I wanted to post this as
my way of apologizing for not being able to come up with any
Christmas stories this year. I'd like to say it's solely because
I've been slammed at work, or that I lead a busy life, but that
wouldn't really be the truth. The truth is that I have been
just unable to get excited about the season. I couldn't seem
to catch the Christmas spirit. When I sat down today to think
about why, the following account began to pour out of me. As
I read it, then re-read it after writing it, the pleasant memories
I conjured seemed to warm my soul and magically drive away my
blues. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I've enjoyed
kicking around through the halls of my mind remembering it all.
Longing For Christmas Past
by Billy Burrew
I remember when I was ten years old, Christmas
seemed so much more intimate, so steeped in tradition and family.
There was going to church during the four weeks of advent, going
to see Santa at the local volunteer fire hall in Wilpen, PA
and all the events leading up to the big two day Christmas holiday
itself. I say two day holiday because I'm Slovak and Christmas
Eve was as much a holiday as Christmas Day. Christmas Eve began
early, and when I say early, I mean really EARLY!
Dad would wake me up before dawn, dress me
up warm and push me out the front door of the house so that
I could start the day off by fulfilling an old Slovak Christmas
Eve tradition. Let me explain the mythos behind the tradition
here so that you can gain a better understanding about why anyone
would wake a small child up throw some clothes on him and toss
him out of the house into the pre-dawn cold of Christmas Eve
morning.
Slovak tradition, or at least the tradition
that my family and most of my neighborhood prescribed to dictated
that Christmas Eve was a day of fasting and preparation for
Christmas. It is also an old Slovak tradition to invite travelers
into one's house at dinnertime on Christmas Eve and offer them
food, drink and comfort. The travelers, in turn, are to bless
the house and the people within with a simple blessing that
will bring luck and happiness in the coming year. Now, be it
through some odd Americanization of the original tradition or
just the lunacy of the old Slovak women in my neighborhood,
the concept of the original tradition changed slightly, adding
in a few cultural morays and sexist beliefs. The "new and
improved" tradition stood thus, "Young Slovak males
are to be awoken in the wee hours of Christmas Eve morning,
dressed and tossed outside into the cold where they are expected
to take on the role of the "traveler" traversing the
neighborhood knocking on the doors of their Slovak neighbors
(read as the aforementioned looney old Slovak ladies) and wishing
them a "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!"
And just so you don't think the tradition
couldn't get any more bizarre, please note the "Slovak
males" part of the above sentence. It's there for a reason,
believe me. It's considered bad luck... REALLY bad luck according
to this tradition, for a woman to be the first person that comes
to your house on Christmas Eve. (I mean it's REALLY REALLY bad
luck!) Sound sexist? It is sexist, but hey, it's tradition!
My grandmother is famed to have screamed at my mother through
her kitchen window that she wouldn't let her in until a man
came to do the Christmas Eve wish.
Now, it's not as if there's no benefit in
this for the young Slovak males. The old ladies took this blessing
stuff seriously, and so they were more than happy to make with
the cash handouts after it was done. A speedy route of a neighborhood
like mine could net about $20 or $30, which, back in those days,
to a ten year old, was a pretty good haul.
The day went on fairly uneventfully after
that and my family would continue our fasting and preparing
for the Christmas Eve supper that was held at my Grandma's house.
Around about 4 or 5 PM, we'd all gather at her house and start
getting ready for the "meatless dinner" that was traditional
for a Slovak family Christmas Eve. The meal would consist of
fish, usually highly breaded baked crispy fish sticks that bore
absolutely no resemblance to fish since getting young kids to
eat fish is only slightly easier than teaching a herd of elephants
to pirouette. Also on the menu was pierogies, peas, stewed prunes,
mashed potatoes and a yummy brown gravy made with sauerkraut.
There would also be kolacky, a Slovak pastry roll that could
have different fillings such as ground walnuts, apricot, poppyseed,
prune butter or pineapple.
At the start of the meal, each family member
would be given a piece of Oplatki. Oplatki is a thin rectangle
of unleavened bread that can come in various pastel colors.
It usually is pressed into a mold on one side so that the side
is embossed with a intricate Christmas scene. The Oplatki is
served (with honey) at the beginning of the meal along with
a blessing. My grandmother would always do the blessing and
I think this, above all, was the main reason that she was much
beloved by all the dogs that we had owned. She would take some
of the food, usually a spoonful of peas and throw them over
her shoulder (no, I'm not kidding!) as the blessing or offering
for "the birds and the animals of the forest." Apparently,
our two dogs, Porky and Ebony qualified as "animals of
the forest" as they usually waited behind her like black
and tan shadows, sucking up the fallen food like little 4-legged
vacuum cleaners.
After dinner, we would go into Grandma's
living room and open presents. Now, there are Christmas purists
that say you should wait 'til Christmas Day to open presents,
but our family usually got "church clothes" for Christmas
and opening them early on Christmas Eve ensured that we'd be
wearing them later on for Midnight mass. After presents were
opened at Grandma's house, we'd head back to our house (we lived
next door to Grandma in those days.) and take naps so that we
would be awake and alert at midnight mass.
