Dorothy Wilhelm: Not all of family holiday traditions are worth keeping

I hated to visit my grandmother’s house, Christmas or not. Even if you made it over the river and through the woods, you still had a three-mile trek straight uphill to Grandma’s rural Oregon home. There was no electricity or plumbing and there seemed to be a variety of living things like spiders and bats in the corners of the attic where I slept.

Grandma, being incredibly old (about the age I am now), had a china vessel under her bed so that she didn’t have to attempt the half block walk to the outhouse in the middle of the night. Her wall was plastered with pictures of the saints for contemplation while she was thus occupied, but since I was young I was expected to make that walk outdoors cheerfully and bring water from the pump on the way back.

Before I get too sentimental about changing times, I’ve got to admit there are some Christmas traditions like those visits I just don’t miss.

I don’t miss codfish soup on Christmas Eve, and I don’t miss the unending line of visitors – aunts, uncles and cousins – who all seemed, unaccountably, to need to be kissed. “Give Aunt Manny and Aunt Vi a kiss now,” my mother would prompt, indicating people I didn’t even recognize.

Aunt Vi was OK. She was young and cute and fun. Aunt Manny wasn’t and she had a bristly mustache.

The newly arrived company quickly filled the preferred sleeping places. And if a bed already had three or four aunts sleeping in it, we smaller children had to sleep across the foot of the bed, dodging hard feet all through the night. So it’s fair to say I dreaded those trips to my grandmother’s house.

And to tell the truth, I was none too crazy about my grandmother either. I thought she smelled funny and I couldn’t understand her heavily accented English. She was given to singing loudly while hitting a tambourine with hip and elbow. Altogether, I thought she was the most embarrassing woman God ever put on this earth.

I really couldn’t see why I couldn’t have Christmas with just my Mom and Dad, especially since Santa Claus seemed to have a lot of trouble finding us even when we were home.

But at Christmastime, the family is very important, so I’d like to say that as years went on, I developed an admiration for my remarkable grandmother, as I learned how she had come from Italy to the tenements of Chicago, bringing 12 children and burying three along the way. But that didn’t happen.

It’s not always possible to like the people we’re supposed to love. But when my Uncle Lou came home from the Navy, he brought Grandma a monkey which she named Susie and carried on her shoulder. Grandma seemed a lot more interesting after that.

I do, however, miss thick Christmas catalogs, and the animated downtown window displays.

Stockings were different. You hung up any fairly clean sock to be filled with an orange at the toe, apple at the heel, a few nuts and hard candy, and maybe a candy cane or two. You had to be cautious putting your hand in. There was always the danger that some sibling or cousin, infused with Yuletide wit, would stuff the stocking with rabbit droppings in the hope they’d be mistaken for jelly beans. Sometimes it worked.

I miss the wonderful gifts from department store Santas, not those pathetic candy canes they give kids today. I stood in line twice the year Montgomery Ward gave away the first editions of Robert May’s poem “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.” I wish I’d kept the books.

When I left my little grandson after a visit last fall, I said, “I’ll try to come back for Christmas.” He threw his arm across his eyes in a world-weary gesture. “Oh, I hope not. Too many people. I’d like just one Christmas just with my own family.”

Ah. Surprised at first, I remembered the unending line of aunts and cousins. Tradition is what you make it after all.

“I’ll come in the spring instead,” I said, “and maybe I’ll bring a monkey.”

Dorothy Wilhelm is a professional speaker and humorist. See pictures and learn more about Dorothy’s holidays in her blog at sixtyplusdatebook.com and downsizersclub.com.