Winters of the past

As we embrace, as much as we can these days, a new holiday season, my mind returns to winters past. The words simple and innocent come to mind, as clear as a cold blue winter sky. Christmas, the time of red and green, came only after the autumn leaf-tinted hues of Thanksgiving.

As a once-upon-a-time art teacher, my favorite chore was creating the seasonal bulletin boards. Pilgrims and turkeys gave way to Christmas trees and reindeer; then came the blue construction paper backdrops with white snowmen which always gave me a chill after returning from the warmth of the Christmas holiday break.

Let's return to Christmas and childhood! I always looked forward to being called to the auditorium for the short holiday film featuring Santa stopping for a break and chugging down a bottle of Coca-Cola. Then there was the sleigh landing on the roof of the Milton Fire Hall. We sat on Santa's knee and were rewarded with a netted see-through stocking with oranges and candy canes.

At home, we had two Christmas trees – one at each end of our house. One was pink and white, and the other a live green one that my mother would ice like a cake with whipped Ivory Snow soap flakes. Jimmy Durante’s "Frosty the Snowman" and the more sophisticated "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" would be droning in the background. Later it would be Andy Williams with his brightly colored sweaters and his French wife, Claudine Longet, on the TV when I came home for Christmas vacation from college.

Striped red-and-white-wrapped gifts with those ribbon bows stuck on lined the perimeter of the tree. Some memorable gifts come to mind. Hand-carved wooden marionettes – one a Howdy Doody figure along with a painted stage, a planetarium that covered the darkened living room ceiling with stars, a cowgirl costume, a bike and a toy doctor's kit. A large breakfast with scrambled eggs, Milton sausage, and fried apples served on plates with a scene of a New England covered bridge would follow the gift-opening ceremony.

Christmas for me is brought back to life most quickly by the memories of various scents. The evergreen tree, the smell of a gift of Arpege perfume from Benjamin's flagship store in Salisbury, Md., and the aroma of a standing rib roast festooned with bunches of rosemary tied with string alongside potatoes in the oven for Christmas dinner.

When school resumed, the joyous surprise of waking up to a snow-brightened bedroom. Did I oversleep? No, a big snowstorm whitened the streets overnight, closing schools. A snow day – oh, boy! Back then there were no computers to transmit homework assignments. Unexpected freedom for a day or two. I dragged my wooden sled through town to Marie Lawson's house on the hill. Yes, a hill high enough for sledding in Milton!

She was not as fussy as my mother. The house was a setting where "kids were king!" A large kitchen with a big table. She had five children, four boys and one girl, Linda. A large pot of hot chocolate kept warm on the stove alongside a stack of styrofoam cups for everyone! Mittens, hats and scarves dried on a nearby radiator. Town kids tramped through with wet boots and were welcomed without hesitation even as they left puddles on the linoleum floor as they pulled the boots off to warm their feet.

Returning home to warm up in a more ordered atmosphere, I confronted the huge, mysterious heating grate on the floor in the living room. The fireplace in our 200-year-old house on Chestnut Street (back then the adjacent alley had been lined with those tall trees) was no longer used for burning wood, but heat blasted out of this one-yard-square grill with force! My grandmother used to stand on it for warmth. "My oh my," she would chant, hands stroking her apron as blasts of hot air lifted up. Another year of Bingo at the fire hall was her Christmas wish!

Sometimes I would scoop up snow and she would make snow ice cream from sugar, vanilla and milk that had cream at the top of the bottle. I would make a snow angel after this to mark my territory, with the footprints of my dog Toby in the snow around me. Snowmen lined the streets where children lived, with coal chunks or buttons for eyes, carrots for noses, scarves and old hats for their heads, and small tree branches for arms.

Yes, winter was a parade of events both planned and weather-driven, predictable and unpredictable. Ice skating on Wagamons Pond on a surprise snow day, or the calendar-proven ceremony of New Year's Eve with fireworks and the dropping of the ball at midnight.

Cabbage Patch Kids dolls have given way to iPhones. Black Friday campouts at big-box stores have gone their way. Now the UPS truck is the modern-day Santa's sleigh, but Old Man Winter will still come with the solstice.