It was Christmas Eve of 1974. Dinner had been served
and savored, and after coffee, my parents prepared cocktails and started a fire
in the living-room fireplace. The room was dominated by Dad’s immaculately and
obsessively decorated tree, which was placed next to the grand piano. The
windows in the room were tastefully lit with dozens of Italian miniature light
sets. Each set of lights was entwined by matching garlands. The mantel over the
fireplace was cleared of the normal curios, lined with holly, more lights, and
little chocolate ornaments hung by strings. Candles dotted the cozy and warming
room where presents awaited from Santa for a little boy who couldn’t wait for
opening time.
Usually it was about this time when Dad’s patience
with me and his anxiety about Christmas and what it must have represented in
his childhood memories got to the point where he melted down internally, and
threatened to “Ruin Christmas” for us. I think the whole syndrome came from his
mother. She always made an epic fuss out of everything. She took hours to get
dressed-up to go out, threatening the whole time that she was not going. I call
this the Helm “Gotterdammerung” gene. It lies dormant until a big occasion such
as a wedding, concert, Christmas, etc. and then rears its ugly head sort of
like a grand cataclysmic final act in an opera. My dad got extra helpings of
this gene and whenever there was pressure on him, it came out.
It’s funny that Christmas meant everything to my
father. He was a socialist and an atheist. This being a religious holiday one
would think that he would shun it in both its original meaning and its modern
manifestation of greed and consumerism.
Instead, Dad was a child again at Christmas. Soon
after Thanksgiving, his eyes would get large, and we would begin the elaborate
and careful process of picking out the tree. I should say that HE took elaborate care picking
out the tree, because in Wisconsin in December the ground is frozen, and so
were my mom and me as we followed my dad from lot to lot trying to both find
the perfect tree and a bargain. We didn’t have a car then, so some other poor
soul (often my dad’s brother Bill, who drove a van) was commandeered into the
unending frostbitten search for balsam perfection. After ten or twenty lots
were visited the chosen tree was duly paid for by my mom. It was then hauled
home into the kitchen where Dad sawed off the bottom inch or so of the trunk,
as my mom and I held the tree.
“You’re holding it wrong!” “I can’t see… my glasses
are all fogged up!” “I cut it crooked and it’s your fault!” “Hold it tighter!”
“I am going crazy here!”… Ah, the memories. Mom and I always seemed to be
holding something and usually to be “Doing it wrong.” We were the captive
audience and helpers while Dad and the tree enacted a play of chaos and
slapstick starring a saw, various household objects careening to the floor, and
terror sweat.
Once the tree was up and was
allowed a deep drink of water, the limbs would spread out and the
second-guessing of the tree selection began. Holes in the foliage would begin
to appear, followed by muttered cursing. Nobody wants to get his or her
carefully picked tree home only to discover it has transformed itself overnight
into the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. One year we had a tree for only two days
when all of the needles fell off overnight. A second tree had to be purchased
immediately and my mom and I were dragged along on the arctic expedition a
second time. We were poor and frugal, and neither parent could bear to throw
anything away, so the tree without needles was duly decorated too, and that
year we had two trees: one green and the other brown.
Another
year we bought a drunken tree by mistake. Dad repeatedly sawed the stump and
tried to make it stand straight, but the derelict tree had other ideas. One day
it would lean to the right, only to lurch to the left the following day. We
finally attached wires to the damn thing and it finally stood still.
Barring any further disasters, Dad began the process
of sitting and looking at the tree, thoughtfully smoking his pipe. Several days
would pass until the possibilities for trimming would speak to him. Then one
afternoon the boxes of lights and antique German ornaments would begin to pile
up in the living room. Dad always put the lights on himself. Mom and I were
only allowed to help place the ornaments. These had to be coordinated with the
many color lights so that each set each other off ‘just so.’ Trimming the tree
was a task that could not be hurried and took two or even three days, but the
result was spectacular!
Christmas to my father was all about the tree,
decorations, Old World carols, smoked sausage, presents, and tales about the
German Christmas of his youth in Milwaukee during the depression. I never
really put my fingers on it, but this elaborate holiday preparation seemed to
be in compensation for something missing in his youth, or simply a supreme
desire to recreate his happiest memories. Whatever the reasons, Dad sure knew
how to make Christmas an occasion which memories are made of. Despite his
threat every year to “Ruin Christmas,” he did the opposite. He made it joyous.
