rated *
*These characters are not mine and neither are the songs mentioned. I’m just borrowing them and am making absolutely no money from them whatsoever.
This is a sequel to Falling in love, so it is set in Christmas of 1960. There was still an influence of the fifties in that era. A lot of young married couples started out living on love, because it took most of their money to pay the bills. Women stayed home and men worked. (I realize this was the exception to the rule, but we know from the Trixie Belden books, that Pete wanted his wife at home). Back in that time, people would do without basic needs to put money in savings. Also decorating for Christmas, a lot of folks would have a few bought ornaments on the tree, but mostly, they were homemade. You usually didn’t spend money on things like that. Christmas presents were usually small things like: a pair of gloves, a shiny new pencil, etc. Especially what siblings might give to one another. And, when I was a kid growing up in the sixties, you didn’t start decorating until about a week or maybe two before Christmas. I don’t remember the decorating right after Thanksgiving till the seventies. Trees were not perfect back then, they didn’t look like something out of a picture. You brought it home and done the best you could with it. And, I actually remember making our own star for the top of the tree.
There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays
by Kay Lynn
Helen looked around the slightly shabby, but cozy apartment that she shared with her husband of six months, Pete Belden. She was feeling depressed and miserable today because it was so close to the holidays and for the first time since marrying Pete she was really homesick. Up to now, everything had been an adventure.
In June, she had married Pete and they had moved to the city together and set up housekeeping. Their apartment was small, because they had to find something they could afford on his salary, since he wouldn’t even discuss her working outside the home. It wasn’t a designer’s dream by any means. But that didn’t bother Helen. For one thing, she and Pete were so much in love. And, for another, she had plenty to do making the small two bedroom apartment into a cozy, comfortable home. And she had done just that.
Helen walked around the small apartment with her cup of coffee, proudly looking at the work she had done. She had used a couple of old bedspreads her mother had given her and reupholstered the ugly couch and chair that came with the apartment. Now, instead of an ugly brown and green plaid, it was white, with pink roses and green leaves. Then, she had taken a green bedspread and had redone their only chair. She had taken a small amount of money they’d been given for a wedding present and bought green cloth to match the chair and had made curtains.
She always felt some satisfaction as she stepped into her sunny yellow and white kitchen. It always looked so cheery, especially considering how drab and dirty it looked when they first moved in. Since the dinette set that came with the apartment was white with yellow upholstered chairs, she had painted the walls in the kitchen a sunny yellow and the cabinets a fresh shade of white. Then, she hung yellow and white gingham curtains in the kitchen windows.
She loved her little home, she thought as she looked around at what she had accomplished. She had learned how to make delicious meals out of little because after they paid the bills and put a small amount in savings for their future, and set a little back for emergencies, there wasn’t much left for groceries. She had learned which corner market had the best prices on meat, which one to buy canned goods from and, of course, her mother-in-law and her mother had given her a lot of vegetables canned from their summer gardens. She had learned to turn the small oil heater off after heating up the apartment and that made the oil last a lot longer.
This morning she was angry with Pete and wouldn’t even kiss him goodbye. She had looked so forward to going home for Christmas and this was the morning he informed her it just wasn’t going to happen. She regretfully remembered their conversation.
“I’ve asked Mrs. Larson to look after our house while we’re gone,” she chattered eagerly as they sipped their coffee. “Even though we probably won’t need anyone to look after it, because we’re coming back the day after Christmas, right? And are you off Christmas Eve? I was hoping you were so we could leave for home as soon as you got off work the day before." Helen noticed then that Pete wasn’t saying anything. He was staring down at his coffee cup as they both sat on the couch together.
“Helen, I have something to tell you,” he said, still not looking up. “We aren’t going to be able to go home for Christmas.”
“Why?” she asked, feeling her heart sink.
“Because we just can’t afford it,” he replied, finally meeting her eyes. You know we won’t get paid until the end of the month and we had to use our little bit of emergency money to have car repairs done. And the bank is staying open Christmas Eve and reopening the day after Christmas. Why drive home just for that one day? Not only that, but I have just enough gas in the car to make it until payday and that’s going to be shaving it close.”
“We can take a couple of dollars out of our savings,” she told him plaintively. “Pete, I’ve never been away from my family at Christmas.”
