The Sunday Memory Drawer - Christmas Traditions

This was my Christmas with jaundice. Or liver failure. More likely, the picture has weathered itself by sitting in a box for years. I'm a trifle confused by that bizarre license plate in the front. It's probably a reference code for the photographer, but it certainly looks like Santa might have been doing some time in the state prison. At this time of year, memories of past holiday traditions come flooding back like spilled egg nog. For instance, a visit to Santa was de rigeur every year for me. My Santa always resided at Gimbels in the Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers. My mother told me that the Gimbels Santa was the real one. That probably had more to do with the fact that she did more shopping there than she did at Macy's or John Wanamaker's. It was apparently more convenient to believe that the Gimbels guy was the true Santa Claus. Looking back, I realized that my family engaged in the same holiday traditions and subsequent frenzy that everybody else did. People do the same thing year after year after year until complete boredom sets in. More likely, family patterns can be changed after somebody says the wrong thing to somebody else at the dinner table. For us, Christmas Eve was always spent with my father's cousin and her family in the Bronx. She liked to go to candlelight service and I felt the need to be the only one in my family unit to go along. Then, we would come back for a big buffet table, which frankly scared me. Usually, the older folks would have a Yuletide craving for creamed herring and its presence on the table made me gag. The lingering smell always pretty much contaminated all the other stuff on the table for me. So, I would run around and munch on as many pretzels and potato chips that I could find in bowls situated around the house. Another relative lived upstairs, so my older teenage cousins (and their dates) used to command that area. Since there was absolutely nobody there that was my age, I was lost at sea. I once ventured upstairs to their lair and inadvertently walked into an old fashioned make out party. There is nothing more horrifying than seeing a relative being groped by some neanderthal on the couch. At that tender age, I ran away screaming and crying. Now, I would simply say, "go get a fucking room." Christmas Day was a round robin affair. Somehow, somebody kept track of who hosted the rest of the family last year and whose turn it was to cough up the eats this year. I hated this concept. There is nothing worse than being gifted with lots of new toys to play with, only to be yanked away several hours later to somebody else's house so you can watch some uncle play "pull my finger." I'd be bored senseless and wind up sitting on the sofa to watch cartoons until I could go home and reconnect with my Zorro play set. The worst Christmas Days were always spent when it was my mother's sister's turn to host us. First off, they lived in Deer Park, Long Island, which might as well have been on the moon. At least there, I had a cousin close to my age. But, still, I wasn't with my stuff and I was constantly reminded of that. To make matters worse, my aunt, who was an attendant in a nut hospital where the loonies were actually saner than she was, seemed to relish in doing a little Yuletide "F You" to me and my dad. You see, she always served lamb on Christmas. My father and I hated lamb. So, obviously, the courteous thing for my goofy aunt to do was make something smaller specifically for me and Dad to eat. Nope. She served the lamb and we were off to get McDonald's. I don't know what was more depressing. My dad and I ordering Christmas dinner through a drive-thru window. Or the poor slob on the other end that was taking the order. Regardless, I never totally comprehended how shitty that was until many years later. On one of my last NY Christmases, I was a free agent and was invited by the mother of my godchildren to have Christmas at her mother's house. I walked in and the first thing I saw was a big leg of lamb being carved on the kitchen counter. My heart sank, but I tried not to let it show. But, then, there was a Christmas miracle. In her thick German accent, my friend's mom turned to me. "Lenny, I remember a long time ago that you didn't eat lamb." She opened the oven door to reveal a small loin of pork. All for me. I gave her a big hug and almost cried. She had given me the smallest consideration that was so enormously huge to me. My own flash and blood hadn't even bothered to do that. As families evolve and fights start, our Christmas traditions morphed into the ether over the years. And, then, suddenly, without warning, you find yourself in a new one. Christmases in Los Angeles the past ten years. With good friends having a meal, opening some presents, and having a laugh or two. And, all through the house, not a creature was stirring. Not even a lamb. Dinner last night: Sausage parmagiana at Miceli's.