She told me how she, beginning at an early age, was responsible for seeing that all the candles on the tree were blown out before going to bed, so that the tree did not start a fire in the house. She said the candles were lit every evening after dinner, and burned for a couple of hours until everyone went to bed. My grandpa was the manager of the A&P grocery store, so he needed to go to bed early. She said they would decorate the tree with all kinds of little things that they had around the house.

I asked her about stockings, and she said they would each take one of their long black stockings that they wore every day and lay it over the back of a chair on Christmas Eve. In the morning there were candies and sometimes small toys in the toes. She said it wasn’t really a big deal. But she made it a big deal for us when she knitted everybody in the family their own decorated and personalized socks to hang by the hearth. She continued to do that for each grandchild as well.

Then she admitted that the thing that she remembered the most about Christmas was a “bad thing”. And as her story unfolded, so did my understanding of why Christmas was the way it was while my sis and I grew up. As she recalled the events, I could see immediately that she still carried immense pain from them after more than 90 years. I bet today she would be diagnosed with PTSD. Here is her story:

Little girls in those days at the turn of the 20th century were expected to keep their legs covered. They wore long black stockings during the summer, and then as the days got colder they wore full length tights. My mom had recently turned six when she got a new pair of tights not long before Christmas one year. As she tried them on for the first time in the bathroom one day she noticed that they were stretchy enough to reach over her head if she hooked her thumbs on each side and raised them as high as she could. She thought this was really a cute funny thing to do, so she put her dress back on and went to get her brothers to show them what she could do. She took them into the bathroom and took off her dress to show them. Of course, she was completely covered by her undergarments so she didn’t think it was improper to do that. But before she could show the boys her neat new trick they went running to their father to report that she had “undressed” in front of them. This set off a trail of events that left an indelible mark on her psyche. This is enough to think about for today, so I will stop here, and say the next installment of the story is “to be continued….”