Andy Williams immortalized the lyrics in his holiday standard, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.’’
There’ll be scary ghost stories
And tales of the glories
Of Christmases long, long ago
Those words resonate for many of us at Christmas. We remember fondly the family and friends who have passed away, the joy of decorating doorways and arches with greeting cards and green-and-red paper chains, the parish parties after Midnight Mass when five families unwittingly brought the same cocktail wieners in crockpots.
We all have our favorite tales. I recall the first Saturday morning of Christmas break, home from Buffalo State College, warm and comfortable in my bed, when I was rousted for a frigid trek into the woods near Theresa. I was assigned by Father Christmas, Fran Holleran, to retrieve the prized blue spruce he had tagged two weeks earlier. He never settled for a Charlie Brown-type evergreen. His trees had to rival the display at Rockefeller Center.
Over the telephone, this seemed like an easy task. However, while I was taking final exams, a snowstorm decked the fields with 2 to 3 feet of snow, then a freezing rain provided a crusty coating. My friend Andy Colburn and I arrived to meet our quest – cut this green monster, laden with ice and snow, drag it to the road, then lift and tie it to the car. Call this The Abominable Snow Tree. We had to shovel out the trunk, which seemed as wide as a Redwood, before we sawed and sawed. Then we inched our way to the car. Heave it 2 feet, punch through the ice-covered snow, heave and repeat. It took us an hour.
Coach Holleran was supremely satisfied with his “perfect’’ 12-foot pyramid. Trouble was our house had 9-foot ceilings. The green monster barely squeezed through the front door, but we couldn’t stand it up in the living room. It seemed a shame to watch Coach prune this evergreen into a round bush that resembled a reject from Jenny Craig. I heard a good description years later – Frankenpine.
I’m like an infomercial. But wait, there’s more … Christmas stories:
ANGEL FACE
My daughter Katie landed a prize role in the annual children’s pageant on Christmas Eve.
As the lector read the story of Jesus’s birth, children dressed as shepherds paraded down the center aisle. Our teen-age daughter climbed atop a table in back of the altar and raised her arms to the heavens as the Angel Gabriel. Her characteristics of Down’s syndrome were as noticeable as the brilliance of her spotlight. People were touched.
One parishioner was moved enough by this inclusive affair to hand the pastor a check for $10,000. He used the money to buy a new creche and statuary.
A CHRISTMAS TERROR STORY
My wife Mary describes our son Liam as a “very literal’’ person. We felt our children needed to be in their own home on Christmas morning, but we’d visit my in-laws in Ohio after Christmas, then travel to Morristown to spend some time with my mother Eileen around the new year.
She also would invite her sisters to visit for this second Christmas, and despite my protests, they insisted on bringing Katie, Liam and Claire gifts.
Liam routinely was an adventure. Gift opening became a training exercise in social skills and decorum.
He opened one gift from an aunt and politely said, “No thank you.’’
He unwrapped another and crestfallenly uttered, “Oh, clothes.’’
One aunt gave him a puzzle and he had a meltdown. “The box says ages 2-4 and I’m 5!’’
As my Aunt Helen Murphy said: “We lived in fear of Liam.’’
CHRISTMAS EVE TREE CAPER
When Mary and I led Pre-Cana preparations for our church, we often referenced John and Ann Byrne as a selfless example of a devoted marriage. Ann had heart issues, compromised vision and lost a foot, all because of her diabetes. John, an ardent parish volunteer, was tireless in attending to her needs.
Before their marriage, John was The Wild Rover/Irishman. He had a fondness for a pint after he returned from Vietnam.
On Christmas Eve, his mother handed him some cash to buy a fresh Christmas tree. Off he went with his best friend, also a Vietnam vet, but they didn’t go directly to the tree lot. They stopped for a beverage or two. As the afternoon passed, they were ossified, Irish slang for drunk.
“It was dark by now,’’ John once told me. “We said, ‘Jaysus, we need to get a tree.’ But we had run out of money.’’
So they drove to a new housing development where some of the homes were completed but not occupied. They found a suitable evergreen in one front yard and cut it. Imagine that homeowner’s surprise at finding a 3-foot high stump on his front lawn?
What a sight they must have been. Two drunk guys in a convertible, top down, a Christmas tree in the back seat, in the midst of a snowstorm on the expressway. It’s a miracle they weren’t pulled over by police.
Merry Christmas. Hope you are building your own memories.
Morristown native Jim Holleran is a retired teacher and sports editor from Rochester. Reach him at jimholleran29@gmail.com or view past columns under “Reflections of River Rat’’ at https://hollerangetsitwrite.com/blog/
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