Family Christmas Parties

When I was a very young child, our Christmas Eve always began with a trip to my great-grandmother's house to have Christmas with the Thurman side of the family.  Mama Thurman was a widow and lived in a small neighborhood in  Houston in a teeny tiny wood frame house.  I think it was a 2 bedroom, 1 bath home with an eat-in kitchen and a small living room.  We would gather together and there would be cookies and punch and cake.  Everyone would bring a gift for Mama Thurman.  I remember one year my mother bought her a little musical angel for her gift.  She rotated on her base and played "Silent Night".  Mama Thurman loved her.  Years later, I got that little angel back and she still played so sweetly.  She was always precious memory to me.

I will never know how all of us managed to cram inside of that little house!  The women tended to congregate in the kitchen and the living room.  I remember Mama Thurman sitting in her chair in the living room and everyone would take turns sitting near her to give her a present and visit a minute.  I think most of the menfolk, after an obligatory 10 minute meet-and-greet inside the house, went out back to the yard (when the weather wasn't too cold or wet) to talk and pass a bottle around.  I know that my dad often got started on his Christmas "cheer" pretty early in the evening, and I'm pretty sure my southern Baptist Mama Thurman didn't allow any drinking inside the house.  I even remember one Christmas Eve I found my dad passed out, snoring on one of Mama Thurman's chenille bedspreads in the spare bedroom.  Oooh, was my mother mad at him that year!  I don't think he ever did that again.

While there were many, many Thurman aunts and uncles, it seemed there were never many cousins my age.  So while it was exciting to be at a party, we didn't do a gift exchange and I was always ready to leave fairly quickly after we arrived.

After we had Christmas with the Thurman family, it was time to have Christmas with the Gibson family.  I do remember some really big parties when I was very, very young. We were a large family with many aunts, uncles, and cousins of all ages.   I remember going to various cousins' houses and I know we had one such gathering at our house one Christmas.  I remember the women were all so pretty in their party dresses of shiny satin or silk taffeta skirts!  Their waists were narrow and belted; the skirts were big and wide, stiff with starch and some wore petticoats that made rustling sounds when they swished by you.  All the women wore heels and nylons, too.  It was a very dressy affair for them, although I don't remember the men being in full suits.  I do remember lots of white dress shirts and ties, but I don't remember the men wearing suit jackets.

The children would also be dressed up in their Christmas best.  Little girls wore dresses or jumpers made of red  or green velvet or maybe black velvet embellished with tiny sparkling rhinestones.  Crisp white blouses with Peter Pan collars, ruffled white ankle socks and shiny black patent leather shoes were de rigueur, of course.  Our hair was tightly curled and ruthlessly pulled up high in the back with a big bow, ringlets falling like waterfalls from a crown.  Boys would be dressed in their best dark slacks, crisply creased, with short sleeved starched white shirts and little plaid bow ties.  The boys' hair would be cut neat and short, combed stiff with Brylcreem, or perhaps a dab of mom's Dippity Do. There were no jeans and tee shirts at parties in the sixties!  We were all dressed to the nines, as they said back then.

I think hi-balls must have been the drink of choice back then.  I remember lots of clinking ice cubes in short, thick-bottomed glasses. I remember the smell and fizz of 7-Up being used as a mixer, but funny, but I don't remember sodas or Cokes ever being offered as drink choices, not even for the kids.   People were loud and laughing and excitement fairly shimmered in the air, sparked no doubt by the shots of flowing Christmas cheer!  I do remember we had a set of champagne glasses at our house, but I never remember the sound of popping corks.  I never saw a bottle of wine in anyone's house. Heavy dark brown beer bottles were always around though.  And there was always a punch bowl with lime sherbet punch made with ginger ale for us kids.

There was more food at the big Gibson family parties on Christmas Eve.  In addition to tables full of pies, cakes, cookies, and punch, I remember hot hors d'oeuvres and dips and chips.  Nuts, olives and pickles of all kinds were set in bowls all around the living rooms, as well as lots of little pillow shaped pastel butter mints. Stalks of green celery filled with orange pimiento cheese seemed to be ever-present as well.  But I never remember any ethnic foods being offered.  There was no Tex Mex, no Italian, no Chinese foods on display.  (In fact, I was sixteen before I ever even tasted a pizza!  But that's another story . . .)