“I know, Helen,” he said. “My mother is very disappointed, too. She was counting on us to spend Christmas with her and Dad. Hal and Andy were home for Thanksgiving, you know, but they can’t make it back for Christmas. Andy can’t afford to fly home from the West Coast and Hal is spending Christmas with his wife’s family. Plus, I hate to go home without presents for everyone. I know they bought us something.”
“I got everyone a gift!” she told him, thinking of the gaily wrapped presents in the top of their closet. “And we can take gas money out of our savings account. We can’t even have a Christmas tree here, Pete, not unless we drive out into the country to get one. I guess we don’t have the gas for that either?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, Helen. I feel bad about this. I really do. But you know how we’ve sacrificed to put that little bit of money in savings. If we start taking money out, it’ll be a little here and a little there, and soon it’ll be gone.”
“Fine!” she snapped, jumping up off the couch, suddenly miserable. “I missed Thanksgiving with my family because I agreed we’d spend it at Crabapple Farm with your folks and now I don’t get to be with them at Christmas!”
“Helen,” Pete said soothingly, walking toward her. “You know why I asked you to do that--because that was the first time in a long time that my whole family could be together. You know Harold hardly ever flies home from Idaho and Andy can’t afford to come home often, him being in college and all. If it weren’t for that, we’d have eaten with your folks and we did have dinner with them the Friday after.
“That wasn’t the same!” she told him, turning her back on him to stare out the window. She had never been this angry with him and they were actually having their first fight since their marriage. “Why don’t you just go to work!” she finally stormed, still looking out the window. “I don’t want to be around you right now.” Helen was feeling very resentful.
“I think I will!” he told her, grabbing his jacket. “It’s a lot warmer there than it is here.” He angrily stomped out and she walked over and slammed the door behind him.
He is so stubborn sometimes! she thought angrily. It wouldn’t hurt anything to take a couple of dollars out of savings to go home.
“Heck, I could borrow the money from my father, but no, Mr. Honorable can’t do that,” she said to herself sarcastically.
She grabbed their coffee cups and headed to the kitchen to straighten up. Outside was a record warm, sunny day. Even the weather doesn’t seem like Christmas. Christmas is next week and there’s no snow! She felt like nothing could cheer her up.
Her mind drifted back to Christmases past back in Sleepyside with her family. She had a family that was rife with tradition. A week before Christmas, usually on a snow and ice covered Saturday morning, she and Alicia and their little brother Mart, would pile up in the cab of her dad’s truck and he’d drive them out to the game preserve on Glen Road to pick out a tree. She and her brother and sister would run through the snow checking out the cedars and the blue spruces and then arguing over which one was the perfect one for them. After finally agreeing on one, the three siblings would stand back, shivering in the cold, as their father chopped it down with the ancient axe that had belonged to his grandfather. They would all grab hold of the tree and haul it out of the woods and load it in the back of the truck and carry it back to their small two story house.
Helen sighed as she remembered what awaited them at home. As they came through the front door with the tree, the whole house would be warm and fragrant with the aroma of baking pumpkin bread-- it had become a family tradition to have a tree trimming party, with hot chocolate and pumpkin bread. The hot chocolate would be so warming after being out in the cold. Her father would crank up the old phonograph and Bing Crosby would sing White Christmas as they decorated. They would pop popcorn and string it and also make popcorn balls and color them with pink and green food coloring and they’d make paper snowflakes and paper chains.
She and Alicia would then go up to the attic and get the box of prized Christmas ornaments and bring them down and they would carefully open her mother’s antique ceramic snowflakes, and hang them on first. There were a few projects in the box, which she, Martin and Alicia had made at school. She smiled as she thought of the small cardboard snowman, with the cotton balls and silver glitter. That was Martin’s first grade project and he was so proud of it. There was Alicia’s salt dough ornament set that she was equally as proud of. She had made it in 4-H club one year. These were always wrapped in tissue; there was a Santa, a reindeer, a snow man, an angel. They were beautifully painted. After they finished decorating, Helen would always cut out a star shape from cardboard and wrap it in tin foil for the top of the tree. And her Father did the honors of placing the star on top.
