Of course, they weren't really hidden. My brother and I had pawed over every one and administered the shake test long before their public debut. I recall us sneaking into the guest bedroom (one favorite hiding place), picking up wrapped goodies one by one, and shaking them like maracas. My brother had the habit of shaking first by his right ear, and then switching over to shake by his left ear, and kind of dancing around as he did, as if he were accompanying a Jose Feliciano Christmas album.
No matter your age, I'm certain you remember those gifts that seemed to appear under the tree, year after year, like celestial clockwork. Our recurring presents were probably, now that I think on it, a result of a personality disorder that I inherited from my mother: the inability to say no to door-to-door salesmen. In her case, she always invited in the Avon and the Fuller Brush sales people. (I buy cookies from kids fund-raising for pee wee football, candles from disadvantaged youth paying their way to summer camp, miracle cleaning products from the guy who appears on our doorstep every spring, and cookbooks from Seventh Day Adventists.)
So every Christmas we could count on
- Soap on a rope. The soap itself had an abrasive odor, a cross between Irish Spring and kerosene. Since it hung under the shower when not it use, it quickly eroded in the waterfall and was cracked and peeled after the first use. But, it was within easy reach and a reminder to wash your armpits when bathing--a necessity for stinky boys.
- Cologne/after shave in a collector's bottle. I may be foggy on this, but I think we started getting a container in the shape of a VW beetle or Model T or formula one race car about the time each of us started growing pimples and whiskers. Avon could have renamed their colognes Eau d' PineSol. Even applied sparingly, they felt like an industrial strength degreaser--probably not a bad deal in retrospect for teenage pores.
- Various scrub and polishing brushes. These I recall as eminently practical. Wooden handled with natural bristles, the small versions worked like miniature blackboard erasers with teeth. That was the case whether used for shining shoes or scrubbing dirty fingers. I also liked the way they wore down in the middle, sort of like the smooth indentations in stone monastery steps trod for centuries by pious monks. To this day I feel virtuous scrubbing my hands with a natural bristle brush.
There were other predictable gifts as well--underwear, socks, flannel shirts, a book or two, some kind of game the whole family could play. But, no matter, like all kids my brother and I always looked forward to unwrapping presents and we always faced the torturous identical routine before the gift baring began.
Christmas Eve started with a family dinner, just the four of us. My mother was a cook from the German school and believed every meal needed meat, potatoes, a vegetable, jello salad, bread, butter, and dessert. Since my father was a laborer, he came home hungry every day and expected a square meal on the table by 5:30. Although I don't remember my dad or mom eating in a hurry, my brother and I would have pulled in platefuls of mashed potatoes and gravy--and whatever main or sides accompanied them--with a straw, if allowed. We couldn't seem to eat fast enough. Leftovers happened, but usually mom would say, "Why doesn't somebody eat the rest of that," and we would. Despite some tight times, we never went hungry and probably overate, especially at suppertime.
But Christmas Eve was different--not the overeating, but the pace. I can hear my mother say, but only on Christmas Eve, "Let's slow down and enjoy this meal." Maybe she read in Ladies Home Journal or Reader's Digest about taking family time to appreciate the holidays. For pre-teen/early teenaged boys, delayed gratification was not high on the list of Christmas virtues. So, after a slower-than-usual family feast of turkey (my dad's favorite) and mashed potatoes, a condiment plate of celery and carrot sticks and black olives, green bean casserole, red hot jello salad, dinner rolls and apple pie, the boys had to do the dishes.
This was a chore we had some experience with. Every night after dinner my mother would wash and my brother or I would alternate drying the dishes. I think every night we also heard the same line: "A good dish dryer wipes off what the washer misses." On occasion, one of us would be asked to take a turn washing.My brother hated washing dishes. But, like everything else he did, he took the humorous route to resistance. He would squirt what amounted to a dixie cup full of dishwashing liquid into the sink and the suds would rise into an Everest of bubbles, sometimes so high they would spill over onto the linoleum floor. Then he would stand at the sink and play with the bubbles. Look, a goatee. Or he'd fill his hands with bubbles and squeeze them out. Look, a volcano. Or when we were older, Hey, look bro, a pimple. This would go on for 15 or 20 minutes, with not a dish being washed, and finally my mother would step in and do them for him.
The rub on Christmas Eve was that we had to do the dishes ourselves, just the two of us, a semi-penitential chore to cleanse the final black marks from our record, so when Santa checked his list a second time we would still be on it. The sink and counter would be piled high with pots and pans and serving dishes, in addition to the usual cups, plates, and silverware. I recall a couple of Christmas Eve's when we flipped a coin to see who would wash or dry. If my brother washed, we were doomed to wait on his goatees and exploding pimples before a pot made it into and out of the suds. Those years my mom would step in to wash the pots and pans and just leave the eating utensils for my brother, but he could still dilly dally by carving up the dishwater with a ten-minute battle of knives and forks before anything touched a dishrag.
(More to come . . .)
(More to come . . .)
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