Tag Archives: Christmas

Midnight Mass: A Hornell Christmas Legend

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(As the title says, this is a legend. But a hundred years ago, local people did exactly these same things — and worse — convinced that they were doing good. Sadder still, we find it back again today. — K.H.)

The congregation sang “Silent Night,” and the choir responded with one resounding chorus of “Go Tell it on the Mountain,” Pastor MacDonald said, “Merry Christmas,” and the 1925 Christmas Eve service was a treasured memory. The children grinned and vibrated, the grownups smiled and stirred, and everybody started gathering coats and hats, and peering under pews for mittens. “Thank you, Pastor!” “Beautiful service, pastor!” “Merry Christmas, Pastor! See you on Sunday!”

Mrs. MacDonald squeezed his hand. “Another fine service, John. Everyone loves your Christmas messages so much. Are we about ready to go?”

He squeezed her hand back. “Not quite, beloved. Take the children home in the motorcar, and I need five minutes with a group in my office, then I’ll walk back to the parsonage. So I will be with you in twenty minutes, but later I’ll have to go out again. After the children are all in bed.”

She sighed. “THAT group? Tonight, of all nights?”

“Tonight above all other nights, my dear. It’s a very small sacrifice for God and country.” He wanted to kiss her, but many of the older folks in the congregation would be fleeing the sanctuary before the thunderbolt struck. Some of the younger ones, too, for all that it WAS the 1920s, with even the Great War now history.

The half-dozen people in his office all jumped a little when he walked in. Why would such a ministry opportunity scare them so much? Well, as ever, the flesh is weak. But still. These are the truly committed.

My Klan.

He smiled. “Merry Christmas.” They smiled, and relaxed just a trifle, emotionally seizing on the familiar. “Merry Christmas, Pastor!”

Better. More vim. “Let’s begin with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank thee for sending thine only begotten Son to us, to be the Light of the World. Grant that we, too, may be lesser lights for thee, under the glorious fiery cross. Amen.” The others muttered “amen” after him.

He beamed on them. “Now, I know this is the first time for all of you, and you feel a little awkward. Some of these folks you might brush shoulders with at the grocery store, or might work beside at the Erie roundhouse. And they may even be good people!

“But that just makes it even sadder. They’re lost, lost in heathen darkness. AND they threaten our beloved country, America the beautiful. Remember that Catholics MUST obey their priests, and priests MUST obey the Pope – or they’ll each go to Hell. So even if they want to, they CAN’T be loyal to America. And if Al Smith wins the White House at the next election, well, the Pope will rule us. He’ll pull the strings in the White House, and even here in Hornell.” He paused. “The next step will be persecution.”

They groaned, but didn’t speak. “We’ve got to stand up for America, for the cause of God and truth… a white man’s country, and a Protestant country, just like God gave our forefathers and they passed down to us, and we’re going to pass it on to OUR children!” Several heartfelt “amens” answered him.

“So we’re going to picket their midnight mass. And all across western New York, Klansmen from other churches will do the same in their own communities. We don’t do this in anger, but in sorrow. We want Catholics to see the error of their ways and repent. But we also want them to know that if they try to steal our country, they’ll have a fight on their hands!”

“Yes!”

“So – no aggressiveness, no arguments. We’ll just march – peacefully – and silently – back and forth on the sidewalk ACROSS from Saint Ann’s. Don’t interfere with anyone, don’t block their way.” He looked them over, and made a decision. “Leave your picket signs here, in the office. I’ll pick them up, and I’ll bring them along. DO NOT start without me. ABSOLUTELY do not. We need to show the world that we Ku Klux have discipline. Heaven knows people will criticize us anyway… the world always does, when you’re doing the Lord’s work… but we’re not going to hand them any extra excuses. Now all join hands for a closing prayer, and meet back here, on the front steps, at 11:30.” Moments later, he was locking up and striding home.

Pastor MacDonald always loved Christmas Eve with his children… reading the Christmas story by candlelight, piling all three kids onto the sofa with him for “The Night Before Christmas,” the whole family sharing hot chocolate, and then putting the little ones to bed. A lot of his calling involved the skillful use of words, but even he couldn’t possibly find words to say how much he loved them.

As the clock struck eleven he put his coat and scarf on and kissed his wife, who was clearly restraining herself from saying the things she wanted to, but of course a woman’s view was limited to the home – rightly so, he thought, but that blinded her to the bigger needs of a whole nation. The night was cold and the stars were bright – a storybook Christmas! – as he stepped out briskly toward the church.

