I did not go caroling when I was growing up but most of my children did, sometimes with Church groups and sometimes with community groups. In the photograph above my son Cabral (age 6) was the only one in the family to go caroling. He decided he wanted to and he did.
This is the final page of the letter my father wrote home on Christmas Day, 1944. He talks about wanting to come back to Detroit and various ideas he has for finding a church there. It would be another 8 years before he made it back to Detroit as pastor of St. Marks Presbyterian Church. That is a post for another day.
Last night (Christmas eve n’ that) we practically decided to return to Detroit in July and organize some sort of a church there. We ain’t too particular…Congregational, Presbyterian..Triumph, the Church and the Prophet…or what have you. Perhaps a Presbyterian would be best…in as much as Daddy and Uncle Henry could then talk someone out of some sort of a building! could it it be done…you-all? (or do we just want to come home) if it was Presbyterian I would try to get something over in the Bible-belt with Rev. White…and the rest…you know over there with Bethel…Plymouth…etc. Buddy would be glad to look around for me…he loves to transact big business. (He looked up that big church at the end of Scotten at Grand River for me earlier…The Real Estate Company sent me
full particulars…95 thousand will handle and that…so we had to sort of let it go…since they wouldn’t take fifty dollars down and rent it! Said they didn’t care who they sold it too however…long as the money was available. But back to the subject…my mind wanders…there is a modest little Church on Forest near John R. (I think…it could be Warren) which is almost unused…I think a few lingering white-folks still worship there…brick…and not bad looking..but small oughtn’t cost too much. If you-all (at a family council assembled) think such an undertaking wouldn’t be too foolish…
Church at John R. and Forest from Google street view today.
I’ll get Buddy to look up the Trustees or whatever there is and see what they want for it. WILL THE UNITED PRESBYTERIANS DO ANYTHING TO SUPPORT SUCH A VENTURE!!! Well let me know…I’m barkin’ up many a tree…tryin to uncover something or other OUT OF THE SOUTH (my stomach ulcers don’t thrive so well in Dixie…the fog is too heavy or something). And I seem to be headin’ for Detroit both consciously and unconsciously it seems like ‘twould be better to just go on and get it over with! But perhaps ’tis just Christmas. Lee, the Boy who was by today wants me to go in partnership with him in a Portrait Photographic Studio down on Central Avenue. He can get some money (Wants me to get some…but can get it all if I want to work for him I’d like to know what you-all think of the church idea, though…FIRST! HOW LONG WOULD IT TAKE SOMEBODY TO FIND OUT WHAT THE PRESBYTERIAN BOARD WOULD DO IF ANYTHING! If nothing can be done…I’ll continue my gentle hints to the Congregational brethern in Philadelphia that they enter the field of Mission work. Them dern Congregationalists are so lacking in enthusiasm, however, it’s like pulling eye-teeth. (I am not again indicating my indecision…I’m talking about next summer…by which time I will have all the CINEMA they have here…and would be ready to go to New York for a Doctorate..if I could get to New York… If I could get a church IN THE NORTH, never fear, I would use my CINEMA. I would build the biggest youth organization in America right around CINEMA PRODUCTION and its allied arts!) So there…I am not changing my mind again! Well so-long…Write sometime you-all!
Merry Christmas
Missing Christmas Carols 1944
Christmas Day 1944 – Part 1
Christmas Day 1944 – Part 2
Christmas Day 1944 – Part 3
New Year’s Eve 1944 – Part 1
New Year’s Eve 1944 – Part 2
For other Holiday Sepia Saturday offerings click below . And in case you missed it, my connection to the theme this time is I posted a LETTER!
It is now 12:15 AM… we just got home… (and I have to get up at 7!!) … having been interrupted in our “spending Christmas quietly at home.” A boy named Lee and his girl, Naomi, who are studying Cinema at school dropped by for a Merry Christmas. (They’re Jewish). They brought me a Christmas present … two books on Cinema published by the Museum of Modern Art… very nice of them… and as usual I had no presents to return … being somewhat flabbergasted by the whole thing …anyway …we bulled for some little time …and then went to the Faun (the 4 of us) again for dinner …and had a very nice dinner… and then (still the 4 of us) went downtown to a little show that has foreign films and saw a Russian Film “The Rainbow”. It was very good… the dirty nastys killed and shot and poked out eyes until everyone was throwing up all over the place or crying (Naomi and Doris) and then the Russians came skiing down the mountain and gave the dirty nastys a taste of their own medicine while we all cheered (Me and Lee… Doris was still crying…and you can’t cheer and cry very well at the same time… she tried but ’twasn’t much of an artistic success. So we came home. (Just thought Barbara would like to know what happened to her Christmas present… it was quite nice, however, kept my little spouse from having time to get homesick as she is very wont to do what with Christmas trees about and that there… and her wonderin’ every ten minutes what you-all are doin’ at that particular minute.)
