Steve's Genealogy Blog

“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