He got half-way there before one leg flew high off a streak of black ice, momentum yanking the other foot off the ground with it, and he only had time to grunt before he smashed onto the sidewalk full-length on his left side, flopped onto his back, and stayed there. The stars were still up above. But the view was very different.

Brakes screeched, a car door slammed, and fast footsteps sounded. “Mister! Hey, mister! You awake?”

“I’m awake, thanks,” the pastor croaked. “Got the wind knocked out.”

“You sure went flying.” The stranger whistled. “Look, mister, I’m a Scout leader. If we were out in the field, I’d splint that leg of yours before I let you move. One of these houses must have a ‘phone. You stay put, and I’ll have them call the ambulance. OK?”

“OK,” he said. His voice was a little stronger, but so was the pain. “Hurts to breathe, too.”

“Well, all the more reason, then.” Despite a blanket sent out from the house that had the ‘phone, Pastor MacDonald’s teeth were chattering by the time he finally heard one wail from a siren. Doors slammed, once again footsteps sounded, the Scout leader whispered to the newcomers, and two ambulance volunteers got down on their knees with the pastor. “Mister, my name is Pavelski. We’ll put a splint on this leg of yours, just in case, just until we get you to the hospital, and the docs there can take care of anything you need. After the splint we’ll rock you onto a stretcher, and it’s going to hurt. So’s the splinting. You weren’t in the war, were you?”

“Not… overseas.”

“Well, O’Brien and me were. We promise, we know what we’re doing. We’ve done it before. But like I said, it’s going to hurt.”

And so it did, making the pastor’s head swirl, but he was still alert enough to say, “Not St. James Mercy Hospital,” when they got him loaded into the ambulance. “Take me to Bethesda.” He would NOT go to a Catholic hospital where some Romish priest would pollute him with incense, and gabble vain utterances in their dead foreign tongue. O’Brien and Pavelski looked at him, then at each other, then shrugged. “Bethesda it is. Either way, be prepared. Some of these streets have frost heaves.”

Which proved to be painfully true, but before long he was in a bed, with a doctor busily on the job and his wife finally sent for. “Broken left leg. Broken left arm – both will need traction. Ribs might be cracked, but the good news is that your back is probably just wrenched. I’m afraid you’re going to be enjoying our hospitality for quite a while, Mr. MacDonald.”

“Pastor.”

“Sorry, Pastor MacDonald. Afraid this won’t be much of a Christmas for you. I’m Doctor Cohen. We’ll be spending a lot of time together for the next few weeks.” The pastor closed his eyes. Cohen. I should have gone to St. James. Why are you punishing me, Lord?

O’Brien and Pavelski, with a little help from their siren, caught the last ten minutes of midnight mass. When it was finished, happy parishioners streamed into the silent and holy night.

Finding the Christmas Spirit

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Christmas is comin’! Do you feel the Christmas spirit?

Quite possibly the answer is no… or not quite… or not yet. You may be struggling to find it, and feeling that it just doesn’t seem to come this year.

Have you thought about MAKING it come? We often feel that things like this ought to happen spontaneously, but in fact hardly ANYTHING happens that way. People DECIDE to stir up a mob, and other people DECIDE to join in. There’s nothing spontaneous about it.

On a cheerier note, you can DECIDE to bring the Christmas spirit into your life. We try each year to do something different for Christmas. Last year we took a chilly December Saturday to wander along Owego’s Riverrow. The street, the bridge, and surrounding neighborhoods are decked out enthusiastically. We wandered into a few stores (with masks!), ordered and ate lunch (at an outside table!). We just enjoyed sharing Owego’s Christmas.

This year we went in the opposite direction from Bath, to the snowy Rochester Public Market, where we rambled around the stalls, enjoying the music and the decorations.

We also have traditional things we do just about every year. Yesterday we visited Rockwell Museum to see this year’s entries in the Gingerbread Invitational – with such creations as “Gourdlandia”… a 3-D Corning montage… Watkins Glen… Taughannock Falls… a bears’ picnic. Tuscarora School children envisioned themselves having class in a railroad car.

Afterward you can see the rest of the museum! You can also stroll Corning’s Market Street, noting that silver seems to be a theme color this year, just as giant Christmas bulbs are common. Only one place has three life-size reindeer, though. See how long it takes you to spot them!

