Holidaze 12/30/21

Angelique and I wish you a Happy New Year--happier than 2021, anyway.

Holidaze 12/14/20

An oldie, but a goodie: Angelique, atop the living room lamp at La Casa del Terror.

Holidaze 12/4/18

I know I've posted this photo before, but it's worth another look, especially since its subject, Angelique, is one of the few survivors from La Casa del Terror. This year? She'll be making an appearance in the workspace. Look for her soon.

The Christmas Tree

I don't put up my Christmas tree every year. In fact, I can't remember the last time I put it up. Usually, I just put Grandma's little lighter tree in the living room window and a few decorations around the apartment and call it good.

This year? I wanted the tree up.

2014 has been a rotten year from one end to the other. I lost my job in March. Spent most of the year flat broke. Won't be able to buy presents for anyone this year--the first time in my adult life that that's happened. And that doesn't even count the deaths of friends and family. So I decided that my Christmas spirit would need as much stoking as possible. Hence, the tree.

Granted, it's not a very big tree--just a three-foot artificial pine--and the ornaments and decorations are a mixed bag of remnants from various holiday celebrations past. Some are leftovers from Grandma's collection, including Angelique near the top of the tree. Others are thrift store finds. A bunch are from Hallmark or Target (in my neighborhood, they're right next door to each other). Still others were picked up on eBay (back when I could afford to shop on eBay). And a couple were picked up during Uncle Fun's going-out-of-business sale.

I had the tree set up before leaving for dinner at Mom's house Thanksgiving Day and had it decorated by the time I went to bed last night. It's a work in progress--I usually fiddle with the tree for a few days after putting it up, and I always see more bald spots on it than anyone else does--but the living room already feels brighter.

Holidaze 12/24/13

It wouldn't be the Holidaze without an appearance from Angelique.

The Boys Beneath the TV

Lined up beneath the TV screen are several vintage figures collected from various places. The one on the left is the newest, found at kitschy toy store Uncle Fun a couple of weeks ago. The rest were picked up either from the long-gone Wonderland Multivintage--the same place where the aluminum tree and the Angels Three came from--or were found amongst Grandma's Christmas decorations (as was Angelique.

These Angels Three

Angelique is not the only ancient angelic ornament on display this year at La Casa del Terror. In addition to her twin sister (on another shelf in the living room), there are these three little ladies that I found at a long-gone second-hand store in Wicker Park--the very same store, in fact, where I found the aluminum tree.

They all date back to the same era as Angelique (somewhere in the late 1940s or early 1950s) and are in pretty decent shape except for the one on the right, who apparently had a rough life before landing in my hands--she was intact, but had no face. Even though I possess virtually no artistic skills, I still managed to draw a passable, pleasant expression on her face and place her and her little friends in a well-lit corner of La Casa del Terror.

Holidaze: 12/9/11

Angelique makes her annual appearance, bathed in early morning light while atop my intercom.

The Christmas Stocking

I violated one of my hard-and-fast rules this week: I put up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving.

I justified the rules violation thusly--for one thing, we have fewer days between Turkey Day and Santa's sleigh this year than normal (less than a month), so the decorations won't be up for long anyway; for another, I needed the emotional boost that colored lights and shiny glass globes can sometimes give.

So I rummaged through the closets and brought out some of the Christmas things. Not all of them--I have more ornaments and garland and lights and figurines than I could ever display at one time anyway, but this year I didn't want to do anything intricate or sprawling. Something (relatively) simple for the living room windows would suffice.

When I was finished, the sills were filled with decorations acquired from various places:

A porcelain white pine tree found at the Brown Elephant, a second-hand store in Boystown (it didn't come with a light, but I borrowed one from a Halloween skull);

Two ceramic angels from Marshall's, one with a broken halo (I've always thought that's exactly the kind of guardian angel I'd get);

A very Seussian Grinch doll from a Hallmark store;

A tin snowman tealight holder from a former workplace (the company was moving and he was being thrown out, so...);

A plush snowman from Walgreens;

Peppermint Kitty, a gift from a then-supervisor that I actually liked;

A large, well-articulated, flocked Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer found at Quake, the best toy store on the whole planet;

A spiral, chrome-plated tealight tree bought at a Walgreens while on the way to take care of Dee's kitty, the fabulous Gigi, while Dee was in Hawaii doing the AIDS marathon a few years back;

And, of course, the little fake pine that graced Grandma's living room window for many years and has graced mine for nearly as long (about 30 years in all, I'd guesstimate).

