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CHRISTMAS 12/26/2012 7:57:53 AM
(This is my annual Xmas column, first written and published 12/25/2002. My regular column, LOVE, will appear on Saturday December 29, 2012 as usual.)
There are people who get their knickers in a knot when I abbreviate Christmas as “Xmas,” as I often do just to annoy them. They say “X” is an unknown quantity (or quality,) and when I say “Xmas” I am taking Christ out of Christmas and demeaning His birthday.
I dunno, they may be right. But if so, it is my misfortune, hardly my intention.
Since December 25th is nothing more than a symbolic holiday, anyway (Jesus, according to the Bible, was probably born in late winter or springtime), I cannot in good conscience ascribe much more to it than what it is: a time for bonuses, decorating dying shrubbery (and hoping it last until New Year’s), exchanging gaily wrapped presents (most of which never fit and go back the day after, anyway) excessive merry-making, bug-eyed, rude and sleep deprived children, kissing and embracing people you overtly avoid the preceding 364 days, and the singing of songs and reading of poems that make no sense whatever (“Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” — nowhere in the Bible are angels ever said to be singing.)
As much as I truly enjoy the “festivity” of Christmas, I openly cringe at “A Visit from St. Nicholas” and “The Messiah.” (“I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause” fills me with glee, while “Rudolph, the Red, Knows Reindeer” makes visions of Dr. Zhivago’s Ice Palace dance in my head.)
The New Year, coming up just a short week later, is a much more gratifying holiday, and it is a time I always look forward to. Not that I go to parties, wear lampshades for hats or get drunk much anymore; it’s been several centuries since I have done more than have an Early Bird Dinner (“buy one, get one free”) and prop up my eyelids with toothpicks to stay awake until the glass ball at Times Square slides down at midnight — but I have fond memories of a family named Ljubanović I once spent the final night of 1961 with.
These were friends of my erstwhile wife, and how she acquired them (or why) I do not know. New Year’s Eve with Riso and Birdie Ljubanović was a celebration of high magnitude and ritual in their household.
Riso, a Croatian, and Birdie, an Irish lass, were surrounded by their five daughters: Gertrude, twenty-five; Louisa, twenty-two; Shirley, nineteen; Marianna, seventeen; and eleven-year-old Eileen.
From time to time, friends and neighbors would drop by between seven and eleven, but it was rare anyone other than the immediate family and closest friends were crowded into the living room at the stroke of midnight (what we were doing there that night in 1961 will forever remain a mystery).
To Riso, this was a magical time: the end of a full year and the start of a brand new one. He would swear to his dying day that he actually felt “different” between 11:59 and 12:01: different, renewed, and to him, even the air tasted better.
It was also a time of keen reflection for Birdie and the girls as well; a sentimental and yet tantalizing moment when the reality of life and its fleeting mortality overwhelmed them, and invariably they would all burst into tears and hug each other as though each might disappear in a poof of vapor before the cuckoo clock in the kitchen clucked its final dozen.
It was a bazaar — and yet touching fragment of time. Riso would first embrace Birdie and say, “It haass bean a glor-yuss yar, voman. You haass bean my bess vife vorever.” And with tears amidst giggles, they would kiss and hold each other tightly.
Riso would then move to Gertrude, the oldest, and separate her from Eileen; and he would kiss her cheeks and say, with more tears on both their faces, “It hass been a glor-yuss yar, daughter. You hass bean da bess girl vorever.”
Birdie, having taken Eileen when Gertrude and the others had finished with her, held her and kissed her and said, “Your da has bean a grand fadder, he has. He is, as meself, very proud we are of ye. All of ye all.”
And they would proceed from one to the other, until all five daughters had been squeezed and bussed with sincere affection, as they in turn would hug and kiss each other and mumble some tearful sentiment that had been engraved on their holiday routine ever since Gertrude came in 1936 and Louisa in 1939, etc.
By the time Guy Lombardo had finished playing “Auld Lang Syne” over the huge Philco in the living room, its green eye pulsating menacingly in time with the ode (what had begun years ago at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City was to become an annual event revered equally by the Ljubanović family, along with fireworks, turkeys and stuffing, candied yams, heart-shaped candies, gaily lighted pine trees, candles imbedded in chocolate cakes, and bridal bouquets brandished bravely amidst dauntlessly desperate but disappointed hopefuls,) Riso and Birdie annualized lavish love and esteem on each other and their offspring, and this was a custom destined to continue amongst them at home and by long distance telephone for decades to come — or at least as long as this sentence.
We escaped about 12:30 and rarely, if ever, saw the Ljubanovićs again, certainly never on New Year’s Eve.
Both Riso and Birdie are gone now, and for reasons I do not remember, I delivered eulogies at both their funerals. I do recall, however, speaking faux-fondly about their unusual New Year’s Eve customs; their girls, sobbing at the memory, said the holidays would never be the same “now that momma and poppa were both gone.” Most of those in attendance were appropriately moist-eyed but had no clue what I was talking about.
The recollection, however, of that one evening has stayed with me over the years, and it may be why late December 31st and early January 1st is held, by me, in much higher esteem than Xmas.
“Should olde acquaintances be forgot”? I say “YES!”
