Steve’s Genealogy Blog

I asked my father and sisters what we did for Christmas Eve when we were young but, oddly enough, none of us remembered the same things.

While my family can’t really agree how we spent Christmas Eve when we were young, I remember that we did have a few Christmas Eve rituals.

• We almost always spent the day at home.
• There were preparations for Santa’s arrival. A plate of cookies and a glass of milk, and even sometimes a few carrots for the reindeer.
• There were preparations for Christmas Day. My mother would start Christmas dinner, at least whatever she could do in advance. Christmas dinner was either ham or turkey (my preference was turkey).
• If snow fell on Christmas Eve, we would shovel the walk, brush the snow off the car, and sweep off the porches.
• And, when we were old enough to attend Midnight Mass, we would get dressed in our best clothes and head off to church.

Written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - Day 24.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

I found today’s topic for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories,  Christmas Sweetheart Memories, a bit difficult to write.

I’ll just say that this gift from a sweetheart of long ago tends to dig up thoughts of the Ghost of Christmas Past.

Written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - Day 23.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

Living in Albany, New York, I always wished for a White Christmas.

In 1966, though, chances of that happening were looking a bit bleak. We hadn’t received more than a dusting of snow until 3.5 inches fell on December 14. But, even that didn’t last. On December 17 and 18, temperatures crept into the 40s, and all the snow melted.

Finally, Christmas Eve arrived. With it came snow.

My sisters and I were ecstatic. We would have a White Christmas after all!

On Christmas Eve, 13 inches of snow fell at our house. Several times during evening, my older sister and I went out with Dad to shovel the snow from the sidewalks and brush the accumulation off the car. Our younger sister helped Mom sweep the snow from the porches and stairs.

The snow continued through the night, and another 5.3 inches fell on Christmas Day. We woke to a wonderful, largely unspoiled blanket of snow on Christmas morning. A full foot and a half of Christmas snow!

We wiped away the delicate patterns of frost on the windows and gazed at the winter scene outside. Every branch of every tree was covered with snow, and each fencepost was topped with a clean, white cap.

We went outside to once again clear the snow from the walks and from the car. The snow muted the sounds around us. Even the snowplows on Allen Street seemed to move quietly as they worked to clear the snow.

From time to time a mound of snow, its weight too ponderous to support itself, would fall from a branch and fall with a plop! onto the ground below.

Winter birds hopped through the new snow, leaving delicate tracks behind them as they wandered about on their never-ending quest to find something to eat. In the garden, bright red rose hips peeked out here and there from their white cocoon.

Back inside, in the warmth of the house, we gathered by the Christmas tree. Mom turned on the radio and the sounds of carols filled the house. We opened our gifts, reveling in our own joys and those of the rest of the family, and we marveled at the beauty of Christmas.

Written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - Day 22.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

“All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth” was written by Donald Yetter Gardner in 1944.

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth,
My two front teeth, see my two front teeth.
Gee, if I could only have my two front teeth,
Then I could wish you “Merry Christmas.”

“I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”, written by Tommie Connor in 1952.

I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus,
Underneath the mistletoe last night.
She didn’t see me creep
Down the stairs to have a peep.
She thought that I was tucked up in my bedroom fast asleep.

These songs were two of my favorites when I was young. During the Christmas holidays, our house was always filled with music, either from the radio or from the phonograph. One of the biggest thrills for our family was when my parents bought a stereo Hi-Fi, upon which we could stack many record albums, and let them play automatically in succession for hours. When the “A” sides of the albums had all played, we could just turn the stack over and listen to the “B” sides.

In 1958, “The Chipmunk Song” was written. Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. wrote the song and performed the voices of David Seville and all three chipmunks, Alvin, Simon, and Theodore.

Christmas, Christmas time is near,
Time for toys and time for cheer,
We’ve been good, but we can’t last,
Hurry Christmas, hurry fast.

My father had purchased the album “Christmas with the Chipmunks” and my family listened to the album over and over. My sister discovered that, if she used her finger to slow the turntable, she could clearly tell that the voices of the chipmunks were the same as the voice of David Seville, speeded up.

When I was in fourth grade, I bought my first “Peanuts” book, and over the next couple of years I bought several others. By 1967, when The Royal Guardsmen recorded ”Snoopy’s Christmas”, my whole family was familiar with the tales of Snoopy and the Red Baron.

