Through the past brightly
Everywhere it’s Christmas, Everywhere it’s song. London, Paris, Rome and New York,
Tokyo, Hong Kong.
Oh, everywhere it’s Christmas,
And I’m off to join the cheer! Everywhere it’s Christmas, At the end of every year!
— The Beatles from “Everywhere It’s Christmas”
REMUS — Oyez! Oyez! Listen up. It’s time for my annual Christmas column, beloved the world over and as highly anticipated as the Coming of The Magi. Except in this case, it’s pronounced “Negi” (plural for Negus). God knows, I’m not a religious man (budup-bup), but as the Narrator proclaimed in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” so it’s also been said of me, ” He knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”
So it goes for the entire Family Negi, we’re Christmas-aholics. That said, my wife, Deborah is an even bigger freak for the Yuletide season than yours truly. I’m convinced she would listen to Christmas carols all year long, given the opportunity, especially if they’re sung by Burl Ives.
She puts up the tree, artificial these days but festive nonetheless, and does all the decorating around the house, indoors and out. She’s also someone I need to take great pains to hide her presents from. Should she discovers their whereabouts prior to Christmas morning, she’s been known to unwrap them in private, check them out and then carefully rewrap them. I’m not kidding. She’s incorrigible.
I’ve loved Christmas for as long as I can remember. And I can remember a LOT of Christmases. I couldn’t tell you where my truck keys are at the moment but I have a king-hell long-term memory. I have a couple isolated standout memories from when I was 2 (falling hands-first into a toilet with a faux black-marble seat was one). I can actually recall day-to-day life when I was four.
I had a gray, plastic record-player in those days, that folded up like a clam-shell. We lived in Oneonta, New York. My favorite record was Disney star, Fess Parker, singing “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” with “I Gave My Love a Cherry” on the B-side. Did I own a coonskin cap. Of course.
Next to that, though, were my Christmas records — Gene Autry singing “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snow Man” and the ones I loved most — two 45s on RCA, Bing Crosby, doing “Silent Night,” “White Christmas,” “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” It was warbling along to those records that I learned to sing.
The first Christmas I can recall in exquisite detail, and our first year in Syracuse, my parents gave me a complete Wyatt Earp outfit — black hat, white shirt, red paisley vest, string tie, pin-stripe pants, cowboy boots and a holster with two cap pistols. It was glorious.
My parents raised us on a claims adjuster’s modest salary but my mother was a budgeter extraordinaire. We always had a nice house, good clothes and plenty to eat. Somehow they managed to go all out at Christmas without plunging into debt. I’d wake at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning and rush into our living room where magic seemed to hang tangibly in the air like a golden mist.
We were a Catholic family. From kindergarten through third grade, I attended St. James Elementary on Syracuse’s south side where I was an altar boy. Christmas was a big deal faith-wise too. The Franciscans saw to that.
Having been an artist ever since I could hold a pencil, every Christmas from when I was 7 to 11 or 12, I would design my own Nativity diorama. I’d draw the Baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the main players, after which, I’d cut them out and stand them up. I’d paint a shoe box to look like a stable and fill it from the small bag of straw my mother would buy me at a hobby shop. Then I’d place it under our Scotch Pine Christmas tree, lie on my stomach and stare at it for hours.
what seemed like hours.
The river of time flows slowly when you’re 9 years old and waiting for Christmas Eve. Unlike today. I was 40 just a couple months ago. Now . . . I’m 70.
Ho-ho-ho. Merry Christmas. And so it went.