Helen remembered when she, Martin, and Alicia would snuggle on the couch and watch holiday specials. She remembered how her mother would try to save a little money out of their tight budget to buy a few small toys and some food and a few inexpensive warm jackets and how she, Helen, Alicia, and Mart would bake a few cookies and deliver all this to the poor families on Hawthorne Street. What a treasure that memory is, Helen thought as she rinsed out the coffee mugs.
Then there was the endless round of parties. There was the school Christmas party before school let out for the holidays. She usually got some new hair bows in a variety of colors and at least one scarf from her friends at school. There was her father’s office party, which was a lavish affair, usually given at the country club and the main course was prime rib and the room would be beautifully decorated. There was the church Christmas gathering, when the children would reenact the Nativity and the choir would sing all the old favorites, like O Little Town of Bethlehem, Silent Night, and Hark! The Herald Angels sing. Afterwards, there would be finger sandwiches and festive strawberry sherbet punch in the fellowship hall. And then she, Mart, Alicia and their parents would walk home in the moonlight.
A couple of nights before Christmas every year, she and Alicia would help their mother prepare Christmas baked goods for many friends and neighbors, while Dad took Martin Christmas shopping.
I guess just Mom and Alicia will do it this year, she thought wistfully. Oh, how the kitchen smelled, with the fudge, with chunks of walnuts in it, the divinity, which they would cut up red and green maraschino cherries in. Mom made the best divinity, she thought.
There were sugar cookies. Her mother had two recipes: one would stay white when you baked them, this was a very old Scandinavian recipe and they would decorate beautifully. She and Alicia were very picky about which cookie cutters to use. The angels and snowmen were reserved for this cookie dough. Then there were the sugar cookies which were a rich butter cookie; they made Christmas trees, Santas and holly leaves with this dough. They would stir up batches of red and green frosting and frost the cookies. They also put peppermint extract in one batch of dough and twisted it into candy canes.
And they would make gingerbread men and reindeer. Helen could almost smell the wonderful aroma of chocolate as she thought of her mother’s boiled cookies. They would melt a stick of butter in a saucepan, add a tiny amount of milk, cocoa and sugar, bring it to a boil and then add oatmeal and peanut butter. Then they would pour this into a pan and cut it into squares and they were delicious. She thought of the snickerdoodles, an old-fashioned cinnamon-flavored cookie and also the tiny wedding cookies which they would roll in powdered sugar. After all the cookies were baked and decorated, she and Alicia would take baskets with loaves of Mom’s pumpkin bread and the various cookies and tiny jars of Mom’s homemade peach preserves and apple butter and she and Alicia would deliver them to eagerly awaiting friends and neighbors.
Helen thought wistfully of her Christmas job at Crimper's. She would work a few hours a day to have money to buy small gifts for her friends and family and it didn’t even seem like work because of the festive atmosphere and everyone was in such high spirits. Christmas always gave everyone hope.
At least one evening before Christmas, several of the teenagers from their group would go Christmas caroling in their neighborhood and then come back to one of the homes for hot chocolate and cookies. Also, Andy Belden used to give a skating party every year at the lake near his home. They would all go skating and, afterward, his mother would give everyone a jar of delicious crabapple jelly to take to their families.
Before you knew it, it was Christmas Eve. Late in the afternoon, Dad usually went to Crimper's for last minute shopping. Helen, Alicia and Mart, would be in each of their rooms, wrapping the last of their presents. As the peaceful twilight ended, Mother would be in the kitchen baking and preparing dinner for tomorrow. She also would have a big pot of her special clam chowder simmering on the stove and banana-flavored eggnog in a punchbowl and a huge tray of sandwiches on the table for friends and family that would stop by and leave gifts or just come to visit.
Helen loved this special time. Her friends, as well as friends of her parents and neighbors, usually stopped by and everyone loved Mom's clam chowder and especially her banana eggnog, which had meringue on top. Martin thought it tasted like banana pudding. It wasn’t spiked, of course.
After an evening of visiting and renewing old friendships and starting new ones and the last of the guests had gone home, Martin and Alicia would hang their stockings, even after they all were too old to believe in Santa they played the game anyway. Helen even hung up a stocking. And they would leave a small tray of cookies and milk for Santa. Then their father would take out the old family Bible and read the story of Jesus, while Silent Night played softly on the phonograph in the background. Afterward, they would all tiptoe up to bed, anticipating the busy but wonderful day they would have tomorrow.
