Today is more typical for December. It is in the low 40’s. The sky is cloudy with light grey clouds. They will hang around all day. I have the stirrings of a cold so I’m staying home. I have plenty of house and Christmas things to keep me busy.

Christmas always merited a countdown. The closer we’d get the more excited we’d be. We still shopped the Sears catalog just in case we missed something. We wrote letters to Santa. One year Santa sent us a telegram, a real telegram. On the top of it was a picture of Santa, his sleigh and all of his reindeer. They were flying over a house. Santa wrote it to the Ryan Children. We were reminded he was watching us to make sure we were good, as if we needed a reminder. He wished us a Merry Christmas and wrote he’d be seeing us. He signed it simply Santa. In a scrapbook somewhere in the eaves I have that telegram.

Back then, there were so many Christmas cards the postman came twice a day. We took turns opening the cards. My mother kept track of the senders making sure she had already sent one or needed to. We decorated with the cards. A string was hung across the wall over the couch. We’d put the cards on the string so you could see the fronts. We’d do the same on the wall behind the desk. My aunt used to send us kids a card. It was always Santa, and we’d place it on the tree mostly inside to cover the bare spots. I also remember a Coke-Cola Santa. He had a bottle of Coke in his hand. On the top of the card was an opening so you could hang it on the tree. He also covered bare spots.

I was always excited when my father spent a Saturday decorating the bushes in front of the house. I loved those lights. The bulbs were huge and always felt warm. The cord came through an open window to the plug, no timer back then. We’d race to plug in the lights as soon the sun started to go down. We’d also light the window lights, the candles. They didn’t have on-off switches. You had to turn the bulbs. They also got hot and turning them off burned your fingers a bit. I remember crawling under the tree to plug in the lights. I wonder now why we never had a fire as there were several plugs in only one outlet. I always thought the tree with its lights lit was the crowning achievement of Christmas decorations. I loved just sitting and looking at the tree. I loved that the house smelled of pine. I loved Christmas. Still do.

This entry was posted on December 6, 2025 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.