Steve's Genealogy Blog

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

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