Speaking of Christmas presents Mr. Moore, the head of the Cinema department gave me a Christmas present the last day of school. The best book published about cinema is now out of print (collectors item and that) well, I’ve been a tryin’ to find one in a used book-store…but Moore had already bought up every copy on the West Coast…so I couldn’t find any. Well, anyhoo…he gave me one of his copies for Christmas! Surprised me…don’t know yet whether I thanked him or not or just looked stupid (O.K. Louis, “as usual”) ‘Twas nice of him, anyhow…especially with folks all trying’ to buy the few copies he has left after stocking up the Library.
Before I was interrupted I was telling about the Grahams present…Doris got some slips or something like that etc. etc….and we both got a large box of cup-cakes we are in the process of devouring with the Cherry Jam Mrs. Graham sent us a bit earlier. Speaking of food…Did you-all can any chicken this year…WELL!!! (Can’t you take a hint!) (‘Splain it to ‘em Pee-Wee. Pee-Wee ain’t home, she’s out amongst em’…well, you ‘splain it Gladys…She ain’t home either…O.K.) Find attached sugar stamp which we let the OPA slip by us… Thought maybe you-all could still find some use for it… (Know what I mean.) Mrs. Graham’s got (or had) 5 pounds for you-all.
Really ain’t no need for no nother sheet of this!
To be continued.
You can read a review of the movie Raduga/The Rainbow from the October 1944 New York Times by clicking HERE.
Missing Christmas Carols 1944
Christmas Day 1944 – Part 1
Christmas Day 1944 – Part 2
Christmas Day 1944 – Part 3
New Year’s Eve 1944 – Part 1
New Year’s Eve 1944 – Part 2
You do have the wealth of info on your family. And the way you present!
Your Father was quite the Guy back in the day, as in my time, too.
the book, if you don’t do it; who will?!
Oh, I’m old enough to remember the ration stamps. Fun to read the humor in the writing too.
Peace …
another great post! i love the comments about his “little wife” and the flavor of their lives before their daughters arrived!
oh my, i love your new look and your new neighborhood. i’m thinking of moving my blog, too, and was wondering if you could give me some pointers on how to do it so seamlessly as you have!
Last year I shared a letter my mother wrote home to Detroit on December 17, 1944. This year I am going to share a long Christmas letter my father wrote home on Christmas day of the same year. Because it is three pages long I am going to break it up into three posts. This is the first.
1944 was my parents 2nd Christmas together. My father, Albert, had taken a year off from the ministry to take classes in film making at UCLA. He planned to use it in his church work. My mother, Doris, was working as a social worker. The “Junior Doctor” mentioned in the letter was his brother, Louis, who had recently joined their father as a doctor at Cleage Clinic on the west side of Detroit. Barbara is his sister and the Graham’s are my mother’s parents.
“MERRY CHRISTMAS ‘N’ THAT…”
It’s Christmas afternoon…that’s what folks out here tell us…but it’s really June..the sun is shining and its warm and folks are out without their coats trying to play like it’s Christmas (full of Christmas cheer, howsoever…the liquid variety)
We ate supper at the Restaurant last night…”The Faun”, everything was quite festive…with Christmas carols… and folks being “elite”… Doris wanted to telephone you-all COLLECT to say Merry Christmas … Suggested that we put through a person to person call to the Junior Doctor (knowing that he would refuse to accept a collect call … and thus you-all would guess that we said Merry Christmas without anybody payin’ anything Smart little wife I got ain’t it. But we didn’t…the war effort ‘n’ that, you know. On the way home we saw a woman stealing a Christmas tree from a stand which had closed thinking that all the trees had been sold that anybody wanted (I guess). She was back in the dark picking over the trees big as life … getting a good one with a solid stand … she looked sort of scared but determined … Last we saw of her she was truckin’ on down the street with the biggest and best one on the lot under her arm.
We got up LATE … about twelve or so… and ate like hogs… DORIS is now engaged in “repairing” one of our “electric plates”… in the middle of the floor barefooted…she and it ((the electric plate) are now sitting in the middle of the front room floor… she has the plate hooked in to prove that it works… she works just like Louis… mess, mess, mess everywhere. She can start on the Radio now… The Christmas carols seem to have burned it out… this morning it refused to play… just smoked when we turned it on … she says a condenser… and only by the hardest can I disuade her from “fixing” it too. (She is now lecturing on how fortunate I am to have a wife who is both smart and beautiful and can fix things about the house.)
We received the presents ($10 from Barbara, $10 from Daddy & Mama, and $50 from Louis) THANKS! Sorry we couldn’t give you-all anything but love. We received a package from the Grahams… shirt tie, hankerchiefs, and CIGARETTES for me…
TIME OUT…
To be continued.
Christmas Day 1944 – Part 2
Christmas Day 1944 – Part 3
New Year’s Eve 1944 – Part 1
New Year’s Eve 1944 – Part
Keep it coming!
Looks great, “Keep on… keeping on…!”
gem!
I don’t know why, but your father saying that they “ate like hogs’ just made me laugh…eating like a hog sounds like eating more than if you eat like a pig.
