Steve's Genealogy Blog

My sisters and I stood, just inside the front door of the house, watching our father as he hung the decorations on the front porch.

The wind gusted and tried to snatch away the aluminum garland Dad was trying to affix to the eaves of the porch. The storm door shook from the force of the wind. We shivered. Even though the storm door was closed, cold air still found its way around the edges of the door and into the house, something that wouldn’t happen once Dad finished his work outside and closed both the main door and the storm door.

The three of us huddled closer to the front hall radiator which had just started its knock knock knocking, our clue that the furnace had come on and hot water would be circulating through the pipes.

With the aluminum garland finally in place, its silver and green leaves rustling in the wind, we watched as Dad reached for the lights. The bulbs were huge! Nowhere near as big as a regular light bulb, but much bigger than the bulbs on the tree or the yellow bulbs of the electric candelabra in the windows. We watched in excitement as Dad replaced the bulb in the front porch light with a device that converted the screw socket to a plug socket. He plugged the strand of lights into the socket and… nothing.

Dad grunted.

“A bulb is burned out!” he called to us. “I’ll have to figure out which one it is!”

“Hurry!” we called back. “We can’t wait!” My younger sister hopped back and forth from one foot to another in her excitement.

Dad selected a new bulb from the box and replaced the first bulb. Still nothing. He continued on down the strand of lights until, finally, the whole string lit up with reds and greens and blues and yellows.

“Hooray!” we shouted, almost giddy with holiday excitement.

Dad pulled the ladder over to the corner of the porch closest to the electric socket and began securing lights to the hooks already holding the garland in place. As he continued around the three sides of the porch, the sun began to set, making the lights seem to burn even more brightly. The aluminum leaves of the garland reflected the light and made it seem as if many more bulbs were in place than really were. The wind blew through the garland, making a rustling noise and causing glints of reflected light to dance across the floor of the porch like winter fireflies.

Dad finished his job just as the sun set completely. The garland was in place and all the lights were burning brightly. He picked up the extra bulbs and the empty box that had once held the strings of lights. He opened the storm door. The wind blew in.

“Brrrr!” We all shivered, and Dad closed the storm door firmly behind him. “Now, let’s see if it all works.”

He flicked the switch to the front porch light and the lights went out. Another flick and the lights came back on. I thought my Dad was a genius for connecting the lights so we could turn them on and off with a switch from inside the house.

“Boy, Daddy! You sure know how to do everything!” I exclaimed.

“OK! I’m going to take the ladder around back and put it in the cellar. You kids close the doors behind me and I’ll meet you in the kitchen. I think I’m ready for a nice hot cuppa coffee!” he said in reply.

Dad opened the storm door once again, picked up the ladder, and headed around the house to the south. My sisters and I closed and latched the storm door, and then we closed the heavy front door. The cover to the mail slot in the door rattled as we pushed the door closed.

I peeked through the front blinds at the lights, and then I flicked the light switch off. Then on. Then off again. Then on again.

“Just leave them on, Stephen!” my older sister demanded, exasperated. With that, both of my sisters turned and headed to the kitchen.

Flick – Off. Flick – On. Flick – Off. Flick – On.

“STEPHEN!” 

I ran to catch up with my sisters.

Written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories – Day 5.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

As far back as I can remember, my family always sent Christmas cards to friends and relatives. My mother wrote the Christmas cards herself, a job that took several days since she hand-wrote a personal message to each recipient. The cards themselves were usually from a box of assorted holiday cards purchased from Woolworth’s; we never sent out photo cards or even cards preprinted with our names.

When we were young, my sisters and I had little interest in most of the mail our family received throughout the year with the exception of holiday cards addressed specifically to us. Those cards, sent at birthdays, Easter, and Christmas, were usually from our grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and sometimes included a gift of cash which went promptly into our bank accounts.

Christmas cards were different from the other cards we received. Christmas cards were addressed to the whole family, and were from family friends, neighbors, and relatives, many of whom we hadn’t heard from since the previous Christmas. I marveled at the designs – it seemed that every one was different. Some were winter scenes right out of Currier and Ives, some were nativity scenes or pictures of angels, some were incredibly opulent with gold or silver trim . 

For a number of years, my parents taped the Christmas cards to the door frames in their apartments with holiday adhesive tape upon which was written “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”. The tape was further decorated with pictures of elves, holly, and other holiday images. This tape was quite special, and I haven’t seen a similar type of tape since. I suppose that the closest equivalent to this tape today would be holiday stickers.

I was fascinated by this tape but, by the time I could appreciate it, my parents had very little left and no idea of where to find more.

Several years ago, I inherited the collection of family photographs and negatives, most of which are still in remarkable condition. In sorting through the photos, I found several old photo Christmas cards from relatives – you know the type – they’re the cards printed by photo shops with a family portrait and a holiday message.

Much to my delight, several of the photo cards still had pieces of the holiday tape attached. I carefully peeled the tape off the cards and taped them to a piece of paper as an effort to preserve the Christmas memories from my youth. Now, if I could only remember where I put that piece of paper…

Written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories – Day 4.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

Despite the fact that my maternal grandmother and her ancestors lived in Lithuania, my ancestry is 100% Polish. Even so, my family celebrated very few Polish traditions at Christmas.