Besides Corning and Owego, Canandaigua (LONG Main Street) and Penn Yan (short Main Street) are places that can give you their own infusion of Christmas. So can gaslight-lit Wellsboro, in nearby Pennsylvania.

Sometime this week we expect to drive around Bath after sunset, enjoying the many illuminations, and the lovely star that shines down on the village from Mossy Bank. Another “regular” event, which we’ll probably do this weekend, is visit the holiday miniatures show at the National Soaring Museum. (Old-timers will recall that this exhibit of dollhouses, toys, and models used to be at CURTISS Museum.)

Be prepared to pivot, and capitalize on the unexpected! One year Joyce was in Sayre Hospital for several December days, with unexpected heart trouble, but we all appreciated the carol singers.

You’re reasonably in charge of what you read, and what you watch, and what you listen to. Maybe you have a favorite Christmas movie: The Bishop’s Wife; The Preacher’s Wife; It Happened on Fifth Avenue; Love Actually; A Christmas Carol; Santa Claus Conquers the Martians! You’re not out to impress anybody. Put in a disc, call up a screening service, catch a broadcast – sit down and give yourself permission to ENJOY yourself.

You can also give yourself permission to skip something. Honest. “But it wouldn’t be Christmas without…!” Well, actually it would. If doing it’s going to burden you, instead of letting you enjoy the season – skip it. If you want to bake cookies, great. You can also buy them. And you should, rather than beat yourself down, or make life miserable for those around you. Forgive yourself. However you feel about Christmas or religion, the holiday clearly has SOME connection to Jesus. He talked a lot about forgiveness. Go ahead and forgive yourself. And enjoy the days.

Forgotten (or Repurposed) Holidays

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A week or so back I had to call a town office in my home state of Rhode Island, but wound up leaving a recorded message, because I’d forgotten it was V-J Day.

That may perplex some people, and stir vague memories for others. It’s the anniversary of Victory over Japan, and Rhode Island is now the only state where it’s still an official observance (second Monday in August, rather than the historical August 14). It’s a curious little holiday, late in a seaside summer. It used to be widely celebrated, but faded with memory of the war, pushed along no doubt by proximity to Labor Day.

Another holiday from my youth is Lincoln’s Birthday (February 12), which itself was overshadowed by Washington’s Birthday, ten days later. This meant two days off school in two weeks, possibly plus snow days as a bonus. George has long had an official national holiday but Abe hasn’t, and some places cram them together as “Presidents’ Day,” but eight states still celebrate Lincoln. This incudes New York, which I have somehow managed to miss in 25 years of living here. I speculate that it’s limited to closing government offices.

Thanksgiving goes back to a proclamation by Lincoln more clearly than it goes back to the Pilgrims, but Franklin D. Roosevelt shaped our modern celebration. It was traditionally the last Thursday in November, and also traditionally kicked off the Christmas shopping season. Some years November has five Thursdays, and the last one comes pretty late, so during the Depression FDR proclaimed it the FOURTH Thursday, to stimulate an extra week of retail business.

New Englanders and Republicans furiously celebrated on the fifth Thursday, and a mini-cartoon in the Bing Crosby movie “Holiday Inn” showed a confused turkey running back and forth between the two dates on a calendar. We’re all used to it now.

November has a second holiday, formerly called Armistice Day, celebrating the 11th day of the 11th month, when World War I ended. As memory faded, and as 17 million Americans went into uniform for the SECOND World War, this became Veterans’ Day, to honor all those who served.

Much to the exasperation of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (combat veteran and P.O.W.), who said “Armistice Day was a hallowed anniversary because it was supposed to protect future life from future wars. Veterans Day, instead, celebrates ‘heroes’ and encourages others to dream of playing the hero themselves, covering themselves in valor.”

Memorial Day started out as Decoration Day, to place flowers on the graves of the Union dead from the Civil War. (Waterloo claims the honor of initiating the holiday.) Former Confederate states fiercely ignored it, but… once again… as memory faded, and as two world wars brought hundreds of thousands of deaths, the day became Memorial Day for ALL the dead, and moved to the last Monday in May.

Believe it or not, the “Pennsylvania Dutch” used to be the about only Americans who paid any particular attention to Christmas, and even into the 20th century it was a normal work day for many people. Even as a gift-giving holiday, it had to compete with New Year’s.

