A Lowell Christmas Story

Ma and granddaughter Tess.

Christmas on Liberty Street was never quiet, never subtle, and barely under control.

The house seemed different in December. Fuller somehow. Louder. Warmer. Even when the heat barely kept up, and the windows rattled in the cold. I don’t know how Ma did it. Money was always tight, and there were a lot of us. But every year, somehow, Christmas arrived like it always had: chaotic, bright, and unmistakably magical.

Christmas Eve meant the little 13-inch black-and-white TV in the kitchen, balanced on its rolling platform, with the news guy (or maybe the weather guy; they were interchangeable in my mind) solemnly tracking Santa’s progress toward Boston. The closer he got, the more electric the room felt. It didn’t take much to thrill us back then. 

We always had enormous Christmas trees. Spectacularly large. They made no sense for a room that size. The bulbs were big and colorful and dangerously hot. Not “warm,” not “glowy,” but scorching. I learned this the hard way once and only once. Pain is a memorable teacher.

One year, the tree simply refused to stay upright. It fell again and again, like it was protesting its existence in this forest of knotty pine. Eventually, Dad solved the problem the way Dad solved most problems: with twine, nails, and a hammer. The tree was secured to the wall, and I’m fairly certain I learned several new words that night that my six- or seven-year-old ears were not meant to hear (but absolutely did anyway).

The days leading up to Christmas were long, and oh so very slow. So. Slow. There was time to kill, and we beat it to death. My Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Marion brought over huge sheets of paper from Jimmy’s work, massive and glorious, the size of a large Oriental rug. I’d spend hours drawing winter scenes at the kitchen table. Aunt Marion, the regal matriarch of my mother’s family, was the one Ma admired most. That paper covered nearly the entire table, but Ma didn’t mind. I was quiet and she knew where I was. To Ma, this counted for a lot.

I remember being transfixed by the first airing of A Charlie Brown Christmas in December of 1965, a fact I’ve since had to look up. It was sponsored by Dolly Madison cakes, which I then pestered Ma to buy relentlessly. Advertising works. But Ma worked in a bakery, and that meant Dolly Madison was never coming to my house.

Then there was the Sears Catalog, the magnificent Christmas Wish Book, one of humankind's finest creations. It arrived thick, glossy, and heavy enough to qualify as building material. I could spend hours poring over it, circling things with wild optimism. I later learned the average Wish Book in the mid-1960s ran over 500 pages, which explains a lot about my out-sized expectations.

One year, I circled the G.I. Joe Space Capsule. And on Christmas morning, there it was — sitting on the couch in the living room, unwrapped. The space suit. The capsule. The 45 RPM record of John Glenn’s flight. I knew instantly it was from Santa.

It was unwrapped because Santa never wrapped gifts. He didn’t have time for wrapping paper. He had places to be. He got in, dumped the goods, and got out.

That box on the couch remains the single most perfect Christmas sight I’ve ever known.

What I didn’t understand then was that none of it happened by accident. The magic wasn’t Santa, it was Ma. It was the Christmas Club at the Lowell Institution for Savings, where she put away a couple of dollars a week, every week, without fail. It was the quiet, persistent saving that never felt dramatic, but was necessary. It was the belief that good things didn’t come from wishing; they came from planning and effort.

And after Dad left, when things got tighter instead of easier, she didn’t talk about sacrifices. She just worked more. A full day at the Yum Yum Shop bakery in Cupples Square, and then, several nights a week in the fall, she walked the mile downtown to Stuart’s Department Store and worked another shift. No speeches. No complaints. Just relentless forward motion.

So when Christmas morning arrived, when the tree stayed upright, the room felt full, and presents were waiting on the couch, it wasn’t luck. It was the result of someone who refused to let things fall apart, who made sure there was Christmas even when it took everything she had.

A dear friend of mine once called her an Epic Mom. I like that. Not because she was loud about it, or sentimental, or that she made things perfect, but because she did the tough things, quietly, over and over again, and somehow made them feel like magic.