Celebrating Christmas in My Hometown-

A preview of my latest writing project

My Grandmother Vera with some of her grandsons.  My brother Terry is at the far right.  Photo: Newvine Personal Collection

My latest writing project is just that, a project.  I’ve combined two family memoirs plus about thirty pages of new stories from growing up in a small upstate New York village into one book.

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed sharing the stories of a close-knit family, relatives we could just drop in on at any time, friends who would do just about anything for another friend, and the store owners who somehow made a living from serving and selling the things all of us needed to survive back in a more innocent era.

For a preview, here’s a look at a typical Christmas celebration in one of the greatest hometowns in America: Port Leyden.

The Santa years were particularly productive with many gifts under the Newvine Christmas tree.  In early December, Mom and Dad would take us to nearby Boonville where Santa kept up a small workshop in the village square.  

I was really impressed with Santa; he kept a notebook and would actually write down what we asked him for Christmas.  He’d make it clear that he was only good for up to three items and that after the limit was reached, we better turn to our parents and relatives for anything else.  He really had his act together.

An early Christmas morning with me and my older brother Terry.  Photo: Newvine Personal Collection

Holiday baking was a big deal at our house too.  Grandma Snyder would usually package up a box of her homemade Christmas goodies as a family gift to us. 

Mom would jump into the game about a week before the holiday and create some treats of her own. As Grandma Snyder stopped baking in her later years, more of the holiday kitchen duties fell to Mom.  She took that responsibility seriously.

Christmas rituals included Mass either on Christmas Day or as we got older: Midnight Mass.  A typical Christmas Eve included holiday TV specials, eggnog, cookies, and the ceremonial opening of one gift. 

It wasn’t much of a ceremonial gift opening; usually, Mom would handpick the gift she wanted each of us to open on Christmas Eve.  Usually, the gift was an item of clothing that would “look just perfect” if worn that night to Midnight Mass.   

For us, Midnight Mass began around a quarter to twelve with the singing of Christmas carols along with the church choir. 

The Mass itself took about an hour.  The church was filled with holiday floral arrangements purchased by parishioners in memory of a loved one.  At least one year, I recall a picture-perfect Port Leyden snowfall as we all left the church. 

We’d go home after Mass and have a light snack of some holiday bread before turning in.

With Midnight Mass out of the way, we were free to sleep in on Christmas morning.  As a little boy, I would be among the first to get up.  As I grew older, I didn’t mind if we “got up when we got up.”

My brother Terry and sister Becky in a holiday photo from the late 1960s.  Photo: Newvine Personal Collection

Gift opening would be followed by breakfast with Dad doing the dishes for what’s believed to be the “only day of the year.”  I’m sure he would have done dishes other days of the year, but Mom never made an issue over whether he should help her out in the kitchen. 

She probably surmised he worked hard all year so that we could have this happy day among the other things we enjoyed in our household.  Still, it was amusingly strange to see my tough father with an apron on wiping dishes at the sink.

The ending ritual on Christmas day came around six pm. 

That was when Dad, sitting on the couch, would utter his annual “Christmas philosophy”.  It would go something like this: 

“Well, there you have it.  Another Christmas come and gone.  You work all year long.  You spend weeks shopping and wrapping gifts.  All for just a few minutes in the morning when everything is unwrapped.  Then it’s over for another year.”

It wasn’t Charles Dickens, but it was Dad. 

He wasn’t trying to rain on the parade, he was just observing the passing of the holiday.

Steve Newvine lives in Merced. 

His latest project A Bundle of Memories combines two memoirs (Growing Up, Upstate and Grown Up, Going Home) with about thirty pages of new stories about his youth in a small northern New York State village. 

It is available exclusively with special pricing at Lulu.com