Columbus Day has rightly come into scorn for celebrating a guy who, whatever his virtues, initiated an age of horror, with bigotry, imperialism, mass murder, and enslavement, all on scales such as the world had never seen. But holidays and statues, however much they purport to be about the past, are mostly about the times in which they are created. Columbus Day proclaimed the acceptance (at last!) of Italian-Americans (and by extension, other “new immigrant” groups) as full-fledged members of the American community. Maybe we should change it to Marconi Day.

Christmas is What You Make It

Ah, Christmas! I love it. I love the spiritual side of it, honoring the coming of Jesus. And I love the festive side, with its pre-Christian symbology, AND the modern-day incarnations of Santa Claus, classic movies, and polar bears drinking Coke.

But despite all the angry demands for a Christian Christmas, for centuries Christians never gave a thought to such a thing. Early Christians had no such observance, and seemed supremely uninterested in the geographical scenes of the Nativity.

This started to change when the Emperor Constantine’s mother saw visons telling her where the manger had stood, and where Gabriel appeared to Mary, and so on. Considering three centuries had gone by, and the country had been destroyed, depopulated, and repopulated twice, and that nobody before her seemed to care where those sites were anyhow, she couldn’t have done it WITHOUT a vision (or at least an optimistic imagination).

When Christians finally DID create Christmas, they borrowed shamelessly from pagan celebrations (holly, evergreens, candles, gifts), and set it at the darkest time of the year, RATHER THAN the time when shepherds had been abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night.

Despite what we often hear, America was not founded as a Christian country, and those new Americans who were MOST Christian despised Christmas as an unbiblical, pagan-based occasion for excess. In the Puritan colonies, Christmas was a crime. In Plymouth the Pilgrims didn’t criminalize it, they simply treated it (and its practitioners) with contempt.

In the 1700s and early 1800s, Christmas was a time when gangs of teenagers, sailors, and slaves were allowed to force their way into people’s homes to demand food, drink, and money.

Christmas in some form presumably trickled into our area when the first whites muscled in in the 1790s, but Christmas in America was mainly celebrated by German-speakers, and often overlooked by the English. It seems likely that the first Christmas tree in Steuben County went up in Dansville, Cohocton, or Wayland, where many German speakers lived. Contemporary newspapers often overlooked it, or gave it only the briefest attention.

“A Visit from St. Nicholas” captured the imagination once it was published in 1823. Queen Victoria’s German husband brought in Christmas customs wholesale after their marriage in 1839, and the thing became stylish. Dickens sealed the deal with A Christmas Carol in 1843. Letters show that many folks were celebrating, at least in a small way (and especially aimed at children), during the Civil War. Cartoonist Thomas Nast created Santa Claus as we know him, complete with his huge living, manufacturing, and distribution complex at the North Pole.

So Christmas was part of the local scene by the late 1800s, although for most people it was still a regular work day well into the 20th century. In 1901 the Hammondsport weekly newspaper started running Christmas ads the day before Thanksgiving, and the holiday was already thoroughly commercialized. Toys and children’s gifts were touted, but so were shoes, ranges, and buggy whips. (“Santa Claus is a practical old fellow.”)

In 1913, Frank Burnside flew Santa from Bath to Corning, with a stop for repairs in Campbell.

Christmas 1918 must have been very confusing. The Great War had ended in November, but the boys still weren’t home, and many never would be, and others would never be the same. The Spanish influenza, which had killed millions, still lingered. Prohibition was running the wineries and grape growers. War workers were out of jobs, farm prices collapsed.

We still weren’t recovered when the Great Depression came, and then the catastrophe of Pearl Harbor. But scarcely two weeks later President Roosevelt lighted the National Christmas Tree. “Let the children have their night of fun and laughter,” said Winston Churchill. “Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grownups share to the full in their unstinted pleasure.”

I look at a lot of one-room school photographs, and I’m always impressed at how well the children are dressed by the time the war ends in 1945, compared with how they dressed earlier. Better times made Christmas a bigger celebration. Captain Kangaroo hosted the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade on CBS, joined by Santa Claus for dinner at the Treasure House.

In 1962 came the first animated Christmas special, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. The following year was another confused holiday, as Thanksgiving and Christmas followed hard on the heels of President Kennedy’s funeral. A Charlie Brown Christmas first aired in 1965.