Was the night before Christmas, 40 below,
When Snoopy went up in search of his foe.
He spied the Red Baron, fiercely they fought,
With ice on his wings, Snoopy knew he was caught.

My family owned a number of other Christmas recordings and we listened to all the standards. Today, Christmas songs bring back special memories of my youth, when absolutely nothing could compare with the excitement and joy of Christmas.

Written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - Day 21.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

My family never talked much about deceased relatives around the holidays.

That changed in 1980 when my mother died.

Christmas 1980 was not a particularly happy occasion for us. I flew back home from Oregon where I attending graduate school. My father, my sisters, and I tried to cook a turkey for Christmas, a task our mother had always handled. Our efforts were somewhat less than successful. We exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve somewhat joylessly. We all felt empty.

We visited Mom’s grave and I saw her headstone for the first time. My sister had selected an epitaph that was simple and sweet:

Sorrow is not forever. Love is.

Mom had been buried in a new section of Our Lady of Angels Cemetery and the area bore the signs of the recently deceased. Many of the graves still bore no headstone. The earth above the many of the graves was still rough, not having had enough time to settle into a level field of grass. The tracks of the bereaved criss-crossed in the light dusting of snow, revealing that nearly every grave in the section had been visited in the few days previous.

For years afterward, it was hard for me to return to our family home without seeing persistent signs of Mom’s presence in the house and in the garden.

And, now, more than 27 years after Mom’s death, our family is selling the house. The sale should close around Christmas.

Written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - Day 20.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko 

On Christmas Eve, my sisters and I would unwillingly go to bed, urged by the television newscasts reporting the sighting of Santa Claus over some state or province. Fearful that Santa would pass us by if he came to our house only to find us still awake, we allowed ourselves to be tucked in. Once securely in bed, we nodded off quickly, exhausted from the thrills of Christmas.

On Christmas morning, we found piles of presents under the tree. Colorfully wrapped gifts with bright ribbons and bows dazzled our eyes and thrilled us to no end.  Where are mine? Here, this one’s for you. How come Dad only got socks?

Clearly the gifts were from Santa. Our parents never went Christmas shopping and never wrapped presents.

As I grew older, after I learned that the gifts were from our parents and not from Santa, I sometimes wondered when my parents went Christmas shopping and marveled at the fact that they could buy and wrap Christmas presents without my sisters and me knowing anything about it. This was the Great Christmas Shopping Mystery.

Our parents never left my sisters and me alone. They rarely hired a sitter. So, when did they do the Christmas shopping?

While we were toddlers, our parents took us Christmas shopping with them. We were thrilled to wander the aisles of toys and grew impatient when our parents would linger in the clothes aisles. While one parent kept a watchful eye on us, I suppose that the other would buy our presents and clandestinely store the gifts in the trunk of the car. There were times when the entire family would go shopping together during the holiday season and return home with apparently nothing but a box of chocolate covered cherries and a package of ribbon candy.

As we grew older, this trick would still have worked. But, by this time, Mom worked from home and would have had no difficulty getting away for a few hours to shop and wrap presents while my sisters and I were at school. Remembering how efficient and responsible our mother was, her Christmas shopping was probably completed weeks before Christmas.

But, if she had purchased our gifts so far in advance, where did she hide them? The attic? The basement? Under our parents’ bed?

One year, we found out when my younger sister “accidently” found the Christmas presents one year, hidden in the front hall closet, just off the dining room. Usually, that closet held nothing but my parents’ coats and some clothing. Exactly what my sister was doing in the front hall closet when she found the presents was somewhat suspect.

Nonetheless, we feigned surprise when we opened our gifts on Christmas morning. Indeed, we had not found all the gifts, so our mock wonder was required for only those few gifts we had seen, and even those gifts we had discovered were delightful to finally receive.

Written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - Day 19.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

“Mom, can we get Christmas stockings?” my sisters and I begged.

There, in the store, was a woman displaying fuzzy red stockings with white trim. She asked her customers how they wanted their stockings personalized and then she carefully applied a string of glue to form the name. Finally, she sprinkled a mixture of shiny red, green, gold, silver, and blue glitter over the glue, shook off the excess, and displayed the finished stocking.

“Can we… can we?” we asked again, insistent.