I also set up a few decorations that only I can see, like a ceramic Christmas tree bought at the same Brown Elephant as the white porcelain one, the glittery angel VB gave me last year, and Angelique, the little ornament that usually sits atop my tree, but since I'm not going through the bother of setting the 3-foot-tall faux pine this year, she's resting on my TV, keeping watch over the scene.

A couple of the internal decorations, though, were hung with, I must confess, some reluctance.

I don't remember when exactly I started hanging Christmas stockings for myself and the Girlish Girls. I know I didn't put one up for Lottie, so it must have been sometime after she died five years ago. In the bag in the closet, there were three not-so-neatly-folded stockings, all bought in different years from the same Target. The forest green one was Olivia's. The corduroy one with the embroidered snowflake was mine. And the burgundy one with the white trim and dangling balls? That one belonged to Ms. Christopher.

It's been just over a month since that sad morning when I woke up early, played Christopher the Johnny Cash/Fiona Apple version of "Bridge Over Troubled Water," took the slow cab ride through rush-hour snarl and, in the small examination room at the vet, softly told her that it was okay, she'd put up a good fight but it was over now and it was okay, she could let go now. And before the vet had a chance to administer a second "just to be sure" injection, she checked Christopher's pulse one more time and found there was no need for that second injection. She had let go.

It might as well have been yesterday, though. I still expect to see her come around the corner in the morning for her tin of Friskies. I still her her clawing at the side of the box spring, asking to be lifted to the bed. I still see her at the dining room window, resplendant in the afternoon sun. I still miss her. Olivia does too, after her own fashion. She stopped looking for Chris after the first couple of days, but is all over me when I come home in the evenings, especially after I've been gone for a long time at work or out shoping or whatever. She's lonely without me, but when I settle in to eat dinner or watch Svengoolie; she keeps me company, and I do the same for her.

I decided not to hang my own stocking--not much I expect to find in it this year, though my Amazon wishlist has a few goodies that might well fit and would certainly be welcome. I did hang Olivia's up where I'd put it last year--on the doorknob of one of the closets in the short hall between the living and dining rooms--but I left Christopher's stocking in storage.

It didn't look or feel right though, seeing only one stocking dangling from the doorknob like that. So out came the burgundy stocking, slung over the protruding hinge of the same door from which Oliva's dark green stocking already swung. Christopher was with me for a lot of years, and this first Christmas without her will have its hard moments. But I'm thankful for all the warmth and unconditional love she gave me all that time, and the stocking will remind me, when the sadness threatens to overwhelm me, how happy she mad me so often and how grateful I am that I had her in my life for so long.

Ms. Christopher is gone in body from La Casa del Terror and will never return (though tufts of her fur keep turning up and likely will for some time). But she's not gone in spirit. Never in spirit. And for this Christmas at least, the stocking will help me remember that.

"O Holiday Tree, O Holiday Tree..."

Last week, one of my regular readers--yes, I have more than one, smartass--asked me whether or not I intended to say anything here about the controversy over whether to say "Holiday Tree" or "Christmas Tree"--a controversy fueled by the tree at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., which, apparently, had been known as a "Holiday Tree" for the past few years, but was re-renamed a "Christmas Tree" this year (even though I didn't know its name had been changed to "Holiday Tree" in the first place).

Honestly? It hadn't even occurred to me to address the controversy here. After all, as I've mentioned here before, I haven't put up a tree for the past couple of years, though I have decorated La Casa del Terror a bit, with a plush Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, a small white bear in a red cap (which I truly don't remember ever buying or finding or getting as a present--maybe Santa dropped him off last year?), Christmas Cthulhu (bringing "tidings of despair) and, most appropriately for me, the Grinch, all lined up on the edge of one of the loveseats.

