A View of My Favorite Christmas Stories - Day 7

Okay, I know I promised to tell the story of how Puddy Tat, my dearly departed kitty, took out the tabletop tree I had bought the first Christmas after my divorce back in 1995.

He looks mean, but Puddy Tat was a very sweet cat...
until he had to take a Christmas tree down....

And when I say he took it out, he trashed that tree like it had insulted his mother and took the last of his catnip. It was hanging by a cord of lights, and I was finding little decorations under furniture and in corners for months after the tree had met its demise.

A View of My Favorite Christmas Stories - Day 6

When Christmas decorations are done with taste and restraint, there is nothing more beautiful. When Christmas decorations aren't, it's a spectacle that has to be seen to be believed.

(This picture is from the blog, "Roadside Curiosities.")

A View of My Favorite Christmas Stories - Day 5

The cry that came from the dining room was one that sent a chill through Mom...a chill deeper and colder than the winds that stirred the snow in the yard that Christmas night.

"LORETTA! COME HERE! WHAT ARE ALL THESE LITTLE THINGS UP HERE?"

My stepfather was a very tough, resilient man. Not much scared or confounded him. That Christmas night, those...those...things in the living room made him call out for help.

A View of My Favorite Christmas Stories - Day 4

There once was a woman who lived on her own in an old brick house. Her companions were two older cats; one a stray she'd raised from a kitten, the other she adopted from a shelter when he was six because he was not only adorable, but he was the oldest cat in the sanctuary at the time. Some people jokingly called her a "crazy cat lady," because she was single with two cats, but she didn't like that label because it felt like a backhanded compliment or an old cliche, and she was no Eleanor Abernathy.

A View of My Favorite Christmas Stories - Day 3

Mom and Dad loved each other very much. Trouble was, they just couldn't live together very well. After years of trying, they finally separated in 1974. Mom, Deb, and I moved in with my grandmother, Dad got an apartment not too far away, and we all got used to the new domestic tranquility.

One of the greatest gifts Mom and Dad ever gave my sister and I was that they never argued in front of us, and they went out of their way to make sure we understood that just because they weren't together, it didn't mean that they weren't going to be there for us. There was no drama over visitation rights, or alternating holidays, or restricted visits because they were angry at each other. The only fight I remember witnessing between them, as a matter of fact, was that first Christmas after the separation.

And that fight was a doozy. It lasted for days, but Deb and I only saw the end of it.

A View of My Favorite Christmas Stories - Day 2

Remember how I said my sister Debbie loved Christmas, loved Barbie dolls, and hated surprises? Well this story combines all of these facts with a double shot of Cream Sherry.

When she was about six or seven, Debbie really wanted a Barbie Dream House.



A View of My Favorite Christmas Stories - A Christmas Bonus

I once wrote a poem that has a line, "It always comes, the call, at the most awkard time."

This picture is from the website, "A Fresh Chapter,"
by Terri Wingham. It chronicles her travels around the world after being
diagnosed with cancer. It's a great site worth checking out.

Today, that call came at 5:30 in the morning. When the phone rang, it took me a couple of seconds to get myself together, then a couple of seconds to actually find the receiver. When I finally picked up the phone, the caller had hung up. I looked on the caller ID and saw it was my neighbor, Fana.*

A View of My Favorite Christmas Stories - Day 1

(Some of these stories will be touching. Some, like today's story, will be a bit twisted. All of them will be true.)

My sister Debbie loved playing with dolls, but she didn't have much love for black dolls. Now this was back in the early 1970's, when black dolls were usually white dolls painted to look black. They usually had too large lips that were too pink, Weird colored eyes that bugged out, and cheeks stamped with circles of rouge that looked like red polka dots. If they had hair, it was either molded to their heads, or weirdly textured so it couldn't be combed or styled.

In other words, they were ugly dolls. And my sister did not like ugly. She wanted a doll that looked like her.

A View of Nativity Scenes

(For Bianca Jones, the Skelton brothers, and all the missing babies.)

Neighbors placed a Nativity scene in the front yard,
nestled the Holy Family in a baby’s playhouse,
a Crayola colored crèche festooned with strings of lights
to keep Baby Jesus, Joseph, and Mary safe from the elements.
“Bless them,” I say when I see it with a chuckle and a smile.
Bless them for doing the best they can with what they have.