A Christmastime memory
At Christmastime, the featured movie was a black and white enactment, before computerized animation (for that matter before most of us had ever heard of computers) of " 'Twas the night before Christmas." We delighted in the poetry, and in seeing the sugar plums dancing in their heads, and the jolly old Santa with his reindeer on the roof. The movie was played over and over, and every year, and before long I could recite the poem from memory, like a chorus with the narrator of the movie.
So, even though this Jewish family didn't officially celebrate Christmas, we soaked in the holiday atmosphere. Maybe it didn't start as early as the day after Halloween, but Christmas was everywhere in the stores and on the air waves. A favorite of the season was the serial story, "The Cinnamon Bear," broadcast for 15 minutes every day, around 5p.m. And Santa didn't pass over our house. We didn't have a fireplace, so my sister and I hung our stockings (the longest ones we could find) from the doors of the "entertainment center," a Stromberg-Carlson console with an am-fm radio and a phonograph inside. We would hang the stocking over the dark wood door and then close it, so that it fit snuggly but was still open waiting for the treats. We would wake up on Christmas morning with oranges and various kinds of candy bulging in the fabric, and toys piled on the floor. I never wondered how Santa got in, even without a chimney to slide down.
Our extended family had our own tradition for celebrating Chanukah. All the aunts, uncles, and cousins would gather at one of our houses, rotating each year, along with Grandpa Jacob and Grandma Sarah. At the appropriate time, all the cousins would gather eagerly in a large space in front of Grandpa and he would throw a handful of coins, nickels, dimes and quarters, into the air. Then all of us cousins would scramble for them as they fell to the ground and rolled to the corners. Grandpa repeated this several times, until his rolls of coins were gone. Because my sister and I were the two smallest, and easily pushed out of the way by our eager older cousins, he would slip us a little extra to make up for our losses. Then we would all adjourn to the dining room for potato latkes, topped with applesauce or sugar.