Holiday Magic

I have sold 27 books in a little over a week! Wow! I was counting on selling one, thinking I could guilt my sister into that at least. Please put a review on Amazon for me!

I hope everyone enjoys the book and finds its message of survival and strength empowering. It does get dark, but then, life gets dark. And, as in life, what is seen as an ending is often only the beginning. The message is that we can carry the patterns of the past with us, but we can move beyond them. We all have the incredible ability to reframe our history into the strengths we need.

But enough serious stuff, the book is just a book, and hopefully it will speak to its readers. In the spirit of the holiday season, another outtake from the book.

I can’t say for sure, but I have been told that Donna and I were the most cynical of the three siblings. Tubby probably believed in Santa Claus because the idea of a fat man bringing him presents to hoard appealed to his greedy childhood heart.

Mom said that Aunt Hazel and Uncle Erick took Donna as a small child to see Santa Claus in Wolf Lake. Not having children of their own, the couple doted on my sister. By the time I arrived, they were older and ready for the flood of nieces and nephews to stop. Before that time, though, they enjoyed raising Donna alongside Mom and Dad.

When Donna came home with the usual Wolf Lake Santa Claus present, Mom said Donna was laissez-faire about the entire incident.  Dumping out her brown paper sandwich bag of peanuts and hard candy, Donna sorted through for the random chocolates. 

“Did you see Santa?”

“Yeah,” Donna said.

“She didn’t say anything more about it, just stood there sorting her candy and peanuts. So, I asked her, Did Santa give you that? She didn’t stop; just said 'it was old Mr. Sorenson (the town mayor and chief municipal imbiber) in a Santa suit.  Santa Claus isn’t real, you know'.  Then she just picked up her candy and walked away.  What kind of kid doesn’t believe in Santa Claus?”

Because Donna ruined Santa Claus for Mom, my parents were determined that I believe in Santa Claus.  When I was three years old, Mom and Dad bought me a brand-new tricycle.  Probably the only mechanical item ever on that farm that was not used by anyone else before our ownership. I remember the tricycle, its shiny red body transporting me for miles on our gravel driveway and farmyard.  I don’t recall when it appeared on Christmas Eve, but I have heard the story.

“Your Dad and I wanted to surprise you with a present from Santa Claus, Mom told me.

“Your Dad and Tubby put that thing together, and we had Donna take you upstairs to her room.  She kept you busy playing.  Then Tubby yelled, ‘I think I hear Santa Claus!’ 

We tried to get you all excited about it, we were all acting as fools, ‘Santa was here, Santa was here.’  Donna brought you downstairs, and you just walked past the tree, looked over at it, and looked at us all standing there.

You announced, ‘Oh, a tricycle, I will have to ride that sometime,’ and walked into the kitchen.  That was it.  No Santa, no excitement.  You didn’t believe in Santa Claus either.  Last time we tried that.”

Following German tradition, we opened presents on Christmas Eve.  Afterwards, under Mom’s scrutiny, we folded up our Christmas paper and gathered up the bows. Everything was saved and reused except for Dad’s paper.  His opening involved shredding and tossing until he got to the present.

There were never many presents to open.  Dad and Mom would get something cheap from each of us kids as we got old enough to spend our hoarded nickels and dimes.  Mom and Dad didn’t spend the money to get presents for each other; they spent what they had on the kids.  There was never a pile of presents for us children, but somehow, there were always enough. 

One of my early childhood presents was a cowboy-and-Indian playset.  Plastic horses pulled a plastic wagon, and there were molded plastic figurines to wage war on each other.  In true Western trail-ride style, the playset came with a molded, hard-plastic yellow campfire. 

This fake campfire was fiendishly pointed in a triangular shape and somehow survived long after the horses, wagons, and figurines were gone.  The campfire continued to appear, hauntingly for years. 

The mystery of its reappearance was never solved, mainly because I denied vehemently playing with it and leaving it in “the middle of the goddamn living room to cripple somebody again”. 

The campfire mangled the foot of every family member at least a dozen times.  It fit into so many play scenarios that it was indispensable in my childhood.  It apparently was also easy to overlook when I had to pick up my toys. 

“Goddamn it, Pooch! Would be roared across the house as another victim hopped on one foot. 

“Throw that thing away.” Someone would yell back at the campfire victim.

Mom said, “If any of us are mangled beyond recognition in an accident, we can identify the body by the triangular campfire shape on the bottom of our feet!”

A child psychologist might have said I played with the campfire, then left it out to be stepped on, in a desperate plea for attention and importance. 

But we were poor, and as such, couldn’t afford a child psychologist.  Instead, I was accused of being too lazy to pick up my toys, which was true.

The miracle of the eternal campfire was that no one threw it away or into the woodstove.  When not disfiguring feet, it lived a solitary life in the junk drawer.  Finally, when we moved in 1972, the campfire was lost in the shuffle.

Christmas day dinner was at Aunt Hazel and Uncle Erick’s house.  Grandma Baumgart had passed away, so Hazel took over managing the mandatory family gatherings.  By consensus, the gatherings were slimmed down to holidays only.  It was a potluck affair, and the most popular was always the fresh lefse, buttered and sprinkled with sugar.  With a German father and an Irish/English mother, we didn’t get lefse at home. With our cousins, us kids ran around the living room stuffing our faces with lefse until our lips shone with butter and our chins sparkled with sugar.

Every year on the drive to Hazels, Tubby would make his announcement with great conviction.

“This year I’m gonna eat more than Aunt June!”

Tubby would hold back from the lefse appetizers, a trap he had fallen into before.  Closely following her, Tubby would take what Aunt June did from the myriad bowls and platters. 

Long after the rest of us were stretched out in the living room bemoaning our stuffed bellies, Tubby and Aunt June would remain at the table, “picking” at the food.

“There’s just a little bit of this, its not worth saving it, I got room” One of them would announce as the Aunties cleared the table.

“Always room for pie!” Tubby would cheer, helping himself and Aunt June to a slice.

It was the same every year, eventually Tubby would stagger to the living room and collapse on the floor.  His stomach stretched to the limit he would lie on the floor like an overturned turtle.  From the kitchen we would hear Aunt June:

“Here, I can finish that off, not worth putting it in another bowl, there’s not enough to save.”