The Silver Ladle

 

The house where Santa Claus came on Christmas Eve when I was growing up was situated beside a lane on a street with a bit of a hill. Whenever a snowstorm came blasting out of the north, the street would more often than not, be closed. And if school was closed too, that street would become crowded with kids and sleds and toboggans. It was a great place to live when just a youngster and the place I look back upon fondly when thinking of hanging my Christmas stocking with my brother on the taped-together, heavy cardboard fireplace our parents brought down from the attic a few weeks before Christmas. We loved the fireplace. It looked real once the flames were plugged in. The flickering effect for some reason made me feel warm and cozy. Sitting on the black cardboard mantle in the same spot every year were a plastic Santa and Snowman. Once turned on, they’d light up. The snowman became a green or blue or red snowman-depending on the little bulb my mother chose.

We always had a real tree. It always sat in the same corner of the front room. My mother insisted. She was a perfectionist when it came to decorating it after my father strung the lights. The smallest ornaments would be hung at the top. The bigger decorations, most of them bought at a local hardware store or Woolworth’s, filled-in the middle and bottom of the tree. Then each branch would be covered in heavy tinsel making it look like something out of a magazine. The decorating of the tree was a tradition-just like my grandparents and aunt joining us for Christmas Eve dinner.

They always came in through the side porch which sat alongside the lane. My grandfather would nudge his old Ford truck as close to the house as possible. They used that particular door to bring in presents-some my brother and I weren’t supposed to see. Years later I figured out my mother hid those presents on the porch until Santa came down the cardboard chimney long after midnight mass and long after we’d gone to bed-but not to sleep.

 It was a sight, seeing my aunt with her long hair and red lipstick bounding into the kitchen loaded down with the gifts that needed to be placed under the tree. My grandfather followed carrying homemade pies and breads. But it was what my grandmother carried that instilled in me a feeling of tradition even though I didn’t know such a word existed or such a feeling had a name.  Despite the fact that you couldn’t eat it or play with it or wear it or the fact that it didn’t have bells or whistles, what my grandmother carried into our home was the one thing that never changed. It was a constant. It simply was-a silver ladle wrapped inside a deep-blue velvet bag with strings that you’d pull to keep it secure. It was a custom for my grandmother to bring that sparkling heirloom to Christmas Eve dinner in the house that sat by the lane. My mother would always make oyster broth and it was the silver ladle that served the soup into china bowls sitting on a linen tablecloth that had been in the family for as long as my grandmother could remember.

It’s not the gifts or the parties that are remembered long after the tree is down and thoughts turn to spring. It’s traditions, linking one Christmas to the next and one generation to another, that remain forever in a family’s tapestry. To some it was just a silver ladle. To me it was the silver ladle in the deep-blue velvet bag brought to Christmas Eve dinner.