If you wonder what my mother was doing all this
time, I can sincerely say that although she cared about the holiday of
Christmas, this overblown preparation was not her cup of tea. Of course, she
had to provide for Christmas, dad being chronically out of work, so in reality
it was all her doing. She would sit on our couch near the tree with a cocktail
and cigarette after dinner for awhile with my dad, but was often too busy with
other things to “Come and enjoy the lights” all the time as my dad often
scolded. We couldn’t just turn the lights on when we wished either. Dad
controlled the turning on and off of any Christmas lights. They only were
allowed to be turned on after dark. It was my job however, to climb under the
tree to plug in the lights when directed. This “Enjoy the lights” thing began
on December 26th, and ran until the second week of January when the
tree finally was dismantled. I couldn’t get enough of the tree and decorations.
I would sit for hours in the evenings near or under the magnificent tree
looking at the colors, reflections, and the ornaments. Christmas is the
greatest time of a boy’s life.
Of course, there were the near disasters that any
holiday might bring on. One year we had several of my parent’s friends over for
cocktails. One of the guests sat near the tree and kept gesticulating wildly as
he talked and consumed my mom’s lethal martinis, causing the tree to shake. Dad
was on pins and needles. Sure enough when the tipsy guest tried to get up, he
toppled toward the tree and had to be saved by dad.
With a live tree, there was always a chance for
fire, and Dad told me stories of ‘the old days’ when trees were lit with
candles and fires were common. To this purpose, we always kept a bucket of
water handy near the tree. If the tree did catch fire, at least the bucket
would give us something to do while we watched the living room go up in flames.
Another year
we started a fire in our fireplace on Christmas Eve, as was our tradition. This
was the first fire of the year for us, and the chimney had somehow gotten
clogged with something. Despite increasingly desperate manipulation of the
flue, the house slowly filled with thick smoke. I remember being terrified. Dad
sent me outside to see if any smoke was coming out of the chimney, and as I
watched, the chimney disgorged several frantic and smoldering squirrels whose
winter home now lay in ashes.
My mother loved company and to socialize. The
holidays were the time to invite family and friends over for cocktails. This
social aspect is what I think my Mom liked best about Christmas. Dealing with
the beginnings of Dad’s increasing neurosis without anything to guide her, and
raising a son while working full time, she looked to others to help keep her
sanity. Over the years, her attempts at holding small social gatherings were a
success, but with a cost. The very escape mechanism of hosting guests often
caused increased anxiety in my father in the preparations for the event.
Christmas was always an occasion for my Uncle, Bill
Schafer to come to dinner and help us celebrate the season. Bill was my
father’s older half-brother and a bachelor. He was always incredibly kind to
me. I called him “Ocaboo”, doing my best to pronounce his name (Uncle Bill …
Ocaboo see?)
Ocaboo was a somewhat tragic figure. He had spent
several years in an institution. In the 1950s psychiatry was not yet a
compassionate profession, and people who today would be treated as outpatients were
routinely locked away. Ocaboo held a job with a flower wholesaler and drove a
delivery route. He had a company van and was often persuaded to drive our
car-less family here or there. He had a troubled childhood, and in an attempt
at discipline, my Grandfather had beaten him regularly. He had a curious way of
eating his dessert before the main course of dinner, which was a habit left
over from the days of the institution. Like dogs, the patients would wolf the
best food right away before it was taken away or stolen from them. Following
the completion of his meal, which he usually finished in less than 30 seconds,
he pushed his plate away from him. This habit always drove my dad nuts.
My parents were always glad to have Ocaboo as a
guest as he had nothing to speak of as his own, and after my Grandparents and
my Uncle Franklin moved to Florida, no nearby family other than us. He always
had gifts for us, especially me, although he must have earned pitiful wages.
The problem with Ocaboo was that after imbibing a few drinks he would start to
talk of vast conspiracies and wax poetic on his fractured views of the world.
