The In-Between Christmas

The In-Between Christmas

The Christmas memories of my childhood are as magical as Hallmark would have you believe.  Each eve and morning were filled with joy and wonder, and then the inevitable hissy fit when, after opening our new toys, we had to immediately set them aside to attend church.  

Once, when I was very young, we arrived home late after a Christmas Eve dinner with relatives in the city.  It might have been one of many harrowing drives through a snow storm, I’m not sure. For whatever reason, my parents announced that my brother and I could each open one gift under the tree.  It was magnificent.  I can’t recall which pretty box I opened, but we, kids, went to bed happy, and a family tradition was born. This is my earliest Christmas memory.

A stand-out memory as an adult, is the Christmas I realized I was an adult. (And, not a moment too soon, as I was in my mid 30’s.)  My future husband and I had bought a house in a lovely, leafy neighbourhood, taking possession in early December.  Christmas morning dawned with big, fat fluffy snow blanketing the world outside, while inside our tree twinkled with light reflected from the roaring blaze in our fireplace.  It didn’t matter what presents sat under the tree, that morning I was overwhelmed with comfort and joy.

It is a close second to my favourite Christmas of all time: 1973, the year I discovered rock and roll.

I had my heart set on Malibu Barbie. Rarely could our family afford the things advertised on television – in fact, we’d only recently acquired a television and indoor plumbing.  My joy on Christmas morning, as I caressed Malibu Barbie’s perfectly tanned plastic skin, was jolted when my father announced I was now far too old to be playing with dolls.  This was the last one I’d ever find under the tree, he told me.  I clutched her impossibly tiny, moveable waist and improbably large, impervious boobs to my chest, promising her that we would be friends forever and I would never stop playing with her.

Then I put her down on the piano bench and ignored her for days. The next gift I opened was a shiny new transistor radio!  My brother got a blue one and mine was orange, the hippest and coolest colour of the 70’s.  That little box changed my world.

Up until that time, our sound track was strictly gospel, and country and western.  My Dad was renowned for his rendition of Webb Pierce’s “In the Jail House Now.” He taught me all the words to Johnny Cash’s Burning Ring of Fire when I was three. And, he never failed to sing along when Jerry Reed came on the kitchen radio: “She got the gold mine. I got the shaft!”

With radios of our own, my brother and I would sing “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” with glee.  For hours I danced around my bedroom to tunes like “Brandy,” “Crocodile Rock,” and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.”  Was there ever anyone as soulful as Mick Jagger exhorting “Angie” not to weep? Roberta Flack “killed” me softly with her song, Gallery caused a “commotion in my soul” and the opening riff of “Long Cool Woman” made me feel sexy before I knew what sex was. 

1973 was the year I set my dolls aside and embraced the music that set my parent’s teeth on edge.  I was a child leaving childhood behind. Maturity was decades away. It was an “in-between” time, remembered vividly.  It was my “In-Between Christmas.”