Christmas is what you make of it – or don’t make of it. For a couple of years in Virginia we belonged to a church that discouraged celebrating Christmas, as an unbiblical holiday. It certainly SHOULDN’T be a club to hit people with! But ever since it was created it’s been LIVING (and so changing), not frozen. It’s always been a work in progress, ever in flux, pagan, Christian, and secular. Whichever tack you take, feel free. I hope you and yours enjoy it well.

Christmas Long Ago

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Back in the 1790s, when European people were just muscling into our area in large numbers, Christmas doesn’t seem to have been a very big deal. To the extent that America had a Puritan conscience, it disdained the holiday as an unbiblical, semi-pagan Catholic superstition. (When the Puritans disliked something, they got their money’s worth out of the emotion.)

*It wasn’t until well after the Civil War that many employers in Corning started giving their workers a day off for Christmas. There’s a Hammondsport photo from around 1901, showing a full shift at the grape-packing house on December 25. A post card mailed around 1910 was postmarked in both Corning and Dundee on December 25, meaning that both offices were open and working, and someone was working to move the mail between the two communities.

*I recently had to go through the December 1872 issues of The Steuben Farmer’s Advocate, published weekly in Bath. I was researching one particular item, and so didn’t have time to really study the papers page by page, but as far as I saw, they didn’t even mention Christmas.

*Where Americans DID celebrate Christmas in the early days, it was often next thing to a riot (which is another reason that the Puritans criminalized the holiday.) In New York City gangs of youths forced their way into people’s homes, singing loudly and lewdly until bribed with enough food and drink to go on to the next house. Down south men celebrated Christmas with heavy drinking, enlivened by sneaking up on each other to shoot off firearms, with results just about as you might expect.

*Two Germans went a long way toward taming Christmas, not to mention popularizing it. Immigrant cartoonist Thomas Nast standardized the shadowy figure of Santa Claus, elaborating on his sleigh, his bag, and his vast North Pole complex, not to mention excited children and indulgent parents. (Nast’s Santa seems to rest firmly on the poem, “A Visit From Saint Nicholas.”)

*Christmas was big in Germany, and the German Prince Albert energetically brought trees and gifts and candles and other accouterments to his large brood at Buckingham Palace with the excited approval of Queen Victoria, who adored anything Albert did. Then as now London and “the royals” were style-setters in the English-speaking world, and Christmas became a fad, then a tradition.

*Nast and Albert were spreading their cheer right around the time of the American Civil War, and the new family-centered domesticated Christmas struck a chord with families sundered by the great conflict. Maryett Kelly wrote husband John in the Union army from their farm in Fremont, describing how their little son Scotty had received some candies in his stocking, along with a toy horse. John celebrated by doing absolutely nothing in camp at Savannah (which they were about to capture), and each of the men was issued a small drink of whiskey.

*By the late 1800s stores were garishly decorated and sales were abundant. In 1901 Christmas ads started running the day before Thanksgiving in the weekly Hammondsport Herald, breathlessly proclaiming how many shopping days were left. Santa Claus, one ad noted, is a common-sense old fellow, meaning that ANYTHING could be marketed as a Christmas gift – “just think of a better gift than shoes.” Or boots, or rubbers, or a cast-iron stove!

*Just before World War I Frank Burnside flew Santa Claus by biplane from Bath to Corning, where spectators lined the rooftops and crowded the landing ground in Denison Park, all courtesy of the Board of Trade. After the war, I suppose, Christmas became more the holiday that we know. Hope you enjoy it – whatever way you like!