Around about 10 o'clock that night, Dad would
go off and start getting ready for mass. Mom would hustle us
into our rooms and get my sisters and I started on getting into
our clothes for church. About 11 o'clock, Dad would tell me
to go and get my Grandma and I would go and walk her down to
our house. We lived in Western PA and it was usually either
icy or snowy or both at Christmastime so I escorted her down
the walk between our two houses under the pretense that her
holding on to me would stop her from falling. (But let's face
facts, I was ten and, had she fallen, that old woman would certainly
have dragged me down with her.) Dad would go out and heat up
the car and we'd be heading off to St. Anne's Church in Wilpen,
PA, about a mile or so from our house in no time.
Now, a side note about St. Anne's Church.
St. Anne's is a beautiful little country Catholic church built
at the base of a very VERY steep hill. (I never realized how
steep it was until I was pallbearer at my Grandma's funeral
a few years ago. I thought I might be joining her in the grave
after nearly having a heart attack getting her casket to the
top of the hill where the church cemetery and her gravesite
lay.)
There's a nice sidewalk with two small flights
of steps that runs from the gravel parking lot to the back of
the church, where the doors to enter are located. During the
winter, especially on Christmas Eve, when we arrived thirty
minutes before mass, before anyone could come and salt this
sidewalk down, this trek was particuarly treacherous. I can
remember many times that I winded up on my butt after falling
on this slick stretch of concrete. We would have to arrive at
11:30 PM, a half hour early, so that grandma could say her rosary.
If ever you wanted Grandma really good and pissed at you, try
getting her to church without her allotted 30 minute rosary
and prayer time. She was definitely a woman who took her penitence
seriously.
The church was set up with long rows of pews
with a wide aisle in the middle. Women and young children sat
on the left, and men on the right. I dunno if this was tradition,
or just Grandpa's clever way of getting away from Grandma for
an hour or so. Since nearly all the old men and women sat separately,
I always just assumed it was yet another weird Slovak tradition.
I remember sitting next to my Grandma and listening to her and
Mary Miney, one of her many bingo buddies who also attended
our church, say the rosary. Those two old women were power prayers,
they could zoom through a rosary so fast that all you'd hear
were hisses from rapidly whispered S's of Hail Marys and Our
Fathers.
One Christmas Eve mass that I remember well,
my mother, who was Methodist and didn't usually come to our
church, was in attendance. The service started out with the
usual stuff. The priest came in swinging the frankincense burner
with such vigor that he often times came close to causing injury
to the people sitting near the aisle. The priest had started
off the mass and it was all going fairly well until communion
when someone in the choir loft decided it'd be a good time to
have a violin and voice rendition of Ave Maria. Apparently no
one had thought to tune the violin beforehand so it was off
pitch... and when I say off, it was WAY off pitch. In addition
to this, the violinist was apparently a novice or out of practice,
squeaking the bow every few notes or so.
As the squeaky off-key intro to the song
played, I began to giggle uncontrollably. Usually, a swift elbow
to the side from Grandma would have stopped my giggling. However,
that night I was sitting next to Mom and she was also trying
hard not to giggle over the squeaky, off-key playing. The choir
leader began to sing, off-key so that she would be in tune with
the squeaky off-key violin, and my mother my three sisters and
I dissolved into semi-silent laughter, hissing and shaking with
barely controlled mirth. My Grandmother was livid, glaring over
at us from the other side of the pew like she was hoping God
himself would come down and smite us.
Mass ended and we all got a nice lecture
from Grandma on the ride back to the house about not being "simple"
in the house of God. Apparently, I was always really good at
being simple. I'm sure that, unless my younger cousin Matthew
beat me out when she went and stayed with my uncle's family
after I graduated from college, my Grandma probably told me
I was simple more often than anyone else in my entire family.
After mass, we'd go home and head off to
bed. Christmas Day would see us getting up and having the big
Christmas dinner around two in the afternoon. After dinner,
we'd all laze around and watch television, nap or play with
our Christmas presents.
As I write this account and think back on
those happy memories, I find myself feeling somewhat sadly nostalgic
for those long ago days. I'm not naive enough to think that,
you know, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of
times" or anything, but I also can't help but mourn the
loss of the long-held traditions and routines my family had
back then. I can't help but be sad for the next generation of
the family who will never experience that facet of their heritage
because of my generation's loss of knowledge about or downright
indifference towards the old Slovak traditions we celebrated
when we were growing up.
As odd as it may seem, I know that if today
I were offered a million dollars cash or the chance to go back
in time, to be a ten year old kid again and re-live that one
Christmas, I would choose the latter without a second's hesitation.
To once more experience Christmas with my family, to once more
be awakened at the ass crack of dawn on Christmas Eve and tossed
out into the cold, to once more sit at Grandma's table at Christmas
Eve dinner and watch her throw peas over her shoulder, or to
once more take that hazardous trek to Midnight Mass at St. Anne's
and listen as those old women sped through their rosaries and
laugh with my mom and siblings at the awful squeaky violin and
off-key singing.
Yeah, that'd be worth a million bucks...
hell, I think it would be worth that and a whole lot more!
Merry Christmas & A Happy New
Years Everyone!
-Billy Burrew
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