RVing web sites
Park Our House!
A column by Fran
Crawford
Published in The Territorial Dispatch
December 20, 1999
Christmas is a great time for remembering.
Christmas is a great time for remembering all the fun things that happened throughout the year as well as all Christmases past. And this year there seems to be a push to remember, not only the year that has gone by, but the century and even the millennium.
But, hey, the century and millennium aren't over until we get through with the year 2000 so we can stick to the subject of Christmas. There'll be plenty of time to talk about ancient history next year... in fact there's even an extra day next year because it's Leap Year.
If you haven't driven around in the evening and checked out the decorated houses all over the area you are really missing something. It seems that folks have gone all out decorating with lights this year.
Decorations have come a long way since I was a youngster. My dad was an artist and he made a Santa, sleigh and a reindeer (with a black nose... this was pre-Rudolph) cut from sheets of wood and painted. They always went up on the porch roof and were lit up by regular lightbulbs.
In the windows we had those electric candles that had six or eight on a base and used those big sized Christmas lights. In those days they weren't 'big sized' so much as the only size available.
That is all that was put up early... the candles and life-sized cut-outs. When my brother, sister and I went to bed Christmas Eve, after coming home from church where Dad played Santa, for the Sunday School party, the living-room was normal.
When we came down in the morning Christmas had 'suddenly' arrived. A third of the living room was covered with an eighteen inch high platform with the Christmas tree in the middle and a Lionel train running in a big oval around a village. The streets were lined with lit up houses and a railroad station proclaimed 'Jimtown' (named for my brother) for the tiny passengers arriving and departing by rail.
When we were younger we were told that Santa brought the whole set-up. As we got older we realized that our parents spent the whole night putting it together so we could have a Merry Christmas.
I was reminded of this years later when I was just finishing up wrapping gifts and putting together toys 'from Santa'. Dawn, hushed by new fallen snow, was breaking over Topeka. One of my youngsters stopped by the living room on his way to the bathroom.
"Mom!" he cried out. "You promised you wouldn't get up and open gifts before we woke up!!"
A couple of years later he brought a friend home after school and was showing him around the house. It was just before Christmas and the reason for the 'house tour' dawned on me when I heard him say to his buddy "And now I'll show you my mother's closet!"
But that was all just past mid-century and times have changed. Christmas light bulbs are smaller, and they blink off and on in patterns, or at random.
Christmas trees are grown on farms and these days all are perfectly shaped. It's no longer a challenge to buy a 'Charlie Brown' tree to take home and make look beautiful despite a crooked trunk and one flat side.
And now there is internet shopping!
Christmas has come a long way in the last century, let alone in a millennium. And we still have a year to go. It's hard to imagine what else can change... but something will.
Have a Happy Holiday and remember... if someone gives you the fruit cake before Christmas hurry up and mail it out to someone else. After Christmas you have to keep it until next year. It's the fruit cake rule!
-- Fran Crawford © 1999