Pick a Game, Any Game

The game closet in Cleveland was my favorite room in the house. It's door was about three feet high and it was situated under the staircase off the front hall. It was a cosy little room filled with our family games. It housed Funny Bones, Uncle Wiggly, Flinch and Rook, Chinese checkers, Shoot the Moon and Labyrinth. There was Old Maid, Concentration, Checkers and Go Fish. There were countless puzzles, many with 1,000 or more pieces.
I have always loved playing games with my family. With ten people in the Thompson house there was always someone to play with. On New Year's Eve I recall games of Risk and Monopoly that seemed to go on all night long. I could never last. Around the holidays there was always a puzzle out on the game table. I would sit and work at it for a while, usually aside Dad, and then come back to it in bits all week long.
I received my very own game of Sorry when I was about ten years old which my boys now play with. Although I never learned to play chess as a child, my boys taught me the rules as they learned the game during our travels in Europe.
In most recent years we have enjoyed going over to Mom and Dads to play Uno, Chickenfoot and Quiddler, although anytime we get together as family, any game will do. No visit from the cousins is complete without a night capped with the playing of games.

Christmas memories #4: Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve took forever to come for us kids, though I’m sure that it came quicker than desirable for Dad and Mom. After dinner we prepared for the Nativity. Although they adjusted over the years, the roles were reasonably fixed for quite awhile. We all knew that Kathleen would be Mary, Brad would be Joseph, and the cleanest doll in the house would be the baby. In later years Margaret and Martha took the part of Mary, and Jon and David tried their hand at Joseph. The littlest kids were usually the shepherds, wearing robes and towels on their heads. At least one year they tried to get Herman the cat to be their sheep. Doug was a dramatic and brooding Herod. I was the angel—probably because I had the speaking part memorized: “Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy…”. Dad was the narrator, but it seems that he doubled as a wiseman. Mom was the director and costume coordinator. She was probably the only one who actually “watched” the pageant, as everyone else was in it, but that only seems fair when she did most of the preparation for the play, as well as the rest of Christmas. It was her small compensation for a daunting task.

After the play we gathered around the Christmas tree, for “as the wisemen brought gifts to the baby Jesus, and Heavenly Father gave us his Son, so we give gifts to each other”. Mom and Dad usually specified the one gift we could open on Christmas Eve—often new pj’s. Although I was young, I remember showing off my new nightgown on one Christmas Eve in California, only to be surprised that everyone else’s pj’s matched my red and white candy-striped nightie. Taking our first gift of Christmas with us, we lined up according to age and marched upstairs singing “Holly Bows Are Arching”

What happened after we went to bed remains a mystery to this day, for although I have been the parent doing the last-minute Christmas Eve prep, mine has been for a family of five, not ten. I don’t know how it was done in one night, and then how Dad and Mom managed to wake up and function the next morning.

Christmas memories: Christmas morning

There was a family rule that no one could go downstairs without the rest of the family, and that we couldn’t wake Dad and Mom til 8:00 or maybe it was 8:30. Brad and David volunteered every year to relieve our anticipation by running down about 7:30 to check that Santa had actually come. I have no hard evidence, but I am pretty sure that several years they made an early run at 6:00 or so, but made it back up before the rest of us knew. When we finally convinced our bleary-eyed parents to roll out of bed, we again lined up to sing “Holly Bows”, and to march downstairs. I don’t think that any of us kids ever knew the real lyrics in their entirety, but mom did so we sang back-up. We marched into the living room to view Santa’s generosity. I can’t speak for the whole gang, but I never remember being disappointed at his gifts. The presents were lined up in order of age so no one would get mixed up about whose were whose. After we had admired each other’s goodies, we sat down for a breakfast that would fuel us for the fun ahead. It didn’t do us any good to say we weren’t hungry. Breakfast was a must.

When we finally assembled around the Christmas tree our anticipation was at a fevered pitch. The first gift was handed to the youngest (lucky Martha), and the great unveiling began. Presents were opened one at a time, and in order—youngest to oldest, round and round—until every one of the hundred or so gifts were unwrapped. It was unreal. It was a thrill to open your gifts, but nothing matched the butterflies as family members opened the gift you had chosen for them. Would they like it? Would they feel the “righteness” that you felt about it when you bought it? I remember the year when I got a package of brads for dad at the hardware store. I hadn’t seen any nails of that size on Dad’s workbench. I worried that he wouldn’t know what they were, or that he wouldn’t understand how much he needed them. No need to fear. He looked so delighted when he opened the package, and even got how funny it was that the tacks were named after his second son. He deserved an Emmy for that performance. The wrapping paper melee continued, it seemed, for hours. The shed wrapping paper filled several large leaf and lawn bags.

When the paper and ribbons were cleaned up, the reveling began. Everyone chose a new favorite toy or game and put all their energies into breaking it in. I remember Kathleen trying out her first blow dryer—very cool. I can see the spot, straddling the doorway between the dining room and front hall, that Brad and David played the premiere game of Stratego. Martha was on fire the year that Santa left her “Loud-mouthed Singers” in China and brought her the pink rag doll instead. She ran around the house, entranced with the responsibilities of her new charge.