I've also got scented candles here and there--Cinnamon for the living room, Vanilla Sugar Cookie for the bathroom, Pine for the kitchen--and my oldest, most treasured ornament, Angelique, sits atop the living room lamp. Seeing her looking down on me almost pushes my worries to the back of my mind and out of my heart for a while. Almost.

But when I did put up a tree--whether one of the faux evergreens bought at a long-closed Goldblatts or the aluminum job I picked up at a now-defunct resale shop in Wicker Park, I didn't call it anything but what it was: A Christmas tree.

I understand the need to say "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" rather than "Merry Christmas" in advertisements and on cards, because not everyone celebrates the birthday of Jesus, who probably wasn't even born in wintertime (the Bible makes no mention of what time of year it is). Some friends light candles for Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, while others dance naked to herald the arrival of the Winter Solstice, and still others could not possibly care less about any of it. And I noted that George W. Bush took flak from the right wing of his own party (not for the first time this year) because the cards sent out by the White House didn't mention Christmas specifically, but put forth a more generic message--as if all the Jews, Muslims, Hindus and everyone on the President's mailing list who isn't a Christian should just suck it up and deal.

But to me, an evergreen with tinsel and beads and ornaments and lights and stars is a Christmas tree. It's specific to one holiday, to one segment of the world population inclined toward religion, even though many agnostics (like myself) and even a few athiests exchange gifts and good wishes sometime around the end of December. And it's not like that tree at the Capitol Building is is covered with Stars of David and colored glass ornaments celebrating the Seven Guiding Principles; there's nothing about it that makes it multicultural. It's a Christmas tree, an evergreen meant to represent and celebrate the everlasting of "our savior"--a tradition we appropriated from the British, who copped it from the Germans in the 19th century, who nicked it from the pagans, who associated it with rebirth and immortality.

Calling it a "Holiday Tree" rather than a "Christmas Tree" makes as much sense as calling a menorah a "Holiday Candle Holder." So unless you're a pagan who's pissed off about all the Christians who've ripped off your fertility bush, you don't have much to bitch about.

But whatever you choose to call your tree--if you have any kind of decorated tree at all--I hope this season, no matter what you call it or how you celebrate it, brings you much joy, warmth and happiness.

The Forever Tree

As I've mentioned before, Christmas Eve used to be the big present-opening day for our family, with Christmas Day reserved for visiting Grandma at her Bucktown cottage and family friends a few blocks away--family friends who owned a full-sized aluminum Christmas tree.

In my memory, the tree is huge--at least ten feet tall, with ornaments the size of 16-inch softballs and hundreds of colorfully wrapped presents for the extended family. I'm sure it wasn't anything quite so Wonkaesque in reality. It was most likely the size of an average Christmas tree--just shinier.

Since then, though, I've maintained an affection for aluminum Christmas trees, just as I maintain affection for Gardenburgers. See, there are plenty of vegetarian products manufacturers that try--try, mind you--to simulate the taste of animal flesh. And they do a fairly good job of it, too--except for products that try to mimic the flavor of beef patties. None of them quite get it right; even the best of them (Boca, probably) taste no better than the dried-out things they used to sling on deflated buns in the Ellen Mitchell Elementary School lunchroom. Gardenburgers--the original, not any of its offshoots or sub-brands--succeeds as a sandwich because it doesn't even try to imitate the flavor of beef. They merely serve as a tasty option. (Not that I'm a vegetarian; I've flirted with it many times in the past, usually because the woman I was interested in at the moment was one and I wanted whatever she liked. Yeah, I know--creepy. No wonder I could never get a date.)

I feel the same way about aluminum trees. They're not trying to be like pine trees, like so many other artificial trees do. They're metallic, man-made alternatives to evergreens and spruces, first manufactured in the late 1950s by Aluminum Specialty Company of Manitowoc, WI, and popular through the end of the next decade.

