saturday, , , ,

I’m in the front, my mother is propping up my sister Pearl.  My father took the photo in our yard.  He was the pastor of St. John’s Congregational Church in Springfield Massachusetts and we lived in the parsonage/community house right next to the church.  We moved to my parents hometown, Detroit, when I was four where we still had plenty of snow.

These photographs are in a crumpling album that my father put together back in the 1940’s.  He wrote comments on all the photographs. I have to photograph or scan them before they disappear.

Click here to see more sepia saturday posts from around the world.

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

The Meadows 1940s

Cleages, sepia saturday,
Mary Agnes Miller (later Davis) and George Payne

This photo is from a small black album I got from my uncle Henry.  It had a lot of small photographs that look like they were cut from a contact sheet.  They were pasted on themed pages, a page for my father, a page for each of his siblings, a page for several close family friends, etc.  The pages and pictures aren’t labeled.  I hope my aunts can shed some light on who the people in the picture are and if it was taken at the Meadows near Detroit.  Judging by the ages of the people I know in the album I think the photos were taken in the early 1940’s.

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.

The Christmas Tree Was Always Real

Advent Calendar, Biography, Christmas, Cleages, memories
"My mother and I decorate the Xmas tree"
Watching my mother decorate the Christmas tree.
"Kris, Pearl and Doris"
Me, my sister and my mother. Job done.
"The Christmas tree."
The presents on the table go to the relatives.
"Christmas tree on Fairfield"
1968 – My last Christmas tree living at home.

Our tree was always real.  My sister, my mother and I would go to a tree lot to pick it about a week before Christmas.  This was Detroit and in my memory it is cold and there is snow on the ground.  We picked short needled trees of medium height and (of course) well shaped.  We used a mix of glass balls my mother had collected over the years.  When we were old enough, I can’t remember when that was, we helped decorate the tree – after my mother put on the beads, the tinsel and the multicolored lights.  We had the big lights but they were pointy.  My grandparents had round lights.  The icicles went on last and there was no tossing.  It was put on a few pieces at a time up and down all the branches.  I remember one year that my mother did not want to trim the tree and was pretty unpleasant about my sister and me doing it and doing it NOW, but usually it was a pleasant evening, either Christmas eve or close to it.  My mother usually had on the CBC, the Canadian station and by that time they would be playing Christmas music. The tree was always beautiful.

My maternal grandparents, Nanny and Poppy, waited until Christmas eve to buy the tree and set it up.  The tree was always scrawny and thin but that was how their tree was supposed to be.  Their ornaments were very old.  I wonder what happened to them.  What I remember are some little Santas that went on the tree and a jolly Father Christmas looking Santa that stood in the window with his removable pipe. 

My paternal grandparents had a bigger house and a big, full, long needled tree that was in the corner of the living room next to the stairs.  My uncles Louis and Hugh plus my aunt Barbara and cousin Ernie lived there in addition to my grandparents so there were always a lot of presents under the tree.

"Cleage Tree"
Christmas tree at Grandmother Cleages.

The black and white photographs are all from the same Christmas.  I think it was 1962.  I was still in high school, about 15.  My sister was two years younger.  Unfortunately these were all taken with a polaroid and they show it.  The colored photo is from 1968. We had moved into the flat we shared with my grandparents.  They were downstairs and we were upstairs.   I had just graduated from Wayne State University and was about to head out into the world to seek my fortune. But that’s another story.

Drawing of Me, 1968

Cleages, memories,

My Aunt Gladys Cleage Evans drew this pencil sketch of me after dinner at my grandmother Cleage’s dining room table.  I did a sketch of her at the same time.  It has been (thankfully) lost.  At some point I tore the picture out of my journal notebook and glued it into a scrapbook.  This was before I knew what glue can do.  I’ve cleaned it up some.  Many lively political discussions took place around that table.   Click for other Sepia Saturday offerings.