At some point though, these traditions fell away.  Mama Thurman gave up living on her own in her little house and the Thurman Family Christmas party disappeared.  I think the Gibsons must all have agreed that the family was just too big for any one person to host all of us in their house.  And we morphed into smaller more easily managed groups.

My own family began to gather every Christmas Eve at either our home or one of my dad's siblings.  The sisters-in-law took turns hosting each year.  Then on Christmas Day we would gather at my grandparent's home.  None of our houses were very large, but they always seemed to be more than adequate to host our family gatherings.  At our largest census, we were 15 in all: 8 adults and 7 kids.

Christmas Eve was a time of great fun for all of us cousins.  We would play together and tell stories of what we hoped Santa would bring.  We would run outside to look at the Christmas lights and check for Santa's sleigh.  Many times we would stay up way past our bedtime, which was cause for excitement in and of itself!  The grownups would talk and laugh, too, drinking and eating and enjoying each other's company.  I remember the absolute joy of those evenings, knowing I was loved and accepted, knowing I belonged in my family.

We always did a small gift exchange as well.  The adults would "draw names" at Thanksgiving, and then exchange presents on Christmas Eve.  The cousins all bought a gift for each cousin.  I remember my mom was always a bit "put out" every year by this process.  I was an only child and my cousins were all in sets of three.  Mom would always quietly tell me that while THEY only had to buy one present for me, SHE had to buy SIX.  My grandparents, Mommaw and Pop Gibson, would also give their gifts out on Christmas Eve.  Their presents were never big or lavish, but no one cared.  It was the thought that counted!  

As we grew older, more awareness of family dynamics emerged.  I was an only child, and of course my cousins all had brothers and sisters, a fact that I envied at times.  I was also aware that my cousins all had other grandparents and families that they visited on Christmas.  But for some reason, I never questioned the fact that I only had one set of grandparents.  That all changed when I was about 10 years old.  My mom's parents, after a 10-year estrangement, suddenly decided that they wanted to make up.  It was quite a shock to discover that I had another side to my family.  My mom was also an only child, so it was just my Grandma and Grandpa Claussen.  And I didn't like them!

There are complicated reasons behind family estrangements.  I won't go into all of them here.  But all of a sudden our Christmas Day routine changed.  Now, after having "Santa Claus" at our house in the mornings, we had to go over to my new grandparents' house before we could go to my "real" grandparents.  We would sit in their little house and listen to my grandmother play something or other the organ.  (If it was a Christmas carol, I couldn't recognize it--and I was a musical child.  It was painful to listen to her play.)  There would be drinks and snacks to eat.  And then they would pass out the presents.  As selfish as it sounds now, that was the only part of the whole visit that I liked.  Being the only grandchild, and having missed out on the first 10 years of my life, my grandparents tried to make up for it with lavish gifts.  It was fun, but it didn't make me like them any better. I was always so relieved when the visit was over.

But in spite of all the presents that arrived on Christmas Day, Christmas Eve remained the high point of the whole celebration to me. Our family parties were exciting and magical.  Once we were old enough, we cousins often were allowed to play card games or dominoes with the grownups at the kitchen table.  And music was always a big part of our celebration as well.  We sang all the Christmas carols we knew over and over again each year.  As children in the sixties, we had record players and vinyl records.  My favorite was Christmas With the Chipmunks!  I loved that album.  I can still sing every song on there.  The anticipation of Christmas morning ran high, almost eclipsing the actual event.  The grown ups were happy and in good moods (unlike sometimes on Christmas morning when a lack of sleep and an excess of Christmas cheer made them slightly grumpy!), teasing and playing with us.  The night literally rang with laughter and song.

Eventually though the heads of the children would begin to droop and heavy eyelids fluttered closed.  We would disperse to our own houses, to be carried in from backseats of cars and gently tucked up in our beds, awaiting the arrival of Santa the next morning.  And Christmas Eve would close silently, quietly, with peace in our souls.