“At This Festive Season;” Gifts That Matter

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At Christmas time, which is also the end of most people’s tax year, many people turn their thoughts to giving… not just gifts to loved ones, but gifts to the community at large.
*If you have a church connection, a Christmas gift to the church might be fitting, or a gift to some church-connected helping agency, such as Catholic Charities, Mennonite Disaster Service, or United Methodist Committee on Relief.
*The Southern Tier Food Bank does outstanding work in helping provide for the hungry right here where we live. I give throughout the year. Milly’s Pantry in Penn Yan also does a tremendous job.
*Kiva Microfunds (or Kiva.org) provides a way to support microloans to emerging entrepreneurs around the world. About 80% of these loans go to women (and about 98% are repaid). Loans to women are one of the most effective ways to change lives and change communities, and we took steps a year or two back to do so through Kiva.
*I gave two gallons of blood before Addison’s Disease disqualified me at the age of 54. But right from the time they were infants we took our sons with us to the blood bank, and they both started giving as soon as they turned 18. BLOOD DONATIONS SAVE LIVES. What could you do that’s better than that? And at this time of year the need is especially great. Donors get over-busy, or catch a cold or flu, while snow and ice and sheer volume of traffic make for more road accidents, pushing demand up just when supply goes down. “At this festive season,” blood is needed even more. Check with the Red Cross. (Did you know that Clara Barton formed the first American Red Cross chapter in Dansville? Giving blood celebrates our local history!)
*When it’s cold, little animals die. The Finger Lakes SPCA in Bath, Chemung County SPCA near Elmira, and sister chapters all around bring them in, make them warm, and let them live. They could use your help.
*With the new administration in Washington, official assaults on the environment have risen. I have a long-standing membership with the National Audubon Society. Consider joining Audubon or one of the other big organizations fighting for our earth and our future: Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, Earthwatch, and more.
*Hate groups are celebrating Christmas by ramping up their activities. Think about supporting the Southern Poverty Law Center, NAACP, American Civil Liberties Union, Anti-Defamation League, or another nationwide group fighting against bigotry.
*Imagine what it would be like being hospitalized over this season, or having hospitalized loved ones. Such services as Fisher House and Ronald McDonald House stay on the job, and always have too much job to do. Gifts help.
*Charles Dickens, who knew grinding childhood poverty first-hand, wrote, “At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time.  Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, remembering his life in a concentration camp, wrote, “When you’re cold, don’t expect sympathy from someone who’s warm.” We can all do better than that. Christmas isn’t the only time we give. But we rarely find a better reminder.
*(This blog first appeared in last year’s Christmas season, and has been lightly edited.)

Christmas Giving

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At Christmas time, which is also the end of most people’s tax year, many people turn their thoughts to giving… not just gifts to loved ones, but gifts to the community at large.

*If you have a church connection, a Christmas gift to the church might be fitting, or a gift to some church-connected helping agency, such as Catholic Charities, Mennonite Disaster Service, or United Methodist Committee on Relief.

*The Southern Tier Food Bank does outstanding work in helping provide for the hungry right here where we live. I give throughout the year. Milly’s Pantry in Penn Yan also does a tremendous job.

*Kiva Microfunds (or Kiva.org) provides a way to support microloans to emerging entrepreneurs around the world. About 80% of these loans go to women (and about 98% are repaid). Loans to women are one of the most effective ways to change lives and change communities, and we took steps a year or so back to do so through Kiva.

*I gave two gallons of blood before Addison’s Disease disqualified me at the age of 54. But right from the time they were infants we took our sons with us to the blood bank, and they both started giving as soon as they turned 18. BLOOD DONATIONS SAVE LIVES. What could you do that’s better than that? And at this time of year the need is especially great. Donors get over-busy, or catch a cold or flu, while snow and ice and sheer volume of traffic make for more road accidents, pushing demand up just when supply goes down. “At this festive season,” blood is needed even more. Check with the Red Cross. (Did you know that Clara Barton formed the first American Red Cross chapter in Dansville? Giving blood celebrates our local history!)

*When it’s cold, little animals die. The Finger Lakes SPCA in Bath, Chemung County SPCA near Elmira, and sister chapters all around bring them in, make them warm, and let them live. They could use your help.

*With a new administration in Washington, some folks are sharpening their axes for assaults on the environment. I have a long-standing membership with the National Audubon Society. Consider joining Audubon or one of the other big organizations fighting for our earth and our future: Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, Earthwatch, and more.

*Hate groups are celebrating Christmas by ramping up their activities. Think about supporting the Southern Poverty Law Center, NAACP, American Civil Liberties Union, Anti-Defamation League, or another nationwide group fighting against bigotry.

*Imagine what it would be like being hospitalized over this season, or having hospitalized loved ones. Such services as Fisher House and Ronald McDonald House stay on the job, and always have too much job to do. Gifts help.

*Charles Dickens, who knew grinding childhood poverty first-hand, wrote, “At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time.  Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, remembering his life in a concentration camp, wrote, “When you’re cold, don’t expect sympathy from someone who’s warm.” We can all do better than that. Christmas isn’t the only time we give. But we rarely find a better reminder.

Baby Boom Christmas — Do YOU Remember?

