59 Yuletide Songs

Growing up on Thackeray Road, Fifty-Nine Yuletide Songs was our Christmas songbook.  The cover featured a deep indigo blue evening sky with jolly Victorian carolers holding his lantern aloft so the Victorian country singers could read their music in the chilly night air.

Over the years, the illustrations on each page became familiar old friends.

     I was anointed the family piano player because my mother was busy in the kitchen basting the turkey.  I was the fifth child, but nobody else had stepped up to play the accompaniment to my father’s violin, which he took out every Christmas. He was like the jolly man on the cover of the book, a pitcher of Manhattans taking the place of the lantern.  Under the holiday baton of my father, I learned to accompany singers, which meant, keep playing no matter what.  Don’t let mistakes stop the flow.  My father would gently tap his bow on my head every time I hit the wrong note. He loved the joke of it. I learned to skip the bad notes whenever possible.  Fine for tunes without too many black notes – Jingle Bells, Hark The Herald Angels, Good King Wenceslas.  But tunes like Oh Little Town of Bethlehem or god forbid, It came Upon A Midnight Clear, were nightmares.  Too many accidentals.

Singing with the neighbors. I was only 5. My oldest sister Anne is on the keys. Mother is not in the picture. Like I said, she was basting, or making herself another Old-Fashioned.

     The Henry F. Miller grand piano sat at one end of the living room, but it was at the center of our family.  We were a family of singers. And of course, the mantlepiece was decorated with evergreens, golden pinecones and red bows. Every year, mother would send me down to back corner of the cellar, near the boiler, to spray toxic gold spray on everything she could think of – pinecones, berries, whatever got in the way. I felt like the chosen one. I can still hear the rattle of the beads inside the spray can and smell the thrill of those intoxicating Holiday Fumes. Perhaps that limited my ability to play too many sharps and flats.

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     Christmas Eve was the magic indigo night, with the pure white glow of our plastic Christmas candles taped to the windowsills, spliced cords stretched to the nearest plug, the wreath on the front door lit up by the spotlight my father attached to a board on the front walk. An extension cord ran out the cellar window through the snow.  The jerry-rigged spotlight rigamarole was always risky.  My father was not a patient handyman. 

My mother wrapped presents in utilitarian tissue paper, writing our names directly on the fragile packages in her catholic school handwriting.  She placed them on her single bed in designated spots.  I was on the lower right corner. I’m the fifth of six kids. By the time I came around, there was no Santa Claus.

     On Christmas Eve, dad would make us line up in the kitchen, in order of age or height, whichever struck his fancy that year.  We would process very slowly towards the living room, singing Silent Night.  I remember parading by the Infant of Prague statue on the little chest of drawers in the hallway. I didn’t need Santa. I had The Infant of Prague. I loved changing its fancy long capes. I changed the capes when they didn’t need changing. Who needed Barbie?

The slow procession allowing me plenty of time to admire its red velvet Christmas cape. Sometimes I had two chances to see the Infant of Prague, as my father occasionally lead us back through the dining room, back into the kitchen and back down the front hallway toward the living room, just to prolong the agony until we could finally see our presents under the tree.

(I searched the internet for this picture. This antique 1930’s version, which looks an awful lot like our infant, can be had for $1400, including all the capes! I’ve since heard the Irish elders’ expression, Sweet Infant of Prague! for those you’ve got to be kidding me! moments.

     The Christmas tree usually stood next to the piano.  It was often tied to the porch door handle to avoid it falling. Again.  Nothing like the chaotic crash of gaily colored lights, carefully laid tinsel and shimmering metallic ornaments to ruin the festive feeling and risk one of daddy’s bad moods. I didn’t know how much my mother cherished those ornaments until the year I broke one and she cried.  Mother never cried. 

     But music was always a saving grace. I still have that Yuletide book, though the pages, like me, are a bit worn and fragile. One Christmas, I was staying with Mother as she began her long journey into Alzheimer’s. We sat at the piano and sang many of the songs she loved so dearly. Mother was transfixed. She read aloud many of the historical details that precede each carol. I was enchanted and broken-hearted.

The book sat on my mother’s piano until she and dad sold the big house.  My oldest sister lived in the same town and got the Henry F. Miller. Mother replaced the grand with a Baldwin Acrosonic she purchased from a local piano teacher.  It’s a pianist’s piano – a very reliable and reputable console piano, with a sound bigger than you’d expect.

When my father died, his violin went back into its case. Christmas Eves were never quite the same, but whenever we all managed to get together to sing those old carols, my father was still there in spirit and still tapping my head when I hit the wrong notes.

     When Mother moved to the assisted living place, I got the Acrosonic. I had been through various pianos but in the end, I wanted that piano.

And every Christmas, 59 Yuletide Songs comes out of retirement and off we go, singing!

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And, here’s a little bonus. One Christmas, not too long ago, I dressed up as Santa and went to Harvard Square to surprise my son, Owen. When I appeared at the door of his ear-piercing business, TrueLove Body Piercing, one of his workers muttered, Oh God, thinking I was a local nutcase. Owen, one of the gentlest and kindest people I have ever met, came out of his office and assured them, it’s my mother.

OK, after that, I met college friends for drinks at Upstairs on The Square.

Keep it strange.