A couple of years back, it became hip to own a vintage aluminum Christmas tree. Every antique shop that had one in stock, no matter what its relative condition--some of those poor things looked like rats had been nesting in them for decades--propped it in the window with a hefty price tag conveniently turned away from the viewing public; you had to go inside and look around if you wanted to find out how much it cost.

One shop in Wicker Park, Wonderland Multivintage on Milwaukee Avenue (packed wall-to-freakin'-wall with old radios, leopard-print coats, action figures and lunchboxes) had several aluminum trees in a range of sizes, from the full-sized ones I remember to table-top models--all at prices that made my wallet clamp itself to my thigh and steadfastly refuse to come out of my pocket. Red Secretary and I were shopping along Milwaukee Avenue, looking for gifts for her parents (I believe she settled on insect-shaped tealight candle holders--I know I picked up a couple for myself), when we sidled in and looked around. One tree really caught my fancy: a four-footer with full branches and nicely textured "needles." The price, however, was not so nice: $140. Meow. (No diss intended to Wonderland Multivintage--all the aluminum trees in all the antique/vintage shops were pricey that year, no matter what the size, shape or quality.)

RS and I still came out with wicked cool stuff--old-school ornaments for me (mostly angels that matched up well with what I already had), a Burger King stuffed doll for her--but the aluminum trees all stayed behind.

I still visit Wonderland whenever I'm in the neighborhood. Sometimes, I buy. Sometimes, I don't. Usually, I just take a quick tour, realize I don't have the scratch to shop, and head back out into the cold.

The Saturday before Thanksgiving, I was having lunch at Earwax with Kaytee, who was very kindly giving me a very nice frame for my futon so that I could actually buy a--gasp--bed to sleep on. (Now, if I could just get around to shopping for a bedÉ.) Earwax, for those who don't know, is on Milwaukee Avenue--just up the street from Wonderland. And would Kaytee be interested in doing a little shopping before we stopped by her place and hauled out the futon frame? Why, of course she would! So after a few minutes of wandering along Milwaukee Avenue, we arrived at Wonderland, where the windows had been dressed in holiday style--and the aluminum tree of my fancy was still there.

There was no price tag visible--surprise!--but I wasn't sure I really wanted to know. I had already decided that I didn't really want to decorate La Casa del Terror this Christmas; after the way this year has gone, I don't feel especially festive. But as I looked at the aluminum tree in the window, I thought that it wouldn't hurt to ask. If it was still too expensive, it could stay there another year. Or two. Or four. But if it was in my price range....

Kaytee and I went in, where all of the counters at the front of the store were covered with holiday decorations: chrome-plated ornaments dangling from a rotating wire rack; boxed glass tree toppers; reindeer arranged before Santa's waiting sleigh; a whole tabletop with nothing but whole and partial Nativity scenes (some missing a wise man or two, others with angels on high looking down on an empty manger). The counter guy, busily hustling back and forth, putting out "fresh" product and taking away anything not fitting the theme of the season.

"Excuse me," I started, hating to interrupt the man in his work, "Can I ask about something in the front window?" He stopped, nodded without speaking, and followed me out the heavy glass door.

"That one's sixty-five," he said when I pointed to the tree of my fancy.

That, to me, seemed a reasonable price. "Done."

While the counter guy pulled out the original box and dumped what looked like dozens of kraft paper tubes onto the floor, Kaytee noted that there was a color wheel beside the tree, and I aksed for its price as well. "That one's forty-five," he answered in a monotone.

Well...damn. That was almost as much as the tree. The counter guy then gestured to a collection of color wheels on the floor behind him. Some were large, others small. One looked like a salon hairdryer, but bronze in hue. He took this one, walked to the other side of the store, plugged it in and set it on the floor. "I haven't tried these out yet this year," he said, resuming his task of stuffing aluminum-clad branches into kraft paper tubes while the color wheel rumbled to life and proceeded to emit a filling-rattling grinding sound.

Kaytee, who had taken up the cause of stuffing tubes as well, looked at me. "Will that bother Ms. Christopher?"

