READY, STEADY, CHRISTMAS...

READY, STEADY…CHRISTMAS! by Justyna Ball

Thanksgiving … check. Holiday Tree…check. Buy tons of unnecessary items to fill up the space under the tree...check. Line the family up against the Holiday Tree, get the camera…check. Dump the Holiday Tree out the window…check.
Get ready for Valentine's Day, St Patrick's Day…and repeat. As always, it's the retailers who dictate the timing of events.
I know some "believers" who while still simmering their turkey soup are already contemplating getting the tree ready. There is nothing neither religious nor spiritual about it. Practical maybe. But since when Christmas is about practicality?
Black Friday turned bloody when one of the employees of Wal-Mart was stampeded. Early Christmas shopping turned brutal.

1986 A D. New in the strange world (or strangers in the new world?), we opened the door to The Big Unknown. And it let us in. Straight off the TWA (no, not off the boat, it's a new era of traveling!), we arrived with 6 suitcases of books, Lego and $400 in cash. Amongst the luggage stood 3 ½ year old Karolina, now all sleepy and tired, after a long flight from Frankfurt followed by a shorter one from NYC. Wearing her light-colored sheepskin winter coat and Salamander boots, the best-looking immigrant child. Jacek, equally exhausted, was carrying ALL of our belongings. My excuse? The benefit of being a mother to be… a full 8 months of "blessed state." (Dr. Schantz allowed me to fly and …changed the due date on my paper work so the "junge" could be born in the US, a nice gesture of my German doctor.)

As we drove from the airport… our first glimpses of the US were from the back window of the van. Highways in the US are extremely wide with the billboards matching their size, I thought. The bearded preacher played "This Land is your Land" all the way from Hartford! What year is it here, anyway??? Who are these strangely behaving people? No time to think, just follow your instincts. We'll survive as long as we are together.

At "home," the crowds (the welcoming squad) slowly disappeared but not before… a short interview for the local paper. Barbarians…

The House of Odds. The living room had five rocking chairs, odd. The bedroom had 5 windows with plastic on them, odd and the bullet holes painted over. The kitchen had a huge "igloo" fridge and a sink the size of a small pool, odd. The bathroom sink was tiny with separate hot and cold-water faucets, rather odd. But as I learned later it's all about location, location, location…

I discarded several yogurts because of their terrible taste before realizing that the "fruit was on the bottom." My instincts were in "asleep" mode.

Amongst the donated items, I gathered a collection of flannel nightgowns, which I gave to the church for the needy. What I actually needed were …earplugs.

The (Very) First Night: In the middle of it, the siren went off. Apparently, we lived walking distance from the fire station.

I believe it was the next day after that, right after dusk, when kids in costumes showed up asking for … candy. What nerve! It's getting stranger with every day now! Nobody told us to shut off the light outside the house. Saltine crackers were all I had.

Waterbeds, electric blankets, drive through cemeteries, old ladies wearing pastels and white athletic shoes, old ladies asking to be called by first names. Christmas theme attire in Season, singing and dancing Santa dolls, Cadillac(s), Shepard's pie and Campbell's soups, peanut butter, Wonder bread. Sloppy Joe, marshmallow fluff, Dr Pepper, ice cream trucks
(Marty will kill me if I go over 6 columns...).

December 16th. The last day of my pregnancy, I woke up in the still unfamiliar country and experienced water leakage comparable to the Hoover Dam (if cracked) with Raggedy Ann & Andy staring at me from the wall!

"The soon to be father's" reaction was rather slow, due to the fact that Jacek was missing some hours of sleep after a visit from Tomaszek, a Polish friend who happened to live in Worcester, Mass and had already discovered the local brewery. Then we did what was instructed by Betty (a woman committed to help us to adjust to the new surroundings). Jacek ran downstairs to tell our neighbor to call Betty (our phone was not hooked up) who called her neighbor, Mrs. White, who woke up her daughter who stayed with sleeping Karolina until the morning. The road to the hospital was rather bumpy with Betty hitting a deer on the way back. Surprisingly the Honda Accord survived, but the deer wasn't so lucky.
I remember being in the hospital checking my ever present Oxford dictionary for two things: one was "jaundice" and the other… My new friend, Magda, whom I just met and who back in Poland was a midwife and already had a 5 year old son here, gave me this advice: If I have a little boy when I hear in the hospital that word "circumcision" is used to just scream "NO!" See, that's what Polish friends are for.
I gave away pigs' feet that I found on our doorstep, but I saved the gallon of vodka, which we used to … disinfect the baby's belly button.

Within days of baby Francis being born, we received a visitor. A guy showed up at our Central St apartment, probably tipped by the hospital, on a mission to convince us (a couple of newest immigrants) that more than anything else in the world, and during this Christmas Season, we need to spend $100 on a photo shoot with our newborn son. The kind that the whole family is included, filling up the left bottom corner of the picture completely, leaving space in the right corner big enough to fit a galaxy. I've seen it at friends' houses later on, but never regretted not getting one. The proud "floating in the air" parents (That still will be us!) hold the baby on their laps. Not sure of how to say, "Get lost" in English and if it's even proper to dismiss such an intruder, we played along. They're not only barbarians, they are also nuts!