Christmas day would finally arrive. The house would once again smell wonderful. The tree would be all lit up, Christmas carols would once again be playing on the old phonograph. Helen, Alicia and Mart would rush down the stairs to see what Santa had brought them. Helen fondly remembered the Christmas several years ago when she and Alicia got shiny new bikes. They had so much fun riding to Wimpy’s. There was another Christmas when Helen got her sewing kit with enough cloth to make a new dress and some thread in every color. She had worked on that dress all evening that Christmas after the guests had left.
One by one, after the family had opened presents, the guests would begin to arrive. Mom always made a huge ham, turkey and dressing, and roast beef, as well as a few meringue pies and a German chocolate cake.
But Christmas was a time to showcase everyone’s culinary specialty. Moms’ sister, Aunt Mabel, would bring her wonderful lasagne. Miss Kline, their neighbor from up the road, would bring her delicious old-fashioned coconut cake, Aunt Ruth would make a wonderful gelatin salad and one by one the other guests would arrive with bowls of green beans and corn from summer gardens, and casseroles and stews and festive deserts. There would be so much food you couldn’t begin to taste all of it.
And Helen would get to see her cousins who lived in other areas that she didn’t get to see very often. She felt so fortunate to have come from the family she came from. Her family had never focused much on presents at Christmas and, as she thought on this, she knew in the future, she wouldn’t either. They had focused on what Christmas was about and that’s what she needed to focus on. When she thought of that, she came out of her reverie.
I feel so bad for the way I acted with Pete this morning, she thought. I can’t wait till he comes home so I can apologize.
She poured another cup of coffee. “I’m going to stop feeling sorry for myself,” Helen said to herself. “Everything changes in life, nothing stays the same. I’m going to start my own traditions. But gleeps, right now, it’s almost time for Pete to come home for lunch.” She quickly warmed leftover hamburger gravy and rice. She then cut up lettuce and tomatoes for a salad.
“Hi, sweetheart.” Peter walked through the door. “I have a surprise for you," he told her. He brought in a silver tinsel tree, the kind she had seen in magazines.
“Peter, can we afford that?” she asked.
“Oh, I didn’t buy it, my boss gave it to me. His wife used this for a couple of years and she doesn’t need it anymore."
"Thanks, sweetie,” Helen said as she kissed him on the forehead and begin dishing him up rice and gravy and some salad. “Honey, I’m so sorry about the way I acted this morning,” she told him. “Please don’t be angry with me.”
“Oh baby, I could never stay angry with you. And, believe it or not, I feel bad about not going home for Christmas, too.” He released her and sat down at the table.
“Would you like coffee or ice tea to drink with that?”
“I guess I’d like coffee because it’s really turning cold out after all this warm weather. I think it may be going to snow.”
“Oh, that’d be so neat--snow for Christmas!” Helen said, looking out the window as she poured his cup of coffee.
"When I get home later this evening, we’ll decorate the tree,” he told her.
Helen felt much better, after Pete left to go back to work. She felt bad for wallowing in self pity. Maybe Pete and I can go ice skating, she thought. And, I have that roast in the freezer, we could have that for Christmas dinner. And, we have his office party coming up, I can wear that beautiful green velveteen dress that Mom made me last year for holiday parties.
Helen still wished she could be home for Christmas, but she was determined to make the best of this. After Pete had gone back to work and she had tidied up, she took the small table top silver tree parts out and put it together. After being satisfied with the results, she put it on a small telephone table in front of the window overlooking the front of the apartment building. She made up a batch of salt dough and unpacked a set of acrylic paints her parents had given her a couple of years ago for Christmas last year.
Helen had splurged on a set of cookie cutters and she worked all afternoon making tiny Christmas trees, Santas, angels, and wreaths. She then painted them and couldn’t believe how beautifully they turned out. Time flew as Helen turned their small clock radio on to listen to Christmas carols and started a quick dinner for Pete.
Maybe I can make some cocoa, while we trim the tree, she thought taking the can out of the cabinet. She had just enough that she and Pete could both have a cup of hot chocolate.