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Christmas is a lot of things to a lot of people, but for almost everyone Christmas includes nostalgia and memories. Sometimes they’re very profound, and sometimes silly and trivial… but even those can be heart-gripping.

Not too many of us actually remember the one-horse open sleigh days, but even memories from “modern times” can seem like another world. For instance, back in the Baby Boom of the 1950s and 1950s…

*You might have gone shopping at M. Cohn & Sons on Liberty Street in Bath, where “Kaynee Pigskin Parade Coordinates rate a rousing cheer” for scoring “another fashion goal with the boys!” These Coordinates were “ivy-neat,” and indeed the young lad in the ad looks like he belongs at Princeton, with jacket, flat cap, and knife-cut creases on his slacks.

*You might find a Dacron blouse and tweed skirt for $12.98 at Mary Kirkland Shoppe in Painted Post, and you might hope that they made you look as elegant as the ecstatic lady in the ad.

*To get the most from your new blouse and skirt you might need Spirella Foundations, custom-made for each individual, measurements taken in the privacy of your home by Mrs. Bertha Crippen of Bath. If you don’t know what we’re talking about, don’t worry about it. You probably weren’t there anyway.

*You might be getting a new hi-fi phonograph from W. T. Grant (in Bath and elsewhere), with four speeds, two speakers, and a hefty price tag of $49.95 (but with convenient terms and no down payment).

*You might be heading out to shop A&P for Holiday Foods and a Wide Selection of Festive Money-Savers, including Butterball and Blue Ribbon oven-ready turkeys at 36 cents a pound.

*You (or your mother) might be playing the Acme Cross-Out Game, with 3500 prizes worth $35,000! Mrs. Doris Doloisio of Cortland and Mrs. Elizabeth Anderson of Canandaigua each won mink stoles!

*If you saved up a hundred dollars in your Christmas Club account, you could make your Christmas “the merriest ever!”

*You could be financing your Christmas shopping by saving Triple-S Blue Stamps from Grand Union (turkeys 39 cents a pound), or with S&H Green Stamps from Cohn’s.

*You might be hoping for a Western Flyer bicycle from Western Auto… maybe accessorized with a Cadet speedometer advertised in “Boys Life.”

*You might be enjoying “the light refreshment” of soda (In glass bottles! Made with cane sugar!) from Pepsi-Cola Elmira Bottling Co., Inc.

*You might be shopping at Rockwell’s in Corning, or at Iszard’s in Elmira, or at Agway almost anywhere.

*You might be arranging special gifts for the milkman and the paper boy.

*You might be haunting the newsstand for “Archie’s Christmas Stocking,” or for the annual Christmas issues of Uncle Scrooge, Dennis the Menace, or Sugar and Spike.

*You might have ordered “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens from the Arrow Book Club, and you might be sweating out a delivery before school lets out.

*You might be hoping to start vacation early with a snow day, and guarantee a white Christmas. What do YOU remember?

Dollhouses and Miniatures — A Sign of Christmas

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Christmas comes, we are reliably informed, but once a year. And with it comes the annual holiday show of dollhouses, miniatures, and model trains at Curtiss Museum. I was there a week or so back, so now I’ve seen twenty shows in a row.

It all started back in the “old museum,” the former Hammondsport Academy on Lake and Main Streets. Someone decided that they should do something a little different and reach out to another audience. Someone came up with the thought of a dollhouse show, and some space was made, and a new holiday tradition was born.

In another building and another century, the show is bigger than it was both in numbers and in concept. Model trains have long been part of Christmas, and several very nice layouts are scattered through the exhibit space. One of them pretty much fills the cupola from Glenn Curtiss’s house.

A long-time favorite is a huge sawmill layout, taking pride of place in the lobby. Miniatures fit in with dollhouses and model trains, but they take a different tack. Miniaturists strive to recreate a scene… perhaps an imaginary one… and draw you into their world. Another miniature in the show is a working carousel. “Best of Show,” in my personal opinion, is Mickie Vollmer’s deliriously busy barnyard scene. (Joyce likes Mickie’s library best.) We also find miniature soldiers on exhibit.

The dollhouses run the gamut from light “art” pieces, designed for adults to admire, to massive carpenter-built playthings that have cheerfully survived the enthusiasms of generations of children. Some are commercial products, each rivetingly familiar to one generation of girls or another. There’s even a nineteenth-century Bliss house, one of the first mass-produced dollhouses.