Nonetheless, during the Christmas holidays we visited traditionally visited several relatives and shared holiday meals with them, the most memorable of which were the meals at my Grandmother Danko’s home.

Grandmother Danko did very little cooking herself, but my Aunt Helen would prepare the holiday meal at Grandmother’s house. Aunt Helen spent days cooking, preparing pierogi (dumplings) and gołąbki (stuffed cabbage, literally “little pigeons”) from scratch, and making sure there was enough szynka (ham), kiełbasa (sausage), kapusta (cabbage), ziemniaki (potatoes), buraki (beets) bułki (rolls), chłeb (bread), and masło (butter) to go around.

For my sisters and me, the best part of the holiday meal were the pierogi. Oh, how we loved pierogi! We could have eaten pierogi with every meal. We still could.

Aunt Helen made three kinds of pierogi: potato and cheese, sauerkraut, and cheese, but I only remember her making the cheese pierogi once. A few years ago, I asked her for the recipe. Like my mother’s recipes, Aunt Helen’s recipes resided only in her head. Nothing was written down. In fact, nothing really had precisely measured ingredients. Aunt Helen’s recipe for pierogi dough was something like, “add water to the dough until the consistency is right”.

Even then, I’m not sure Aunt Helen gave me all her secrets for making pierogi. I’ve made pierogi several times, but they don’t taste quite the same. I don’t make pierogi very often because their preparation is very time and labor intensive. But, maybe this Christmas…

Written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories – Day 3.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

My family had a wonderful collection of mercury glass ornaments when I was a child. My earliest memory of those ornaments dates back to when I was just 3 or 4 years old, when one of the ornaments broke. I was probably responsible.

But, the most amazing thing about the broken ornament was that, as bright and colorful as it was on the outside, the broken ornament revealed an interior even more wondrous. The interior surface was silvery and shiny, and it reflected my image, though distorted, like a mirror.

I was enthralled and amazed. My mother was horrified. There sat her toddler at the dining room table, playing with broken glass. She promptly took the broken shards away from from me and disposed of them in the trash.

To me, the ornaments themselves were wonderful works of art. The craftsmanship of these ornaments was far less than that of ornaments I’ve seen since, but these were much more than just colored glass globes. They were of many shapes and sizes: round, bell-shaped, and spindle-shaped. The exteriors seemed to glow with their own faint light, catching the illumination of the lights on the tree and sending that light on a new path to warm the room.

The surface of each ornament was further decorated with intricate, lacelike patterns of glitter, implying that these were priceless treasures, and not the common Christmas ornaments they really were.

When decorating the tree, my family carefully unwrapped each glass treasure from its cocoon of white tissue paper. My sisters and I could smell the slight musk of the basement still lingering on the paper as we unwrapped and hung the ornaments on the tree with wire hangers which, though carefully stored the previous year, seemed to have entangled themselves into a Gordian Knot, the result (no doubt) of the late-night revels in which the wire hangers must have engaged during the 11 months they spent in the basement.

The final touch to the tree was silver strands of tinsel which, my sisters and I were instructed, were to be carefully placed one by one on the branches of the tree. We faithfully complied. At least at first. But, as the evening drew on and the task of hanging tinsel began to lose its appeal, we would begin to get a little careless with the tinsel, especially on the higher branches a bit above our reach. These higher branches received great clumps of tinsel, thrown into the air from below, which we assumed would sort themselves into individual strands as they fell, thus saving us the trouble of separating the strands ourselves.

And it seemed that, with time, the strands of tinsel did just that. The great masses of tinsel disappeared and the individual pieces migrated to other branches as my parents clandestinely redistributed the tinsel when my sisters and I were out of sight.

Over the years, the traditions of decorating the Christmas tree changed as the ancient mercury glass ornaments broke and were replaced with newer ones, as tinsel was replaced with garland, and finally as my sisters and I grew older and moved away to lead our separate lives.

Written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories – Day 2.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko

When I was very young, my family had real trees in the house at Christmas. I remember the smell of spruce and fir, as much a part of Christmas as the presents, the decorations, and the tree itself.

Sometime in the mid 1960s, when I was about 10 years old, my parents decided to get with the times and buy an artificial Christmas tree. Not just any artificial Christmas tree, but an artificial tree with white needles.

The tree was similar to the more familiar aluminum Christmas trees. But it was white. And plastic.

I don’t remember if I was more confused or excited by the concept but, because the tree was plastic, we couldn’t use our usual Christmas lights on the tree. The tree simply would have melted with the heat of the bulbs. Instead, my parents bought a light wheel. The exciting part was that my parents asked me to assemble the light wheel, which I did with gusto, having something of an aptitude for taking things apart and putting them back together.

There really wasn’t much to assemble, but I did it by myself, and that’s what really mattered. The wheel included four colored panels, behind which burned a bright, white bulb . In my mind, I can still hear the whirring of the motor as the wheel turned, spraying an array of colors on the tree and around the room - now blue - now red - now green - now yellow.

We assembled the white plastic tree year after year until it was finally too old, broken, and sad looking to use any longer. Its replacement, again artificial, was a lifelike green tree, upon which we once again strung traditional lights.

But of all the Christmas trees my family had over the years, none brings back such vivid memories of Happy Christmases as the Great White Christmas Tree.

Written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories – Day 1.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen J. Danko