Our mother consented.

We proudly carried our stockings home, each one emblazoned with our own name, ready to hang them over the fireplace for Santa to fill with Christmas gifts and goodies.

The only problem, we realized, was that we did not have a fireplace.

“Where do we hang our stockings?” we wondered.

We pondered this quandary for a moment.

“How about the radiator?” I finally offered, nodding towards the hot water radiator in the front hall. The radiator may not be a fireplace, but it was hot like a fireplace. The logic was incontrovertible.

“That’s silly,” my sisters pointed out. “Santa doesn’t come down the radiator.”

And, then, it dawned on us. If Santa came down the chimney, and our chimney connected to the furnace in the basement, did Santa come in through the furnace?

“No,” my mother told us. “He just leaves the presents in a box on the front porch and rings the doorbell. Your father and I get the presents from the front porch and put them under the tree.”

“Ohhhhh!” my sisters and I said in complete understanding. That explained a lot. Who would be foolish enough to think Santa would come in the house through the furnace?

“You may hang your stockings on the front hall radiator,” my mother said.

And so we did.

Come Christmas morning, we didn’t find anything in our stockings. We tried to put something in them ourselves, but the stockings just fell down with the weight. After all, the stockings were just attached to the radiator with scotch tape.

Written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - Day 18.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

Growing up Catholic, I attended mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation at the Church of St. Vincent de Paul in Albany, New York. The church was within walking distance of both of the houses in which my family lived since I was born.

The Christmas season was a special occasion in our church, and I especially enjoyed seeing the nativity scene in the church. The figures in the crèche seemed enormous to me, and awe-inspiring in the grandeur.

When my sisters and I were very young, we would attend services on Christmas Day, after being wrenched away from the gifts left by Santa. On Christmas day, the choir sang carols with which we were familiar, and we lustily sang along.

As we grew older, we asked to attend Midnight Mass, a request met with some skepticism by our parents who thought we’d just fall asleep during the service. Falling asleep proved not to be a problem, as often as not we ended up standing through the service, having arrived too late to secure seats in a pew.

Attending Midnight Mass provided benefits, however. The midnight service was much more elaborate than the services on Christmas day. There was a procession. There was incense. There were many more candles than we normally saw at church. And, upon returning home, my sisters and I were each allowed to open one Christmas present before we went to sleep, an opportunity not available to us before we started attending Midnight Mass.

Some years later, perhaps when I was in about fourth through eighth grades, I was an altar boy and was able to participate in the Christmas services directly. For Midnight Mass, quite a few of the altar boys assisted, some laying out the vestments for the priests, some preparing the wine, water, and hosts, some preparing the thurible and incense, some lighting the candles.

As an altar boy, my favorite job was as thurifer. I would empty the ashes from the thurible, fill the incense boat, place a round piece of charcoal in the thurible, and light the charcoal. The charcoal, itself, amazed me. It was laced with gunpowder which allowed the charcoal to light quickly without using flammible liquids. The top of the charcoal had ridges in a star shape and, when lit, the charcoal would begin to spark, first along the star ridges, then into the body of the charcoal, until the entire charcoal was glowing red.

At the appropriate point in the service, I would carry the thurible to the priest. Another alter boy would carry the boat of incense, which the priest would bless. I would raise the lid of the thurible and the priest, using an elaborately decorated spoon, would sprinkle incense on the now-glowing charcoal. I would then lower the lid onto the base and pass the smoking thurible to the priest, who would proceed to cense the altar, the nativity scene, the book of the Gospel, and the congregation.

Returning home after the service, my mother remarked that I smelled of incense. I didn’t mind. I rather liked the smell.

Written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - Day 17.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

Sister Marie DeLourdes finished her list of the characters in the first grade Christmas pageant and stepped back from the blackboard.

“Students, these are the roles in the Christmas pageant that we need to fill. We’ll go down the list, one by one, and I’d like you to nominate someone in the class who you think would do a good job in the role.”

She used her pointer to direct our eyes to the first name on the list. The Virgin Mary.

Hands flew into the air as several students offered their suggestions for the person who should play the Virgin Mary. And then we voted.

Sister Marie DeLourdes continued on down the list. Finally she reached the character of the Shepherd Chief. I raised my hand to nominate my friend Lance for the role. Lance also had his hand in the air. Sister Marie DeLourdes called on Lance first.