Christmas to me is a blend of the comfortingly familiar on one hand, and the excitingly new on the other. Jim Sladish’s model train layout is an old friend, and so is a barn built by Dick Hamilton. Dick and Myrtle both passed away since last year’s show.

Something new calls out for attention right by the admissions desk. It’s a roadside diner, with cars in the parking lot, hot dogs on the grill, and customers at the counter.

I saw former Hammondsport art teacher Bob Magee at the show, and he showed me a special offering of his own. When Randy Kuhl was in Congress he asked Bob to create a large ornament for a White House Christmas tree representing all 435 House districts. Bob’s globe shows Glenn Curtiss, grapes, and glassblowers. He wrote the George W. Bush Presidential Library, which quickly unearthed it and lent it for the exhibit.

This special exhibit segues nicely into some of the museum’s permanent exhibits. A one-horse open sleigh is festively decorated, and the miniatures slide into a large selection of antique toys and dolls – not to mention that there are plenty of model airplanes, of course.

As far as I’m concerned, the miniatures show is an integral part of the holidays. Take a look, and see if you think so too.

Holiday Miniatures Show Returns to Curtiss Museum

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Twenty-four. The number of Christmas Eve. The number of days “until,” once December starts. The number of little windows on the Advent calendar, until the big one is opened.
Twenty-four. The number of miniatures shows at the Curtiss Museum, ushering in the holiday season. It’s part of our regional holiday. People who were not year born when the first show opened (in the “old” museum) can now bring their children.
That original show was a dollhouse show, but now the exhibit also includes models, miniatures, and antique toys and dolls.
Roll into the lobby, for instance, and you’re seized by Lanny Wensch’s large sawmill operation, circled (ovaled?) by a garden-scale railroad. To its left is Jim Sladish’s little Christmas village, with its two tracks of trains and Santa sleigh circling overhead. To the sawmill’s right is one of the late Carroll Burdick’s miniature carousels, music and all.
Each of these is operational; the trains run, the carousel circles, Santa’s sleigh flies, the sawmill equipment does its thing. They also show some of the range of this exhibit. The little stores and houses of the Christmas village are mostly available commercially, as of course are the trains. Likewise the sawmill’s big train and tiny engines are commercial products, but the sawmill and its setting are home-built. There’s also some repurposing. The burly millworkers started out in life as action figures of the “He-Man” type. The carousel, at the other end of the range, was largely constructed from scratch.
Range and variety are hallmarks of the show. Still in the lobby a case of large electric trains sits next to a case of paper dolls from the 1920s. A few steps away are a fleet of die-cast airplanes, and an enthralling n-gauge model railroad layout.
Out of the lobby into the main museum are case after case of dollhouses – some commercially made, some scratch-built, some assembled from kits, and some “kit-bashed” – using the kits as starting points, and going wild from there. Some are actually toys, others are works of artisanship, some are perpetual-motion hobbies, always improving but never quite finished. Many are homes, some are farms, some are stores.
And some are not true dollhouses. These are the room boxes, about the size of the proverbial breadbox. Room boxes are artisinal creations, usually in fact focusing on a single room, be it hat shop, colonial kitchen, or comfy living room.
Some of the doll houses and miniatures go back to the 19th century. Others were being finished just as the exhibit case was closed.
Running the gamut from mid-19th century to mid-20th century is a substantial exhibit of toys and dolls (see if you can find Donald Duck, and Charlie McCarthy). Our family exhibits a pressed-board toy store – a gift to my father, in the Great Depression. There are the inevitable war toys, the toy airplanes, the blocks and bowling pins. Take a look at Eva Stickler’s 19th-century doll collection. She cut material from her own dresses to make dresses for her dolls.
Of course you can always wander away to look at the airplanes, motorcycles, workshop, and other permanent museum features. But before you can do that, see if you can find:
*Will Parker’s crystal-laden railroad layout.
*Two cardstock cathedrals.
*Several dollhouses from Marie Rockwell’s collection.
*Miniatures made from toothpicks.
*Toy cars from famous movies and TV shows.
*Creations by Mickie Vollmer, who’s also operating the museum’s upcoming dollhouse and miniatures vendor show.
*A antique-Buick kiddie car, lent by Guy Bennett Jr.
*An original Studebaker sleigh – just waiting for Santa Claus!