Holidays, both holy and not

For many years, we have had Thanksgiving at our home in Thomaston, Maine. We usually have twenty or so for dinner. Sometimes we have it in the loft of our barn and if it is too cold up there, we have it either in the house or in Albie's heated studio. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Unlike Christmas, no one is ever disappointed in Thanksgiving. The only expectation is to have a great banquet and a chance to visit with relatives and friends.

This year Lauren and John hosted the holiday at their home in Hyde Park, a part of Boston. They had added a large sun room to the rear of their house, and it was big enough to seat everyone at one very long table. We had two big turkeys, the usual root vegetables, Albie's rolls, and 8 pies. The year before Lauren had offered to host the event and let us of the hook. It was just as well as in the meantime we had put our Maine house on the market, and had it sold, we would have had to find another place to celebrate the holiday.

Christmas is entirely another matter. Albie and I do not make anything of the day itself. No tree or presents. We do put a wreath on the door and another on the barn. For a few years we even bought and decorated with lights a tree, and placed it on the porch where neighbors could enjoy it, but lately we have skipped the tree. I miss it. I love parts of Christmas, especially the caroling and the aura of good feeling that permeates society at that time of year. But the gift giving I have never cared for. I think Christ might very well have been one of the greatest men to ever live, but I am not a Christian or even a believer anymore.

That does not stop my children from celebrating Christmas. They gather at one of their houses in Massachusetts, usually at Kathy and Jim's, and have big dinner and gift giving. This is an unusual gathering for Christmas, as my children and their spouses and children are not all Christian. My daughter Ruth married a Muslim, my son Greg married Jew. Their two children are Muslim and Jewish. My daughter Karen married a Muslim from Pakistan, and their children are Muslim. They live in Texas and usually don't make the trip to Boston, but they nevertheless celebrate Christmas with a tree and gift giving in Texas. My eldest son, Paul,and his wife and children are Witnesses and do not believe in celebrating Christmas at all, so do not attend. MOST PEOPLE DO NOT REALIZE IT, BUT THE PILGRIMS AND OTHER EARLY SETTLERS OF MASSACHUSETTS, DID NOT CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS EITHER, AND FOR THE SAME REASONS AS THE WITNESSES. They forbid the celebration of Christmas, as it was a pagan holiday. When Ebeneezer Scrooge says of Christmas, "Bah Humbug!" he is reiterating the same belief. It was once against the law in England to celebrate Christmas as well, when the Puritans were in power.

Part of my feeling about Christmas may be because I am a Christmas baby. As a child I had to share my birthday with another J.C., whose real birthday was most likely sometime in April. I would get one of my presents early as my birthday was actually Christmas Eve. When other school kids would have a special day at school on their birthdays, my day was always a school holiday. Even later in life, my mother always sent me "Happy Christmas Birthday cards.

I wrote a poem about my birthday and my first Christmas:

Christmas Birthday

Although she was not a churchgoer
Christmas was always her favorite day
Refusing to spend it in a
hospital,her child was born at home.
Carolers sang outside her window.

No kings arrived bearing gifts, yet
Christmas morning she told my brother
"Look what Santa brought us last night."
An bundled her joy for the ten hour ride
In the Model A to grandparents house.

Neither snow nor sleet nor predawn dark
Would stay their course that snowy morning.
The road became impassable by Portsmouth
Where therewas room at an inn for the night.
Baby was bedded in bureau drawer.

By morning the road was clear again
Nothing more prevented the family
Celebrating the birth of a child.