"Now, what could we have in lieu of Mom’s pumpkin bread?” she asked herself. Bread pudding, she thought. She was always saving leftover bread for that.
Tomorrow, she would bake a few cookies, and take them around to the few families she had met in the apartment building. She had been squirreling back ingredients since September. Because they only had a certain amount of money set aside for groceries and what they had would have to last through the month as she had spent her small allowance on some small Christmas presents for Pete and for both their family’s.
I’ll miss Mom’s cookies and banana eggnog and clam chowder, and I’ll miss all of our traditions and mostly, I’ll miss my family, but Pete and I will have our own traditions, she determined.
That had all happened a week ago. It was now Christmas Eve and Pete Belden’s boss had let the employees leave work a little early. Traffic was terrible, but Pete had some last minute shopping to do. He didn’t know they were getting a bonus, but his boss had given him a nice one right before leaving work today. Most of it would go in their savings account, but he would splurge first. Pete pulled in and after quickly finding a parking space, he jumped out of the car and ran into a department store. He wished Helen was here to help him, but she was going to be so surprised, he thought excitedly.
Pete quickly picked out a GI Joe for Martin. At least that was easy, he thought, remembering when he was Martin’s age. He wouldn’t be buying Andy and Hal, his own brothers, anything because they wouldn’t be home for Christmas.
He found some warm, terry cloth house robes in various colors. Mom would like this, he thought, reading the label “one size fits all”. He quickly picked out a light green one for his mother, a pale blue for his mother-in-law, Anna, and threw them both in the cart, and started to rush off to purchase more stuff, and then on second thought rushed back and picked out a pink one for Helen.
Alicia? he thought. How in the world do you buy for your teenage sister in law? I have no idea what to buy for a teenage girl. He quickly found a round pink overnight bag, she could use when she went to visit friends and a stuffed pink and white French poodle. He then picked out his father and father-in-law some Old Spice aftershave and then he went to stand in the mile long line at the register.
“Oh man!” he said, constantly checking his watch. I hope I can make it to the jewelry store before it closes.” Finally, he purchased his things and he rushed out to his car, threw the presents in and headed through the traffic and the light snow to the jewelry store.
I wanted to be heading to Sleepyside before now, he thought as he sat in traffic.
Finally, he pulled up about five minutes before the store was to close and ran in and bought the heart shaped picture locket he had picked out for Helen. It was gold filigree, on a delicate chain, with a tiny diamond set in the center of it. “Finally!” he said rushing out the door and heading for home.
It was a beautiful scene that awaited him when he arrived. Helen was baking a pie, and she was making vegetable soup for their Christmas Eve dinner.
“My boss gave me a bonus and guess what? We’re going home for Christmas. If we hurry, we can be with your family for Christmas Eve.”
“Oh, Peter," she exclaimed.
“Grab the presents,” he told her “And let me wrap yours really quick and let’s go.”
“Wait a second,” she said, smiling. “Let’s take a moment and exchange ours here in our first home.” For she had found peace. She almost didn’t want to go home now, but, on the other hand, she was glad they were.
Helen had saved most of her small allowance every month since they had gotten married and had bought Peter a couple of shirts for work when they were home for Thanksgiving. Crimper’s had them on sale and he desperately needed them, along with his favorite aftershave cologne and some dress socks.
“Oh!” she exclaimed when she opened the locket. “You didn’t have to.”
“I know, but I’ve had that picked out for a long time,” he said, kissing her. “If I could, I’d give you the world covered in gold.”
“Oh Pete,” she said happily.
They quickly wrapped the presents he had bought for the families and loaded them in the car, along with the small gifts she had picked out. She'd boughten her brother a checkerboard, her sister a pair of warm gloves with a matching cap, her mother and Mrs. Belden some guest soaps shaped like tiny rosebuds and her father and father- in-law a heavy white ceramic coffee cup.
“Your mother had better save me some of that eggnog and clam chowder,” Pete told her teasingly. “Because I’m starving and that’s part of the reason I decided to go.”
They both laughed as they drove into the starry night.
On the radio Burl Ives sang: “There’s no place like home for the holidays, no matter how far away you roam.”
And I’d have been content to stay in my home, Helen thought. Christmas can be wonderful no matter where home is.
The End