Celebrating Christmas

 Happy Holidays, everyone.  We are on the sixth day of Christmas, and a day away from New Year's Eve.  Kwanzaa and Hanukkah are ongoing.  I wanted to take time to share Christmas memories, since that is pretty much what I have left, but for three cousins, my family is pretty much gone.

We had wonderful family Christmases in Illinois and California.  We had big trees, often real, lights, cookies, homemade potpourri, stockings, and presents.

In California, we had roses and birds of paradise.  We went to Race Street Fish and Poultry for seafood, and we baked sweets, baklava, melomacarona, kourambedes, nut cake, butter cookies, so much. My family  on my mom's side went on a European vacation in 1938 that trapped them in WWII Greece.  After the first year when my grandfather lashed cypress branches together to make a tree, they didn't have Christmas till around 1947 when they came home.  Everything was gone from inside their houses.  They had to start over.  Christmas became important more than ever; the decorations we have started after 1947, but it all lovely, and someone played Santa.

My earliest memory of Christmas, or anything else, occurred when I was two.  My dad finally got out of the Greek air force, and after a year and a half, he was home at my grandparents' house.  It later became our house when everyone else moved to California.  I remember wearing a red snow suit, and my mom and dad pulling me on a sled in front of the house.  It has already snowed.

The next year, all but two of my uncles were in a bad accident a few blocks away from our house on December 23d.  I was there, but did not get hurt.  My dad and grandma were hurt badly, my grandpa, mom, and Aunt Connie were banged up.  My uncle Jim broke his ribs.  We were a few feet away from the old hospital, luckily.  I remember fighting to get off the examining table, and a neighbor who had come to help trying to give me chocolates.

Everyone recovered, but it was tough.  We still did Christmas.

At home, we went to Marshall Fields on Black Friday and Boxing Day, shopped after Christmas sales, and had duck or pheasant, sometimes turkey.  I don't eat any of that now, but memories were terrific.  My mom made oyster dressing for the holidays, I made pecan pie, which was Dear Abby's published recipe.

Dad put lights up, and set up the tree.  My dogs had their stockings, and I made ornaments and gifts all year in anticipation.  I often sang in choir programs, and played Christmas music on our piano at home.

Mom knitted and made gorgeous stockings and gift containers out of old pill bottles.  Our presents were small, a few dolls, an outfit or two, coins or tiny minis in the pill bottles, all decorated with lace, beads, and trim.

Every year my mom, and often grandma, would take a doll of mine and dress her, then wrap her for Christmas.  It was a beloved tradition.

We had all the old carols sung by choirs, and our beloved school program.

My babysitter, Aunt Rose, loved me like her own.  She made wonderful gifts and painted ceramics. One year her gift was a reproduction of an antique china head doll.  My mother sewed her a wardrobe.

We were together, and safe, and healthy.  We handled airlines, with dad one year in O'Hare getting us seats while picking up tiny Barbie accessories that had spilled on the floor out of my carry-on Barbie case.

These memories are all ghosts of Christmas past.  Now, it's my friends, and my husband and our son with two cats.  I still send cards, and remember my dad showing up in second grade with a box of cards for me to give out in class.  He was there in his suit, tie, and overcoat, and the cards were a white snow man with drifting snow on a black background. 

May your memories sustain you.  Merry Christmas and Peace in 2025.  God bless us, everyone!

Skyward for October 20-24 by David H. Levy, our guest blogger

Skyward for October 20-24 by David H. Levy, our guest blogger

American Doll and Toy Museum: "The really avid collector feels that she should b...

American Doll and Toy Museum: "The really avid collector feels that she should b...: "The really avid collector feels that she should buy as many dolls as possible so as to preserve them . . . " Kay Desmond, The Al...

The Mad Collector in the Basement; Established Doll Museums

Recently, I learned of a program to be given at a future doll convention. It purports to tell us all how to start a doll museum. Key points are that the museum is in someone’s basement, with a separate entrance. Hmm. To create our 5000 sq. foot doll and toy museum took twenty years and lots of paper filings with the state and federal government. We had to find a building, and bid on it. We started in a much smaller building and paid rent; I had saved up a year’s rent to cover it. Many of our cases had to be transported two hours from the former Planetary Studies Museum. We had to file for nonprofit status for our building, too. All this took more than a year. We got our permanent building in August 2020. It took a year to set up the dolls and toys, and I’m not done yet. I did this on my own, with my husband helping. He runs his own security company, so doesn’t have the time he’d like to devote to the museum. We get wonderful donations of objects, but not many financial donations. We finance it ourselves, for now. Covid hit when we were in our old building, and only open three months. We had to close. We got no grants, though we applied, no financial help. As for the collection; it’s mine. I started collecting at age three, and never stopped. Really, I’ve been planning it my whole life, with my family helping. They took me to doll museums all over the world. My family has been every where but Antarctica, and my mentor, teacher, and friend, the late Dr. Roald Tweet went there. It counts. Actually, my first “museum” was in a basement, too. My parents’. Dad built it. It took him about a year, and a year before that to build my fantastic red doll house, Plantagenet House. I hear lot of people talking about doll museums in their house, in a basement, within a retail shop, in a garage. I hear about “established doll museums.” When I googled the term, our museum came up. We have toys, games, doll houses, dolls, books, models and puppets representing Prehistory to the present, and we are here to preserve and to educate, not to invest, sell, or make money. Below are some pictures of the “museum” Dad built. pBefore I had to pack and move my core collection, the dolls were organized by size, material, age, country, and type. There were toys, doll houses, art, books, and paper dolls. Doll related art hung on the walls. I hope to do a podcast soon.

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