Usually he retired to a local tavern after this to the relief of my parents.
One of the stories from my dad’s childhood I
remember well. There was an older man in my dad’s (German) neighborhood that
played the German Santa-Claus or Weinacht’s Man. He traveled throughout the
neighborhood on Christmas Eve dressed in costume visiting households with
children, and dispensing gifts that he bought with his own money. Keep in mind
that this was the great depression; everything was hard to come by, and every
penny was precious. At each stop, the grateful parents would insist that he
stay a moment for a quick glass of schnapps. By the time he got to my dad’s
house, he had had a snootfull. As he appeared in his costume, now sort of askew
and disheveled, and cried out “Schone Weinacht” to the three children, he fell
down the stairs, landing on his bag of gifts. Imagine as a kid actually seeing
Santa in your house, only to
have him drunkenly tumble down the stairs and land in front of you in a heap.
What makes the story touching and not just comic is the fact that the man was a
widower who lived alone, and had buried his only son years before. The boy had
died near Christmas when only six years old and the old man never got over the
loss. In compensation, he had adopted the entire neighborhood.
Back in that evening of 1974, my parents relaxed for
a while after dinner while I was sent to my room for a short nap. (Both so that
I calmed down enough, and so that Santa Clause could come). Dad was a genius
when it came to dramatizing and choreographing the coming of Santa. I would be
downstairs playing when from the second floor a stomping and ringing of sleigh
bells was heard. Dad would come running down the stairs shouting that he
thought he heard Santa. I would go tearing up the stairs to see if I could spot
any reindeer on the roof, giving Mom time to quickly remove the presents from
their hiding spot and arrange them under the tree. It all seemed like magic,
but of course, I was easily deceived. After awhile the scene was ready, and we
gathered around the tree to open presents. I don’t know what else I got that
year, but the big box was saved for last. I tore the wrapping paper off and
found an electric train set complete with engine, boxcars, and a cool
maintenance car with a working crane. It had a round track and a box of
telegraph poles, signs and miscellaneous accessories. I couldn’t wait to play
with it.
After singing carols around the piano, Dad and I
went upstairs to set up the train. Now most people would have set it up in a
craft room or basement, but Dad chose his bedroom floor. I guess I was deemed
not responsible enough to have it in my own room right away. We got it working
and I probably played with it for an hour or so before going back downstairs to
the family Christmas. Mom and Dad were well into cocktails by that time and
later we went to midnight mass at the Newman center across the street.
The next morning I went into Dad’s bedroom to play
with the train. Dad was snoring away. The train sat on the track kind of
‘funny’ and many of the cars were separated. Then I noticed that several of the
cars were crushed and had been carefully glued together. Of course, it was easy
to see what had happened. Dad had come up to go to bed and in the habitual
darkness of his bedroom, had trod on the poor train, crushing it on his way to
turn on the bedside lamp. I am sure I was angry at the time, but now I just think
of the time and care he took staying up all night to glue each piece back
together, especially after a night of cocktails. He must have felt terrible as
he squinted in the basement work area trying to figure out where each piece
went. The train still ran, but it now it had a history that I always would
remember.
My parents always spent time picking out just the
right gifts for me. It was quality over quantity. Instead of the latest
must-have plastic trash advertised on children’s shows, I received wooden
erector sets from Austria, castle building sets from Spain, and toys generally
designed to enhance the mind and allow a single child to play alone for hours
on end. The one Christmas gift that I still have was my first ever. It was
Christmas Eve of 1965, and my dad was roped into attending an office Christmas
cocktail party after work. Much beer was consumed until he looked at his watch
with an exclamation, realizing that by now most of the stores were closed, and
he had yet to get a gift for me. He scoured Wisconsin Avenue in hopes of the
luck of an open shop. Boston Store had stayed open late that year and he
hurried in to try to save the situation. As he searched the toy department, he
spied a small white stuffed doggie with big soft eyes and a little black nose.
“Eureka!” He must have thought with profound relief. As he told it, my eyes lit
up like candles at the sight of that little doggie, and it was my favorite gift
that year, my first Christmas. My parents used to bring the dog out and sit it
in a little chair of its own as a kind of decoration in later years. By then
the dog, which had seen a lot of love and drool, had clumps of hair missing and
one leg was taped up.