Christmas memories #3: playing Santa

One family night each December we loaded the family in our station wagon, along with several boxes full of oranges, apples, home baked goodies and other unknown wrapped items. We drove in the dark, singing Christmas carols, and stopping in strange neighborhoods at strange homes. Dad, Doug or Brad would sneak up to the house, place the box on the porch, ring the doorbell and dash back to the car parked down the street. It was the best kind of doorbell-ditching. Dad and Mom never told us who it was that was in need of some Christmas cheer, but a few times I remember seeing the silhouettes of those who came to the door, and could tell by their body language how excited and surprised they were. It always gave me a warm and grateful feeling to be able to help someone who I assumed was in need. These experiences became much more meaningful the year that our family was struggling financially. It was early December and we had not bought a Christmas tree yet. It didn’t seem like Christmas, and I think that all of us kids were feeling a little bit of concern. One night the doorbell rang. I think that Brad opened the door, but I was right behind him, and we were both amazed at what we found on the porch. My recall may not be precise, but I remember a Christmas tree and two or three boxes full of goodies and other items. What was in the boxes was really unimportant. I just remember feeling overjoyed that someone cared about us, because that meant that the Lord was aware of the worries of some of his children, and wanted to answer our prayers. In that moment I remembered the silhouettes at the homes we had visited other years, and then I understood that although it may be better to give than to receive, sometimes it was good to receive gifts of love with no ability to give back. That was a moment of pure joy.

Christmas memories #2:music, caroling & open house

Music was a big part of our holiday. The day after Thanksgiving, and occasionally before that, the Christmas albums moved to the spot adjacent to the stereo, and it seemed that they played most of the day. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Julie Andrews were our favorites. Now and then during other times of the year Mom would put on a Christmas album, and that’s when we knew she was homesick. Since all of us took piano lessons at some time growing up, every year there were a couple of us learning carols for our lessons, so there was disconnected background music each December afternoon that sounded vaguely like familiar Christmas tunes.

Christmas was about making other people happy. I remember the family going to a nursing home to sing carols. We weren’t real thrilled about singing to strangers, but mom insisted we go. The home looked and smelled strange inside. The senior citizens looked blankly at us, wondering why our horde had invaded, I suppose. But when we started singing, their faces brightened. Some smiled, some clapped their hands, and some tried to join us in raspy voices. After our performance we passed out oranges to the residents. Some of them grabbed for us and wanted hugs. I felt a little awkward, but couldn’t say no. I remember thinking that they really weren’t hugging me. They were hugging the people in their lives that should have been there for them, but weren’t. I was just the stand-in for their moment of pleasure, and that felt good.

Several years we hosted a Christmas open house at our place, inviting ward members, neighbors and the missionaries. It was chaos, but it was fun. Mom baked like crazy the week before to provide the refreshments. She made banana bread, light and dark fruitcake, and her heavenly lemon nut bread. I remember squeezing the citrus for the hot spice punch (the juice of seven lemons and seven oranges in each recipe). It had to have been a load of extra work for dad and mom, but everyone enjoyed the party. There seemed to be wall-to-wall people of all ages. I recall that one year Frances Whiting commandeered the grand piano and sang like an opera diva. Someone--probably Dad---hung mistletoe from the hallway light, and there was some strategic maneuvering by certain guests to avoid or congregate underneath it.

Christmas memories

Margaret's post about Christmas sparked a bunch of memories for me. I'll post them in digestible doses, and hope that everyone will correct or fill in the details I may have forgotten. Christmas was not just a holiday at our house. It was a season, a lifestyle, a state of mind. Although there were preparations and a lot of talk before, it officially began on December 1^st--Kathleen’s birthday. She always pulled the first figure out of the number one pocket on the felt advent calendar and placed it on the tree. We took turns, by age, decorating the advent calendar day by day during December. On the first, Kathleen also lit the wick on the first day of the Spirit of Christmas candle. It was lit at meal time and stayed burning throughout the meal unless we were less than civil to each other. We helped lick the stamps on the out-going Christmas cards Dad and Mom addressed, and hang the in-coming cards on the cord across the dining room.

It seemed that we had a tall Christmas tree every year, though that tradition may have actually started in the high-ceilinged rooms of the Fairfax house. I remember Dad putting the lights on first, which seemed to take forever while we waited to get started with the other decorations. The huge pinecones (from California, I think) went on next, and then the ornaments. Mom was so careful with the ornaments, and I felt like she was holding her breath while she let us kids help put them on. Hanging the icicles was the most fun of all, though the messiest. Everyone had their own style—some separated one icicle from the bunch and placed it carefully in it’s perfect pre-destined spot. Others impulsively tossed handfuls, watching them fall willy-nilly wherever they might, often in tangled clumps. Then the dining room lights would be turned out and we would be amazed at the artistry of our slipshod handiwork. Somehow, the next morning, the tree would be evenly covered with silver shininess and well-spaced ornaments, as if some fairy had rearranged the mess after we had gone to bed.

I loved the star that Dad made out of plywood and lined with outdoor lights. It hung on the garage at the green house in Cleveland, then over the front door at the Fairfax house. There were years that we put up other lights outside, but the star was always my favorite. It seemed to say, “There’s always room at this inn”.

Days of December

During this month, my boys remind me of the anticipation of Christmas I experienced as a girl. I smile, even now, as I recall the excitement of the days of December.

For weeks I would consider what gift I could give to each family member for Christmas. I never had much money, so it was necessary to be creative. Sometimes I decorated IOUs or made some other homemade gifts that I, perhaps, had made in school. At least once, Kathleen took me to Twigbees, a special branch of the department store Higbees which was around at Christmas time. It was stocked with gifts children could afford.

It was great fun to plan to fill the stocking of the family member whose name I had drawn. I loved keeping it a secret, while at the same time trying to figure out who everyone else had.

I tried hard to be good and kind so that when I put my shoes out on the stairs at night, I would find a mint or orange slice or some other sweet left in the night by Santa's elves. I recall a few times actually seeing elf tracks on the railing and window sill outside the sunroom. I kept my eyes peeled, but never got a glimpse of those sneaky little spies.
-Margaret