Allow me to share with you the reasons why Christmas was always my most special holiday. During my childhood years, my mother and thus I were very poor with respect to income and worldly possessions. My first memory of the holiday was a single room in an illegal dwelling in Manhattan, soon followed by a “swank” single-bedroom apartment in a low-income New York City housing development, called a project (a term I never fully understood even to this day).
Each December, the season was enhanced by my mother taking me to Macy’s sixth-floor toy department to enjoy the myriad of playthings which I could never own. These trips, as I recall, took place during my fifth through 12th years of life, and I could select one or two of the hundreds of items, and include the name and/or description of said toy in my letter to Santa Claus.
Of interest to me every visit was the display of electric trains manufactured by both Lionel and American Flyer. Yes, poverty destined me to be a believer in the white man in a red-and-white suit with reindeer pets for more years than most children. I knew there was no way my mother could afford to procure the toy of my choice on her own, so there absolutely was (as is the case with Virginia) a Santa Claus. The Christmas when Santa brought me my first and only Lionel train set was especially poignant. To this day, I have no idea how that feat was accomplished.
The Christmas season for Mom and me always began with a trip to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Midday Mass at St. Francis of Assisi Church on 32nd Street, and then dinner at “Aunt” Stella’s house. I saw many a parade in the 1950s, not to mention learning the most polite of maneuvering skills to place myself right at the police line to see the balloons, floats and celebrities.
One year, unfortunately, my mother took ill at St. Francis Church and had to be rushed by ambulance to St. Vincent’s Hospital on 11th Street. I recall the ride through the hospital’s tunnel to this day with me grasping Mom’s handbag. Somehow, I did eventually still have dinner with Aunt Stella, who lived in Brooklyn, by the way.
Let us return to Christmas at the Carter household of two, which always started with a special breakfast. Special meant there was more than Cream of Wheat being served that morning, probably even bacon and eggs or pancakes. The preceding evening, I served as an altar boy (you can google that term on your own) for the Midnight Mass at the local Catholic parish. Thus, the birth of Christ and Santa Claus were safely woven into the fabric of my holiday memories.
Also of importance to my mother was the purchase of a real Christmas tree. This was quite an event, which occurred usually three or so days before Christmas to ensure the best possible small tree at the lowest possible price. Too bad there was no YouTube at the time, because the five-minute negotiation session between two immigrants – the tree guy from Italy and the customer from Trinidad – was priceless.
We decorated the tree together, and Mom insisted on precision and balance with respect to the ornaments. Obedience was the basis of my childhood years, and so those ornaments and the tinsel were placed just so, plus I somehow equated good tree trimming to the accurate filling of my request to Santa.
As we anticipate Christmas, let me bring you back from the low-income housing project in Brooklyn (where I finally got my own room, by the way), to the Cape Region shores of the Atlantic which we all now call home. We have our own parades, some even on watercraft, and then there is Schellville, our own little miracle from Preston and Chris. Many of our communities are gaily decorated by their residents, and the Tanger Outlets holiday decor has been beckoning to us for weeks. Rehoboth Avenue, Second Street and Federal Street remind us that it’s Christmas time at the beach, in Lewes, and in Milton.
From what was to what is, this columnist wishes each and every one of his readers a very Merry Christmas, or whatever is your particular religious or ethnic holiday at this time of year. Let us continue to be kind to one another as we enter 2023.
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Peter E. Carter is a former public school administrator who has served communities in three states as a principal, and district and county superintendent, for 35-plus years. He is a board member for Delaware Botanic Gardens and Cape Henlopen Educational Foundation, and the author of a dual autobiography, “A Black First…the Blackness Continues.”
