Community Corner

Ghosts of Christmas Past

Editor's Note: This column ran just two weeks after Berkeley Patch debuted back in December 2010. It still has relevance for anyone missing loved ones this Christmas. It's been updated slightly.

By Patricia A. Miller

I read an online column a few years ago during the holiday season written by Jodi Helmer, a native Canadian who for various reasons wouldn't be home for Christmas. Her article was entitled "Home for the Holidays...Not This Year."

Her parents beseeched her annually to make the trek up north. But for the last decade, her answer has always been no. She loves her family, but prefers to visit at other times of the year.

She prattled on about how cold it is in Toronto in December, how hectic her "close-knit little clan" is at Christmas. Somebody's always doing something, she said.

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Christmas can be tough, I'll give you that. But the stress is largely man-made. There's no need to max out credit cards, shop till you drop, turn out a gross of cholesterol-laden goodies or chug eggnog until you can't see straight.

Faith and family will steer you through the holidays, if you're lucky enough to have both. But holidays are bittersweet for many. They are laced with the memories of loved ones no longer here.

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And while the columnist didn't want to go home again, I wish I could. What I wouldn't give to hear my mother's voice again. What I wouldn't give to make the trek back home to the hills of northwest New Jersey and knock on the front door of our family home.

My mother died of throat cancer on a sweltering day in August 1984, just two and a half years after my father. He died of pancreatic cancer on a cold Christmas night in 1981, 32 years ago.

The new owners of my parents' home in Basking Ridge closed on the house three days before Christmas in 1984. My brother was still carrying out boxes laden with our past while they toasted their new home upstairs.  I will never forget how our footsteps echoed as we walked through the empty rooms for the last time. We couldn't go home again.

My parents gave us wonderful Christmas memories when we were little. The real - repeat real - Scotch pine or balsam tree went up on Christmas Eve and came down promptly on New Year's Day. It glowed with plump red, blue, green and yellow Noma Christmas lights, which flickered in the silver tinsel. I was always a stickler for tinsel protocol - one strand at a time. My sister Susan was a little more lax. She wasn't adverse to tossing clumps of the stuff on the tree, if she thought nobody was looking.

My grandmother was up at five, stuffing the turkey, setting potatoes on to boil. She made everything from scratch, including the pumpkin and mince pies.  Cranberries sputtered and popped gently in a pot on the stove, before she and I mashed them into a crimson sauce.

My childhood nuclear family of six is now only two - my brother John and I. Mary died at 39, Susan at 48. Alcohol took them both. John and I have our own families now, but our parents and sisters are never far from our thoughts, especially now.

And if I could go back to a scene from one of those long-ago Christmases, it would be early Christmas morning. Very early. WCBS in New York always broadcast the classic 1951 English version of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" at 1 a.m.  We were all supposed to be in bed.

One by one, we tiptoed out of our  bedrooms and made our way down to the stairs leading into the living room. I would flick on the T.V. and turn the knob (no remotes then) as gently as I could. Then my brother and sisters and I would settle in to watch Ebenezer Scrooge, brilliantly played by Alastair Sim, on the road to his redemption. We knew all the words to the movie and would try to beat each other to be the first to say them.

Even as adults, we would still call each other up before the holiday to let each other know when  "A Christmas Carol" was set to be broadcast.

My favorite spirit in the novel is the Ghost of Christmas Past, a gentle phantom dressed in a white tunic, with a sprig of holly in his hand. The initial exchange between Scrooge and the spirit still makes my chest ache.

"Who and what are you?" a frightened Scrooge thunders.

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past," the spirit replies softly.

"Long past?"

"No. Your past."

The farther time spins away from those childhood Christmases, the more I try to hang on to them. My family has slipped away. The Canadian columnist is wrong.  She should go home again, while she still can.




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