"Fuck Christopher," I replied. "That sound will bother me."

I decided to forego the color wheel--for this year, anyway--and just take the freshly boxed tree back to La Casa del Terror. Kaytee and her boyfriend gave me a lift back, the disassembled futon frame tied to the roof of his car. After we carried the frame up to the third floor and dropped it on the back porch, I said my goodbyes, went back upstairs with the aluminum Christmas tree and, in a moment of nearly blasphemous giddy excitement, assembled the tree and set it up in the kitchen atop Great Grandma's old wooden table.

That is the first, last and only time I've put up any Christmas decoration before Thanksgiving. But, as I said, I wasn't much in the mood this year, and that goofy, glittery four-foot Evergleam tree helped me feel better about the impending season. Not that I've added much decoration to the display: Peppermint Kitty, a gift from a co-worker years ago, and Angelique, the decades-old little angel found in Grandma's house after the house had burned. Oh...and Santa Cthulhu Plush, who bids you celebrate "Cthulhu-mas" and brings you "tidings of despair" (hee) and Charlie-in-the-Box (from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) atop the TV ("Nobody wants to play with a Charlie-in-the-Box!"--I feel your pain, my brother).

This is very light decoration, compared to past years, true. But walking into the kitchen and seeing that aluminum tree, lighted from below with pine-scented candles, makes me feel good. So do the cards with messages of holiday cheer affixed to the woodwork above and to the side of the tree--cards from Chicago neighborhoods like Ukrainian Village, Andersonville, Lakeview and Chinatown; and from towns near and far, with names like Round Lake Beach and Richardson, St. Joseph and Dayton, Gibsonia and Evanston. There's even one from an old high school buddy who now lives in the town where my aluminum Christmas tree was manufactured so many years ago: Manitowoc, WI.

Put it all together, and it forms a core of holiday spirit. Maybe it's not as strong, warm or glowing as in years past, but it's present--and welcome--nonetheless.

Merry Christmas, one and all.

A Christmas Casa

There's always an annual self-debate within the walls of La Casa del Terror: to decorate for Christmas, or not to decorate? That is the question. Do I lug out the storage container full of ornaments, garlands and figurines, or do I spare myself the bother? After all, I live alone and don't get many visitors (at least not after the Halloween Movie Bash), so the only person who will see these festive knickknacks will be me and the Girlish Girls, who could not possibly care less--unless I roll the tree in catnip, they'll not be roused to action.

But then I take a walk around my neighborhood, and the debate rapidly ends.

There are a lot of single-family homes in my hood, and many of the owners go all out at Christmastime. From sequential lights rimming the rooftops to inflatable snowmen tucked onto too-small front porches to life-sized illuminated figures of Jesus, Joseph and the Virgin Mary, these homeowners charge into the holiday season with admirable, even enviable vigor. If they can go all out like that, can't I spare a minute or three to dig in my closet and set up a tree? Especially since no one else in my particular apartment building seems to have decorated at all?

So the debate, then, boils down not to whether or not to decorate for Christmas, but the degree to which I decorate: shall I dust off the artificial pine, or will some vintage figurines suffice? Last year, the latter was the case. I set up a small display in the living room, smiled at it occasionally and dismantled it before the sun had set on New Year's Day. But this year, when I could sincerely use some extra cheer and would rather spend the whole season in bed? It would have been easy to blow off decorating entirely. Really, it would have. And it wouldn't have been a network television first, either.

Instead, on Thanksgiving Day, when I was home alone for the first time ever (because Mom's employers, in their eternal wisdom, scheduled her to work both Wednesday second shift and Thursday first shift, thus delaying any cooking till Thanksgiving evening--and don't even ask me why I didn't cook for her: she really enjoys making holiday meals for her sons and likely wouldn't touch any poultry I roasted for her benefit), I lugged out the three-foot-tall wire tree (still haven't upgraded to an antique aluminum tree), popped the top off the clay-green storage container with the Christmas decorations and popped on appropriate holiday music--A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, in this instance. And, over the course of a couple of hours, I transformed La Casa del Terror into a winter wonderland.