“I suggest Steve Danko,” he said.

“Very good,” Sister said as she wrote my name on the board. “Would anyone else like to nominate someone?”

I did not raise my hand again. After all, it would seem strange for Lance to nominate me and then for me to nominate him for the same role.

“If there are no more suggestions, then Stephen Danko will play the role of the Shepherd Chief,” Sister Marie DeLourdes declared.

She then handed out scripts to each student who would participate in the pageant. My script had all the lines for the Shepherd Chief marked with a star.

I brought my script home with and showed my mother. She looked over the script, congratulated me for winning the role, and then the work began.

For days afterward, in the evenings before I went to bed, my mother and I rehearsed the lines together in the kitchen. I knew my lines perfectly and was anxious for the time I would recite them in the pageant. My mother made the Shepherd Chief’s costume as described in the script: a bathrobe and a stick for a shepherd’s crook. I was ready.

Then, on December 12, my mother called me over to her and asked, “Stephen, how long have you had these spots on your face?”

“What spots?” I asked.

And then, just a week before the pageant, my mother diagnosed that I had the Chicken Pox.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t go to school and you can’t be in the Christmas pageant,” my mother told me.

I was miserable. Moreover, I was worried.

“But, I have to go to school and be in the Christmas pageant,” I protested. “Who will play the Shepherd Chief? How can they put on the pageant without the Shepherd Chief? Nobody else knows the lines! They’re depending on me!”"

My mother called the school to inform Sister Marie DeLourdes of the sad situation. We discovered that I was not the only student in the class with Chicken Pox. Sister Marie DeLourdes had had to recast several of the roles in the pageant. Someone else would be the Shepherd Chief.

Despondent, but relieved that the pageant wouldn’t have to be cancelled because of me, I accepted the fact that I would have to stay home.

My chance to appear on the stage would have to wait for another time.

Written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - Day 16. 

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

My earliest recollection of Christmas is from when I was just 4 or 5 years old.

We lived on Park Avenue in Albany, New York, in a house owned by my uncle Jack. We rented the first floor flat in the house and my cousins lived upstairs.

Our Christmas tree was set up in the dining room and, under the tree, my father had set up a train on tracks that ran in a circle around the base of the tree. The dining room table had been pushed to one side to make room for the tree, and the table itself was dressed with a festive holiday tablecloth. The table was decked with special Christmas candleholders and candles decorated with holly leaves and berries. We never lit those candles, but used them again and again for many years.

On the buffet on the north wall of the dining room we set up a nativity set, first rolling out a layer of fiberglass angel hair sprinkled with glitter, and then setting the wooden stable and clay figures carefully in place. The figures, themselves, included the Baby Jesus in His manger, Mary, Joseph, the three Wise Men, a Shepherd, an Angel, a cow, a camel, and several sheep. A bulb burned inside the stable and illuminated a star cut in the front of the structure.

On one particular evening close to Christmas, my father brought out our Victrola and set it up on the floor in front of the tree. He brought out his 78s of Polka music, placed one of the brittle black discs on the machine, and set the needle on the disc.

We listened to the Beer Barrel Polka:

Roll out the barrel, we’ll have a barrel of fun,
Roll out the barrel, we’ve got the blues on the run,
Zing Boom Terrara,
Join in a glass of good cheer,
Now it’s time to roll the barrel,
For the gang’s all here!

We listened to the Tic Tock Polka:

Tic Tic Tic Tock goes the clock on the wall,
As we’re dancing the evening away.
Tic Tic Tic Tock Goes my heart with the clock,
Beating time while the music is gay.
Tic Tic Tic Tock is the rhythm that plays,
And I know it’ll make you feel blue.
Tic Tic Tic Tock goes my heart with the clock,
‘Cause they know I am dancing with you.

And we listened to the She’s Too Fat Polka:

Oh I don’t want her
You can have her
She’s too fat for me
She’s too fat for me
She’s too fat for me
Oh I don’t want her
You can have her
She’s too fat for me
She’s too fat
She’s too fat
She’s too fat for me

My father and I sat on the floor for what seemed like hours, listening to polka after polka.

Most of those old 78s are probably long gone, either broken or too badly scratched to be playable anymore. But the memories remain.

Written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - Day 15. 

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko