Okay, so I haven’t written a blahg since before Halloween. 
I have been busy people. You will notice however there is a new picture of me to the right that was taken by my friend Tom a couple of weeks ago at the nighttime Santa Claus Parade in Belleville, Ontario. It was cold and Tom was annoying with his camera. Not a bad picture though.
So now we move past Halloween and on to Christmas. Today is the second day of December and I’ve been thinking a lot about old Christmas memories. It really started with my daughter Abbie and I trying to come to an understanding about Christmas and her Birthday. 
Her Birthday is December 16th and so she gets presents on her Birthday and nine days later on Christmas. This year she told us she didn’t want us buying anything for her for her Birthday or Christmas. She didn’t really have a good reason but when pressed I think she thought we were one step from the Poor House. That’s her on the left, walking for her school in the Belleville Parade (another picture courtesy of Tom).
We had some fine arguments about her stance on the no presents situation but finally I boiled it down to the giving versus getting philosophy. She’s the one that brought it up first and insisted it should be about the giving and not the getting. I agreed with her and stressed that it was about the giving for me. Every year I try to find something nice or rare that my children have mentioned over the year and that I’ve filed away in my brain. It’s a nice thing I enjoy doing and I didn’t want Abbie taking that away from me by saying she didn’t want anything. She understood my point and how important this was for me. Not a great memory getting to that agreement but it did remind me of other memories of Christmas past.
I don’t recall what was my earliest memory of Christmas but I do recall a lot of snow filled winters. One of my favorite Christmas memories was one year when I was about ten years old. That Christmas, my older brothers Tim, Todd, and I all received new toboggans. They might have been Krazy Karpets for all I remember. You remember Krazy Karpets. I thin sheet of plastic between you and the ground that went at breakneck speed with no brakes for trees other children. Check out this video below for an original commercial from the 1970s for the Krazy Karpet:
That was a fun digression from the story. Getting back to the memory, we received some form of sled for Christmas and late in the day, after Christmas dinner, we took our sleds to Vinegar Hill. Now Vinegar Hill was a reputable toboggan hill in our neighbourhood. I don’t remember why it was called Vinegar Hill but some quick online research reveals that it is near where the Belleville Fruit and Vinegar Company operated in 19th Century. The toboggan run was actually a series of backyards on a hill. It was surrounded on four sides by houses but the hill part was long and there were no trees. We tobogganed well into the evening and I remember the moon was out and it was snowing. 
I don’t think I’d spent a better Christmas Night as a child. Years later, the houses at the bottom of the hill erected a fence along their back property lines and cut the hill in half. So much for Vinegar Hill.
Jump ahead a few years and I’m 13 or 14. The Belleville Santa Claus Parade is looking for people to wear costumes and walk in the parade. My brother Todd and I stand in line outside of the old police station for over an hour to get a costume to wear in the parade. 
I don’t remember what Todd ended up with but when I finally go through the line, I was stuck with a giant Papier-mâché clown head. My head bobbled loose inside and there was no red cape left to cover my winter coat. The picture at left gives you the idea of what size these heads were like. I have no actual pictures of that parade but it was exciting to walk the parade route and try to keep that head balanced on my head with one hand and wave with the other.
The following year, Todd and I were determined to get better costumes. This time we had to stand out front of the Belleville Armory in a crowd of other kids until one of the organizers pointed you out in the crowd and allowed you in to pick a costume. There seemed to be no organization and after not being chosen a few times, I located a loose brick from the Armory and removed it to stand on. I stood a half head taller than most of the other boys. It did the trick and Todd and I were the next ones chosen to enter the Armory. When we got inside we noticed a line of other young people, the previous chosen ones, lined up along one of the Armory walls. We didn’t know we were meant to join the end of the line so we just went to the head of the line and entered a roped off area where they kept the costumes. Nobody questioned us. 