In the early 1990s, after Dad started to get his
social security payments, the whole Christmas epic on Downer Avenue became even
grander and more over the top. Literally hundreds of unlit candles and holders,
little figurines, and plastic holly were attached to every square-inch of the
house. With the garlands of faux pine surrounding every room entryway, it was
getting crowded and hard to move. One evening my Uncle Charles and Aunt Carol
were over, when my mom, who was by that time connected to an oxygen tank due to
emphysema, slowly made her way to the bathroom on the second floor, trailing
the oxygen hose behind her. The hose kept getting fouled on the garlands that
spiraled up the staircase railing, thus impeding her progress. My dad saw this
and in his typical fashion said to my mom “You are ruining the decorations with
that oxygen hose!” One of us commented “ That’s OK Fritz, she will be dead soon
and then she won’t ruin your garlands.”
Christmas dinner was one of the special times when
my dad often prepared the repast. Far from my mothers simple and wonderful
cooking, my dad always made a huge production of holiday dinners. We often had
goose or duck, which had to specially selected and prepared. The talk about the
fowl would finally drive my mom to the limits of her patience, and she would
give in. We would traipse to the local butchers looking for the right bird. The
search and the preparation were similar to the Christmas tree in that the final
product was fit for an Epicurean feast, but the stress and buildup to the
dinner often spoiled our appetite. One year Dad made Beef Wellington. This is a
traditional Anglo-French dish of beef roast covered elaborately in puff pastry
strips. Something went wrong with the pastry and he started the anxiety and
blaming. Of course, it was somehow my fault or my mother’s, or that he had the
“wrong tools” for the job. The resulting mummy-like roast was delicious, but
eaten in total silence.
On
another occasion, we were to have dinner guests several days after Christmas.
They were to arrive at 7:00 p.m. Around the time they were supposed to arrive, Dad
started his pacing. The hour grew later as 7 o’clock turned to 7:30, then to 8,
then 8:30. By now, Dad was furious and put the roast in the oven on broil. By
the time the guests arrived at 9 o’clock, the roast was charred and black. Dad
served it to them anyway out of spite.
In the 1970s in Milwaukee it started snowing
sometime after Thanksgiving and usually didn’t stop until March. We nearly
always had a white Christmas. Houses during the holidays kind of glow with
warmth when viewed from outside, and ours always seemed the warmest.
The music that surrounded our Christmas on Downer
was very traditional. We often sang carols while Dad played the piano, or
listened to several LPs of choral groups with Christmas themes. Milwaukee was
blessed to have an excellent classical music station in the 1970s, WFMR. The
station would broadcast carols and sacred music full time starting early on
Christmas Eve and going throughout Christmas Day. Favorites included the carols
sung in German such as ‘Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen’. I never was exposed to
the horrors of jazzed up holiday music until much later. There was no ‘Rockin‘
round the Xmas tree’ in our house. Till this day, I consider being forced to
listen to horrible holiday music as possibly the worst form of torture
imaginable. Far from luring me into stores, it instead drives me screaming out
the door. Perhaps if I had grown up with it, it may have been different, but I
doubt that. Christmas in the Helm family was about sublime beauty. Bad music
didn’t fit in to that.
Another activity I miss about Christmas as a child
in Milwaukee was going to the Gimbels department store downtown to look at
their window displays. These featured a snowy North Pole landscape populated by
elves in various stages of making toys. Some of the elves were animated, and as
a child, I thought they were real. The scenes seemed to go on forever, and
later were moved to their basement and expanded. When Gimbels closed its doors
Milwaukee lost a Christmas treasure.
Christmas is indeed the best time in a child’s life,
but it is short lived. The wide eyes and joy on the face of a child as he or
she rips open every package under the tree, and the smiles of parents knowing
that they had succeeded in making Christmas special are at their zenith only
while a child has faith in Santa Claus, and is delighted with everything. When
the child begins to get choosy about specific toys and moody when he or she
doesn’t get them, some of the magic dies. Luckily for us, Dad made the holiday
such a pageant that it was always special.
