OUR FAMILY'S LEGENDS (CONTINUED)

I always loved Nanny’s memories about times  when she was a girl…

The Millers were a poor and big family.  I have no idea what great grandfather John Miller did but I know he was a laborer and he was big and I took after him – according to my grandmother…He and I were just big.

One Christmas eve when all of my family were in bed waiting for Santa, Nanny and I were watching the midnight mass service on TV.  Nanny married a Catholic and my mother was christened Catholic – but Nanny nor she ever practice that faith – we were Methodists (mainly because we could walk to  the church).

I asked, “Nanny, what was Christmas like when you were growing up kid?”  She pause to gather her thoughts and then I knew she was back in Vineland.

“Well Calvin we were poor, we didn’t have a lot, but we got along.  My mother was French and my father was a German, Abot and Miller - so we had a little of both ways of celebrating and they made it the best  they could. 

On Christmas Eve I will always remember that father decorated the whole house in evergreen boughs that he cut from the nearby woods.  And I can still smell  them.  He made garlands of holly too.  Every doorway was an arch of green.  

My oldest brother’Charlie's job was to take a couple of the younger brothers and cut down our tree.  Old Tannenbaum - which my father remember and sung from the old country.  On Christmas eve we carefully fixed candles to the branches – no twinkling lights for us.  It's a wonder we never burned the place down.

We used tinsel saved from last year – not the plastic kind of today, it was metal and had a heavy feel.  Mother insisted that we put each strand on one by one – she always commented that some folks just toss hands full and that’s not the way to trim a tree.

   

We didn’t have a fireplace in our little company house, we  had a big wood stove in the kitchen that heated the whole  place.  We hung our socks on nails that night and hoped Santa would find them.  My mother assured us that he would come even though we didn’t have a chimney.

 

The next morning we would find oranges, apples and nuts in our socks – and one year we all got a big piece of  chocolate which was a wonderful. Toys were not in our budget many years but each Christmas I remember I would get a “new” dress – I was the lucky one as the boys, who ages were like steps, only had hand-me-downs.  We did look like a “ragtag” bunch going to school.  

My mother made my dresses – so “new” was an exaggeration.  Mostly mother would cut down one of her “old” ones and make a small one for me.  I had two dresses for the year for school and my brothers had one school shirt.  Mother washed our clothes every night when we went to bed.  (We all slept in one bedroom crowded with cots) and she hung them near the stove to dry for morning – sometimes I would put on a dress that was frozen!

 

But we never complained – we didn’t know there was anything better.  We just loved being.  Those were different times…so different than today.  For me, 82 Christmases have come and gone.  And I wonder where the time went so fast - I’m getting there Calvin…I’m getting there.

And now Calvin – it is time for our beds so Santa can come!”

That Christmas was her last visit and later that summer Ethel May joined her brothers who all went before her and I wonder if she has to drag a shovel tied to a rope so she doesn't get lost on a walk in the clouds.