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| Source: Wikipedia One of the covers to the 1934 sheet music published by Leo Feist, Inc. Writters J. Fred Coots & Haven Gillespie |
Ah, the holidays are upon us. So special…so many memories.
Gosh, I’ve written so many Christmas columns over the years I sometimes worry that I’ll run out of ideas or unintentionally repeat something I’ve written in the past.
So, hoping readers will bear with me this December, I will share still another family Christmas memory I’m sure I’ve never recounted out of concern that it might offend someone in the extended family, although I can’t see how it could.
As background, we were Santa Claus people from the get-go. Oh sure, we paid proper respect for the real reason there is a Christmas, the birth of Christ. We were pretty good Lutherans, after all. But for those of us young enough to still believe in that other Christmas guy, St. Nicholas, that was the reason for all of the holiday excitement. Sorry, pastor.
That being the case, we had an elaborate ritual regarding the visit of Santa Claus and his eight tiny reindeer from the North Pole on Christmas Eve. None of our extended family had a fireplace for the Jolly Old Elf to slide down and distribute gifts while we slept. Our elders made up for that by having Santa — and the reindeer — show up in our front yards and on our porches on Christmas Eve shortly after the Christmas dinner (turkey/trimmings) dishes were done.
My mother, an accomplished pianist, would sit down at the piano and start playing an exuberant rendition of “Jingle Bells” and, lo and behold, as the notes were flying out of the piano, there would be a noise from the outside — the prancing and pawing of reindeer hoofs, actual sleigh bells jingling and a “ho, ho, ho” cried through a huge white beard?
This is what we little ones imagined at that moment. It was actually a suddenly-absent-from-the-group father, a bag full of gifts pushed through the door being tended by a mother, kids shunted aside and prevented from seeing the visitor, expressing delighted shock that Santa Claus himself had already arrived.
Here’s the story kids believed: Very busy that night, Santa didn’t make it to a lot of homes (with fireplaces) until much later, leaving gifts for children to discover under the decorated tree when they woke up (very early). But he had to start early in the evening after dark, with the likes of us.
There you have it. Gift-wrapped presents opened, Christmas wrappings strewn across the room, excitement all around, and that was pretty much it for another year as long as there were children who still believed.
It’s hard to say when children stop believing, but, of course, they do. My cousin Howard, a decade older than I, had crossed that line pretty early we’ve been told by way of a family story that has lasted for decades in the memory of some of us.
Howard and his parents, brother and sister, lived in a duplex with the children’s grandmother residing in one of the units. She was a Swedish immigrant, as were all of her aged friends.
According to family lore, one day in the holiday season a group of her friends, fluent in broken English, were coming to visit Howard’s grandmother and encountered the young lad languishing outside the house.
I’ll try a Swedish accent: “Vell Howard,” one of the visitors said, “are you looking FORward to a visit from SANta CLAus?”
“O for dumb,” responded Howard in plain English,
In my own family, we have been quoting Howard’s response to the Swedish grandmas for decades, not only at Christmas time but any time we commit something stupid, and who doesn’t occasionally?
Cousin Howard is long gone, but I’m sure he’d be surprised that part of his legacy is a brief youthful grinchy Christmastime quote shared today with thousands of newspaper readers, along with this writer’s wish for a happy holiday for all.
Back with you next year — 2026. Yikes! I was born in the 1930s.
Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.
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