It was Sally Deremian who took the first pics of Francis when he was only hours old at no charge. Priscilla Kulas made a dish of golabki. Good Christians Mr. and Mrs. Gagnon gave us $20 and from the Blisses we received a Christmas tree! Florence Bolton (herself a daughter of a Polish-German immigrant couple) helped us write a thank you letter to the churches who sponsored us. She gave us area tours and…ideas.

Peter Coulthard (Betty's husband) got Jacek his first job. Mike Deremian (Sally's husband) helped Jacek buy our first family car, the Buick Skylark. The year was still 1986.
My kids either slept, rode or played in cribs, carriages, high chairs that were borrowed from the Watermans (Grandma Gail was a postal worker and a friend of Betty's), or wore clothes from Dyjaks' children (school principal)… and they turned out ok. They seem it at least.
We all adjusted, as planned with Betty's help and many others. And that's what I'm thankful for each Thanksgiving. For people who showed up in our lives when we needed them or just to chat to lift up our spirits.

We indulged in American life but not necessarily the lifestyle.

Soccer practices, dance recitals, Macy's Day Parade. Skiing trips, bunny slopes and Black Diamonds. Mario Brothers, Disney World, Six Flags, South Beach … did not spoil us. Tonsils and ingrown toenails, broken arms, wrists, ankles, poison ivy, dog bites…
Those we could not avoid…and the class rings (rip-offs) and the Starter jacket craze that we could...

(But never forgetting where we came from keeping our own traditions alive.)

The memories of Betty showing US how to use a stove are priceless.
Hiding from her new items like a set of steak knives in the closet to avoid the "no, you don't need those!" comments. I smile at the memory of Paul Korzec who sat in that van on the way from the airport and acted as a translator. He learned his Polish from grandma so he, himself a sixty-something guy, unknowingly, spoke like a … woman which to us was quite amusing.

Polish "common sense" (na chlopski rozum) approach equipped us with the ability of not falling into the mass hysteria of buying the newest video game or other object of desire to keep up with the Jones'.

The New Yorker's humor (like comics from the 1930s with its "Room for sleeping or jumping?") and daily doses of Peanuts kept us sane. This Christmas season I wear my "It's ok to wish me a Merry Christmas" pin.

Last year I paid special attention to how the media ignored or targeted, when needed, sometimes even ridiculing things that cannot be bought, the stuff they cannot sell like traditions, customs, and the symbolic aspect of Christmas. Holiday shopping is ok, but Christmas traditions are not, seems to be their motto.
We'll see about that.

Traditionally, within days of Christmas Eve, we'll go to the … hardware store to pick the ugliest tree, the one that nobody wanted and we'll make it look pretty and we'll keep it until Feb 2nd. You know, the Blessings of the Candles day that in America, over the years, evolved into…you'll never guess…Woodchuck, I mean Groundhog Day. In other countries, it is still the Purification of the Virgin and officially ends Christmas season.
When according to ancient Jewish custom, 40 days after Jesus was born, his mother became purified. My grandma in Poland always told me that she takes the tree down right before my birthday, which is Feb 5th.

It's 2008. I will cook a whole Christmas Eve's (meatless) supper, traditionally on two burners! (My notorious bad luck with appliances.) It's a challenge but I'm always for it. To mark the beginning of Wigilia, we will share an oplatek, then have fish and "pierogi z kapusta," barszcz and uszka, herring, an apple & leeks salad, gingerbread, poppy seed strudel, cheesecake, and the very next day, while we still nibble on bigos (hunter's stew) and paszteciki (little meat pies)… I'll watch the saddest sight, a sight of a Christmas tree, naked for only the remnants of some Angel's hair, flickering in the wind on my neighbor's yard.

Sure, you can convince people to do that. Dump the tree, all together now! Retailers want you to prepare for Valentine's Day.
But you cannot erase Christmas completely, because it brings too much profit.
What the media can do is make it appear less attractive, at the same time promoting shopping (It's called the "exchange of gifts" they want you to keep that one tradition going) and giving a boost to other holidays, so "others won't feel left out."

So, for now...Merry Christmas to All! Who knows, maybe some day our children will call it, "Mr. and Mrs. Santa's anniversary gala!" Or the "Snowman extravaganza."

In 2000, we spent Christmas in Warsaw, one brisk morning, as we were leaving for downtown, grandma yelled after my husband, "Jacusiu, a zalozyles cieple majtki?" (Which translates to: "Jacus, are you wearing warm underwear?" The forty-year old father of two replied rolling his eyes, "Tak, babciu, zalozylem!" Some things never change.