In the costume area we saw those Papier-mâché heads but we were determined to avoid those. Luckily we immediately spotted Batman and Robin costumes. Score! I didn’t get to be Batman but I was just as happy with Robin. These were the classic 60s style Batman and Robin costumes to boot! We gave our names and address and walked away with the prize of our youth. On the day of the parade, we were lined up behind some float next to a young woman in a Catwoman costume. We jumped and tumbled along the parade route and were hugged and adored by all of the children. Batman and Robin trumps a big head any day.
I don’t remember any more special memories from my teenage years but I’ll add a not so great memory from around that time I was ten years old. My Mom and Dad would always wrap a few presents ahead of time and place them under the Christmas tree to tempt us to be good. They didn’t always tell us which present belonged to a particular child of us six children. I remember that year there was a very large and heavy rectangular present under the tree that we all hoped would belong to each of us in turn. Before the Christmas holidays I got into a fight at school with some older boys. I didn’t start the fight nor did I end it. We were all playing king of the hill where you climb on top a big snow pile and try to stay on top and be crowned the King. I remember I was knocked down by Terry Moon who was the bane of my brother Todd’s existence. They hated each other and of course Terry Moon hated all of Todd’s siblings for no good reason other than being related. I wasn’t stupid enough to try and go after Moon when he knocked me down but he jumped down off the pile and started to pummel me regardless. Soon three of his buddies joined in and they lay down a good beating on me. I was covered in snow and snot was coming out of my nose profusely. I was crying quite a bit and no one came to my aid. The beating only stopped when the school bell rang for the end of recess.
After the beating was over, a young friend of mine helped me up and I went to the washroom to clean up. This friend must have told a teacher because I soon found myself whisked to the Principal’s office to tell what happened. Between sobs, I told my story and gave up Moon and his cronies. They were hauled down to the office where they all laid out a yarn about how I had attacked them and had fallen in the snow on my own. They all said they hadn’t laid a hand on me. Mr. Post, the idiot Principal, chose to believe them over me. I had no witnesses of my own in that office. To say I was shocked or indignant was to say the least. I couldn’t believe that idiot Principal. I let into him with a verbal tirade of swear words the like of which he had probably never heard before or since from a ten year old. I was suspended immediately for one day. That wouldn’t have been so bad but when I got home and told my mother about my berating of the Principal and of my suspension, she informed me the large present under the tree was mine and if I didn’t go back to school the next day and apologize to Mr. Post then it would be given to one of my siblings. I should have called her bluff but a big present to a ten year was powerful stuff. I returned to school the next day and made the apology. I don’t recall much about the apology but I can tell you I was secretly insincere. The big present turned out to be an aquarium. The aquarium is long gone but in my fantasy Mr. Post was fired in disgrace and Terry Moon and his cronies all ended up in jail later in life or are dead. Merry Christmas!
What’s next? I have great memories of Christmas with my wife and children. I don’t think I’ll write about those today. Maybe another time. Christmas memories always contain music in my recollection. I’m a sucker for great Christmas music and I begin listening to it early on in November. I remember one January, yes January, Bryan and I put together a radio show of all of the great Winter or Snow songs that cease to be played after Christmas. Why is that? Many of the songs like “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow” “Winter Wonderland” and “Jingle Bells” don’t even mention Christmas. This was why Bryan and I put together that radio special. Here’s one of the songs that we included. It’s Bing Crosby singing Hoagy Carmichael’s “The White World of Winter”:
I think that’s it for today. I’m going to get busy over the next few weeks leading up to Christmas as we are going to be finally moving my parents into their new home around December 18th. I’m hoping to find some time to knock out another blahg before then and I’ll post pictures of my Christmas decorations and yard display and hopefully post a new short story I’m working on. I’ll leave you with another beautiful Winter song sung this time by Frank Sinatra. This one is his version of “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow” from his Songs By Sinatra radio show of December 25th, 1946. A world and age ago for this version but it’s beautiful and it’s a sentiment I’m looking forward to. Let it snow.