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Sunday Journal

No reds or greens, all is blue come Christmastime

By LINDA GUGGINO HUMPHERS
Published December 25, 2005

Depression hit my mother hard every Christmas, most severely during the 1960s. She'd start the season by having my father drag the artificial tree and decorations in from the carport utility room. The dusty boxes would sit in the living room for a couple of weeks, and eventually she'd tell me to put the whole thing together. "I just don't have the energy," she'd say.

From her spot on the couch, she'd critique my efforts: "You're throwing the tinsel on in clumps. Each strand has to be placed separately." "Why are you putting all the red ornaments in a ring around the top?" "I hate that chintzy star." I always thought a nice stiff drink might have made Christmas a lot merrier - my idea was that she should drink it - but a bottle of bourbon tended to last a year or two around our house. In any case, she'd always end the misery by saying brightly, "It looks beautiful. You've done a beautiful job. Thank you."

She'd spend a lot of time crying during the holidays, and a lot of time in bed. But she'd rally long enough to take me shopping for my presents, always clothes, always at Lerner's. We'd pick out armloads of things for me to try on, and we'd head to the dressing room, where she'd resume her critique posture. "Take that off. It's completely shapeless." "Not your color. Washes you out." "That's a winner."

She'd buy me a lot of clothes, enough to fill three or four big blue Lerner's bags. When we'd get home, she'd say, "Staple a bow on those bags and put them under the tree." It never occurred to me to argue with her about the dispirited treatment of my presents, or to whine to Father or my friends about our cold and cheerless Christmas. It all it seemed pretty much okay to me. Bows on bags was actually an improvement over the years that I had to wrap empty boxes so that when the neighbors reluctantly accepted her invitation for gluey eggnog and burnt refrigerator cookies they'd think we were normal and had surprises under the tree.

There was very little about the suburban ideal of Christmas that was a fit for my mother. She was a terrible baker, she thought Christmas carols were dreary and repetitive, and the forced march of gift-giving overwhelmed her.

Worst of all, she didn't want to spend every Christmas Eve with my father's raucous family in Tampa, with a dozen kids screaming and running through the little house, with Uncle Steve flashing huge - I mean huge - wads of dough at everybody who walked in, with Uncle Tony dragging out his toy microphone to give a running commentary on the chaos. My Sicilian grandmother, tougher than any prizefighter, spent the evening at the stove, robotically heaping platters with spaghetti and chicken, cursing anybody in her way.

One year my mother waged a campaign to spend Christmas Eve at home in St. Petersburg, but a posse of my father's brothers came to our house and asked him to step outside. They stood in the back yard talking in Sicilian for a long time and he finally capitulated. The crux of their argument had been, "this might be Mama's last Christmas." She lived, I believe, another 23 years, but by then the family festivities had been moved to Aunt Lily's house and my mother had long since given up the battle.

During all those years, especially in the 1960s, every Christmas morning she'd have a piteous cry, weeping buckets and shaking her head in despair. And then it was over. The day after Christmas she'd pop out of bed and open up her sewing machine. New Year's Eve was just six days away and she had to make a party dress, something long in black satin or green velvet, with over-the-elbow gloves to match.

She'd grow happier and happier, and by dusk on New Year's Day all signs of Christmas were packed away and my mother was back to her old self, humming Keely Smith songs as she danced behind her duster.

- Linda Guggino Humphers lives in Clearwater.

[Last modified December 23, 2005, 10:23:02]