Okay, so my apartment isn't quite ready for a presidential visit or scrutiny by Martha Stewart--unless Martha is really into The Nightmare Before Christmas or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, in which case she might actually dig it. Under the lamp in the living room, Jack Skellington and Sally dolls keep watch over Clarice, Yukon Cornelius and King Moonracer figurines. In the kitchen, a blue-and-silver garland with gifts evenly spaced dangles over the windows while the resin bass ornament (given to me by Mom to remind me of Dad, as if I could forget him) guards the doorway and an angel in gold lame watches from atop the fridge and the Frankenstein Monster, resplendent in a Santa cap, holds down the microwave.

And then there's the bookcase in the southeast corner of the living room, which is currently covered, from left to right and left again, with holiday cards from friends near and far, with animals decorating a pine tree, a Victorian girl writing Santa, purple and silver snowflakes, a pair of imposing nutcrackers, a serene waterfall, a collection of festive puppies, shining deer, a bow from a "Bettie Page in Bondage" alarm clock (which now resides atop my SuperDisk drive, quietly ticking away the time), and lots and lots of snowmen (can one ever have enough?).

And on the top shelf of this bookcase, where Mom's tin dollhouse can usually be found, stands the Christmas tree, such as it is. There are many little figures surrounding it, from hand-painted Santas to elves to Mom's favorite childhood toy, Molly the Dolly. But the tree itself is small--only three feet tall--so I usually have many more ornaments than I have branches. A couple of themes, then, must be selected from the assortment in the storage container. Carousel horses? Cartoon characters? Kittens? Nothing more than shiny balls? All have been past choices, and all served me well. This year, though, I went with an eclectic selection of superheroes (Batman, Wonder Woman, the Tick), personal faves (a holiday unicorn, a chrome-plated Kris Kringle) and a new addition or two (Bettie Page in a leopard-print bikini).

Oh. And angels. Lots and lots of angels.

I've always liked angels, and my Christmas trees have always reflected that--from small porcelain angels found in department stores to angels way too big for this little tree but too pretty to keep in storage to tiny gold cherubs to a cookie-colored angel, cradling a dove in her delicate hands, that had been intended to be given as a gift to a woman I thought I loved at the time, but which wound up staying with me anyway. (Time has healed that, if not all, wounds.)

The most special angel on my tree, though, is also arguably the cheapest: a small cardboard girl, covered in what looks like silver chain mail and holding a tiny candle in each of her pipe-cleaner hands. She's not the largest angel on my tree, nor the most beautiful, nor in the best of shape, her wings held on by Scotch tape. But this humble girl, Angelique by name, always gets the center spot on the front of the tree in those years when I bother to put a tree up, because she was found in a tin can in the wreckage of Grandma's house after it had burned to the ground on a cold February morning. The can contained many decorations that make the tree every year, and more than one angel.

But Angelique is a dead ringer for the angel my parents put on their tree every year--an angel purchased at Jules Five & Dime on Milwaukee Avenue, where Mom had worked as a teen and which is still in business just down the street from the Congress Theatre and just up the street from White Castle. Angelique was a sister to my parents' angel. She was family and deserved to be honored as such. And so she is.

I may be the only person who sees my holiday decorations this year, it's true. But as light my pine-scented candles from Walgreen's (best to be found, I tell you) and go through my demented collection of Christmas programs, from the recent Saturday Night Live clip show to Mr. Krueger's Christmas, a strange half-hour sponsored by the Mormon Church and starring Jimmy Stewart (he has a cat named George--get it?), to the joyfully painful experience that is The Star Wars Holiday Special (if you ever want to feel better about your life, watch this show and be glad you had nothing to do with it), I'll look up from time to time and check out my surroundings, if only momentarily. The tree. The angels. And, for those moments, at least, I'll smile and give myself a damn break. And if this is as good as my life gets, though I certainly hope for more and for better, I don't have too much to complain about. So I won't. For a change. My gift to you. And to myself.

Peace to you and yours this holiday season.