We decorated it together
with home-made paper baskets filled with hard candy, raisins, and small butter cookies,
crepe paper garlands, small pretzels, an orange wrapped in fine tissue paper
coming all the way from Israel, a few apples dangling from a string, and 12 red
and green 3-inch candles clipped carefully away from overhanging branches that could
catch on fire.
Mom’s
hand-stitched table cloth made a convenient tree skirt. Two metal bars forged
by hand helped Dad nail the tree to the floor at the foot of the couch where I
slept in the living room that doubled as my bedroom.
I fell
asleep and woke up every morning setting my eyes on the scented tree. It lasted
two enchanted weeks before the dried needles fell all over the floor.
Christmas was lighting one
of the 12 candles for a few minutes every night, careful not to set the tree on
fire, basking in the soft glow while Daddy’s twinkly eyes were beaming with
pride that he made his family happy once more. We were rich with love and God’s
blessings.
Christmas was standing in
shorter lines for freshly baked bread, butter, milk, cooking oil, flour, sugar,
and the small pork roast mom always baked in the gas oven. Grandpa’s homemade
smoked sausages with pretzels toasted on the stove top were always on the menu.
Grandpa used to joke that life was so spectacularly good, even the dogs ran
around with pretzels on their tails. Pretzels were sold by big bags, hard and
stale, but toasting them on the stove made them taste just baked.
Christmas was Daddy opening
the ceremonial bottle of red wine freshly brewed that year by cousin Mircea
from Grandma Elizabeta’s vineyard grapes.
Christmas were the village
carolers in hand-sewn folk costumes coming door to door, trudging through 3 ft.
of snow, pulling a plough decorated with a real fir tree, singing traditional
songs and snapping their whips in spite of the Communist Party moratorium, forbidding
the observance of such religious traditions.
Christmas was sneaking at
midnight to the village Orthodox Church with aunt Leana, the singing deacon,
lighting candles and praying, surrounding the building when the crowd
overflowed its tiny confines into the yard and the cemetery. The cold chilled
us to the bone but the inside eventually warmed from our bodies, the candles,
and the excitement of prayers and closeness to God.
Christmas was eating with
my Mom and Dad, feeling full, happy, and loved in our tiny apartment, sometimes
sharing meals with family members who had traveled far to be with us. The spare
wool comforter aunt Nicuta had woven, a blanket, and set of sheets
painstakingly hand washed would make cozy beds on the floor for the tired
traveler – no fire place to light up, just the coils of steam heat which the
government generously made sufficiently hot during Christmas to make up for the
cold misery during the winter.
Christmas was peering in
the shop windows at the glass ornaments we could not afford but I wished I had.
They were made in Poland, whimsical fairy tale characters, no religious symbols
of any kind, they were “verboten.”
Every Christmas I longed
to have the same doll in the window at Omnia department store, dressed with miniature
detailed clothes, real curly hair, blue
eyes, and eyelashes. I never asked my Dad because Mom said it cost three months
of his salary. I still had my raggedy cloth doll aunt Stella, the village
seamstress, had made for me when I was two years old. When my first child was
born, Dad mailed her a large doll similar to the one I had longed for. The doll
was so big, it stayed in a corner untouched. My spoiled children had too many
other toys to play with and never appreciated the sacrifice their Granddad had
made in sending such a gift of love.
On Saint
Nicholas Day, December 6, I would put my boots outside the door, hoping that they
would be filled with candy in the morning and not coals. Grandpa had a wicked
sense of humor – he would sometimes fill one boot with switches and another
with candy and a chocolate bar. Chocolate was always in short supply and hard
to find.
Grandpa
never bought a blue spruce - we cut a fir tree from the woods. We were careful
not to cut down a tree that had bird nests in it. We decorated it with garlands
made from shiny and multi-colored construction paper. We cut strips, glued them
in an interlocking pattern and voila, we had our garland. For ornaments we used
walnuts and shriveled apples from his cellar, tied with Grandma’s red knitting
wool.
The warm
adobe style fireplace built from mud bricks mixed with straw cast a dancing
glow on the tree decked with tokens of
food, something our heathen Roman ancestors did during the celebration of
Saturnalia. On December 17, the polytheistic Romans celebrated Saturnus, the
god of seed and sowing, for an entire week. As Christians, we celebrated the
birth of Christ and the religious traditions in our Orthodox faith, in spite of
the communist regime forcing the transformation of Christmas into a secular
holiday.
On
Christmas Eve, after we ate Grandma’s traditional Christmas supper, roasted
pork, sarmale (stuffed cabbage rolls with ground meat and rice), and mamaliga
(corn mush with butter cooked in a cast iron pot), we went to the midnight
service at the Orthodox Church not far from her house. Sometimes it was a
sloshy trek and other times it was icy and slippery. If we got lucky, a heavy
snow would turn our walk into a winter wonderland with dancing snowflakes
shining in the weak street lights. We had to bundle up well – the church was
not heated and we circled it three times during the procession with burning
candles in our hands. I always wore my flannel pajamas under many layers of
warm clothes. To this day, pajamas are my favorite garment – cozy and
comfortable, keeping my body warm.
When my
children were born, Christmas became a tradition of toys and happiness seen
through squeals of innocence and twinkly eyes when unwrapping a favorite game,
book, toy, stuffed animal, or bike. I taught my children to be charitable and
to share with other children who were less fortunate than we.
I
decorate my Douglas fir with beautiful lights and shiny ornaments now. My heart
fills with loving and longing memories of glowing Christmases past and of family
members lost who made our Christian traditions so special.
I hope and
pray that American Christmas traditions will be passed on to future generations
to light up the season of faith, family, and charity.
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