Congratulations on the move. I’m hanging in with Blogger until I can learn to use the other, self-hosted WordPress. Might be a loooong time. I’ve got my blog backed up (I think) and that will have to do for my sense of security now.
It’s snowing on your blog here – is that a feature you can turn on and off?
Zann, I turned it on until Jan. 3. Probably will be all the snow I see until later in the winter. I plan on going the self-hosted route too. In fact I tried one out but decided to move here for now. It wasn’t much different then this WordPress is to work with.
Looks great, Kristin. I do truly love keeping up with your family history. You are doing such an amazing job with documenting all this. It will be treasured by your descendants for many years to come. What a great gift.
I have all my blogs on self-hosted WordPress. With some of the latest versions, it has become a dream to use.
Peace …
I am not self-hosting yet but that is the plan. I will have to ask you some questions via email.
i loved this one. can’t wait for the next two installments. i’m so glad you’re doing this. it’s like reading about characters in a novel!
Jan who was driving, answered, “We’re on our way to the store to get some eggs and hamburger buns.”
After going to the grocery store for Warren, we headed home. Nikki, Jann and I started mixing up the cake. When we put the cake into the oven Jann, Nikki and I sat down with Kriss (Jan’s brother) and James (my brother) and started playing Seaga. We hadn’t got very far when the cake was done and we started the icing. After we iced the cake, we were going to get Jan to drive us over to Louis’. I went over to tell my mother (Kristin) and she suggested that we put the cake into a box and drag it over on the sled since the roads were iced over. So we decided to pull it over on the sled. When we got to Hugh and Louis’ we started decorating the house with balloons, and crepe paper. We even had a sign that said “HAPPY BIRTHDAY JIM AND WARREN!” that James and Kriss had printed up on the computer. When we finished decorating, people started to arrive. We were all brainstorming on how to get Warren to come over. Louis said that we should tell him that we were having a surprise party for Jim and then…the fire siren went off. Jim is a volunteer fireman so that meant he had to go to the fire. But lucky for us it was a false alarm. Jim arrived a few moments later with Kristin, who knew about the party and brought him over. We all hid and had the lights out and yelled “SURPRISE!” when he came in.
I have been making fruitcake using the recipe in my mother’s “Woman’s Home Companion Cook Book” for decades. I like my homemade fruitcake but can’t say the same for the blah stuff from the grocery store. This year’s fruitcakes are still soaking up the brandy. I will finish making them as soon as I get over this horrible cough I’ve come down with. To see last year’s photo of me up to my elbows in candied fruit and nuts, go to Yay For Fruitcake!
Christmas and Early Childhood
by Juanita Cleage Martin
From the book “Memories to Memoirs”
My favorite toy was a big doll. In our day, dolls were stuffed with sawdust, and their heads and arms were made of plastic, not like plastic of today. I remember I left it outside and the rain ruined it and made puffed splotches like blisters. I cried, as I dearly loved this doll. My sister Bea was the doctor. She gathered wild purple poke berries and covered the places. I continued to carry and play with it until it finally tore to pieces.
1928-1940 Cuddles or Sally-kins, 14-27″ tall, composition head, arms, legs (some limbs are rubber), cloth kapok stuffed body, molded hair, tin flirty sleep eyes, with lashes, open mouth with upper & lower teeth, tongue, mama crier, wore an organdy dress, bonnet and rubber panties, (Little Sister has flannel diapers). Made by Ideal.
Here is my Uncle Henry Cleage with his adoring mother, Pearl. Henry was born March 22, 1916, the third of my grandparents 7 children. He always told us his nickname was “Happy”. He looks pretty happy here. Henry grew up to be an attorney, a printer, an editor, a writer, a farmer and a philosopher. Not in that particular order. He lived until 1996, when he died from cancer.
Click the logo for more photographs of 
mother’s and children and other exciting subjects. –>
The Kwanzaa Table
When I was elementary school age our neighborhood was majority Jewish for several years. We never celebrated the Jewish holidays but we learned about them. I remember singing the dreidel song in school and learning about the menorah.
We have celebrated Kwanzaa in various ways over the years. 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. At one point we didn’t celebrate Christmas, only Kwanzaa but after the kids started school we gradually added Christmas back into the celebrations.
Kwanzaa is an African American 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.
One Response to Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories – Christmas Day 1944 – Part 3
Kristin,
I know I’ve said before that you come by the writing gene naturally. It’s such a part of your family’s heritage. Beautiful!
Kathy, You got here! Good to see your comment.
A letter written on Christmas Day shows his dedication. These days people don’t seem to write letters other than the ’round robins’ that I hate.
Perfect fit for the theme. I can’t wait to hear the rest of the story unfold.
I love the determination, vision, and hope. A wonderful letter.
Now that the holiday rush is past I’m getting caught up on my blog reading. I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas.
I really enjoyed reading this letter. It’s fun to read your father’s thoughts as he thinks about how to organize a church in Detroit–and I’m looking forward to future posts about how he eventually gets back there.