Richard Howe | My Christmases

My Christmases

December 25, 2025 by DickH Posted in Uncategorized Leave a Comment

My Christmases

By Leo Racicot

When I was a boy, a must do every Christmas was to go downtown to see the holiday lights on City Hall, and the manger display in front of it. Papa would take Diane and me down to see it. In those days, the entire facade, including the sides of the building, every inch of it, it seemed, were covered in multi-colored lights — a real treat for the eyes, eye-popping. It was and is still a tradition of many years standing although the lights are sparser, framing the edges of the edifice, and are all-white. The creche is looking its age and lacks the luster and serenity of when I saw it in the ’60s. But I looked forward every November of each year to being able to view it in all its festive glory. After the viewing, Papa (or Mama) would head us over to The Bon Marche Department Store on Merrimack Street, to its Toy Department on the 4th or 5th floor (I forget which). I know that, to reach it, we got to ride in the old-fashioned elevator conveyance, with the iron latticed cage, complete with elevator operator. He seemed ancient to my young eyes and I loved watching him pull open the accordion-like cage to let us in, announcing the floors and which goods could be found there. “Third floor! Ladies garments and Millinery! Third floor!” I thought it was cool that the elevator said, Product of Otis Elevator Company; Aunt Marie worked in the Lowell office for Wilbur Bailey, whom we’d run into every summer browsing The Sunday Lowell Sun at Hampton Beach parking lot. In the Toy Department, Diane and I would go wild (well, as wild as our parents would let us which wasn’t much), so excited were we to see miniature trains, dolls, Easy Bake Ovens, cowboy outfits, bicycles, the colors, the lights, everything. Bob Clark’s 1983 comedy chestnut, A Christmas Story, offers a perfect depiction of the excitement inherent in this type of annual thrill in the scene where Ralphie stares, eyes agog with awe, at the many treasures to be had in the window of Higbee’s Department Store. After, Diane and I would be taken to see Santa Claus, as I recall, a terrifying experience the first time involving instant tears and screams, but a visit to be looked forward to in ensuing years; getting to tell the kindly, bearded old fellow what we wanted for Christmas and to assure him we’d been “good, little children all year long”.

After the Santa visit, at home, Mama would go about putting stencil decorations on each window of our house, using Glass Wax. I don’t think stores even sell this product anymore!

As she did on Thanksgiving, Marie collected the three of us in her Rambler around 11 a.m. for a Christmas Day meal complete with all the trimmings. More than the food, I looked forward to visiting the different apartments she and Nana occupied in The Highlands section of the city. My favorite was the house on Branch Street with its enormous, screened-in porch. Their landlady, Agnes Bogosian, was a large, hospitable bubbe of a woman, and always brought up for us exotic treats from her Armenian kitchen,

odd-looking pastries, candies from Ashtarak, the city she’d emigrated from. One item I bit into and was sorry I had was a ball of raw hamburger stuffed with peanut butter and garlic cloves, not a taste sensation I’d care to repeat. Agnes always smelled of garlic but in a good, kitchen-y way and would let loose with a big Ghost of Christmas Present laugh. Later, Marie moved herself and Nana to an apartment across from Tyler Park, a park I liked for its quiet serenity. While waiting for dinner, Marie would let Diane and me go for a walk there. I loved the sound of our boots crunching on the snow and the birds feeding beneath the trees. Their last residence was on South Walker Street where her landlords were Roland and Doris Phinney, who Marie always seemed to be at odds with. In years to come, the Phinneys’ son, Doug would gain local notoriety when he was accused of bashing in the head of a ULowell female college student with his camera. She lived in the house next door. While she slept in her bed. She caught Doug in her room, peeping, clicking pictures of her. Diane worked with Doug at Astro Circuit and always said how creepy he could be, forever sneaking photos of her and other workers. Doug was tried, found guilty and spent many years in prison but on appeal was found not guilty and released. So, there was never a dull moment at Marie’s at Christmastime. We came to take for granted the always-scrumptious repasts she made us, the carols on the radio and record player. She always kept the house too warm but the warmest warmth came from being with Nana. If I close my eyes, I can still hear my grandmother’s clear-as-a-mountain-stream soprano as she sang along with the Christmas music. If she didn’t always know the words, she embraced the spirit of them. I’m finding words fail me here to describe the treasure she was, the love she emanated, the acceptance, her uncomplaining embrace of all that Life offered, the good and the bad surprises. I loved being in her presence. Nana was a one-woman safe house sanctuary against the blitzkriegs of childhood. Her presence made every Christmas special.

I’ll never forget the year aluminum Christmas trees came into vogue; Diane and I begged and begged our mother to buy one. She finally gave in. The branches of the aluminum trees were silver. They came with a color wheel. The colors of ours were red, blue, green and orange. The color wheel was placed on the floor at the base of the tree, aimed at the branches which made the silver twinkle and shimmer in those particular colors. It was lovely to look at. At first. But we soon got tired of it. For one thing, the tree didn’t look so good if decorated with lots of multi-colored ornaments and lights, the way a real Christmas tree did. Ornament balls for the silver tree were of solid colors: all red or all blue or all what-have-you. Diane and I got bored with looking at it. After a couple of years, we told Ma we wanted to go back to a pine tree. She explained that the aluminum had cost so much, we were going to get as much use out of it as we could. So, year after year, that aluminum tree stayed, and stayed, and stayed. It did, after a number of years, begin to fade, lose its visual appeal, and became somewhat depressing to look at in its little corner of the living room. Ma finally relented and replaced it with a real tree. Phew!

I’ve written about The Christmas of the Bicycle before. I woke extra early one Christmas morning to find an English racer taking up most of the living room. It didn’t fit under the tree but seeing it, I literally gasped at the wonder of it. It was the most beautiful bike I’d ever seen. I was nine years old and kept scratching my head as to how Santa had gotten it down the chimney. The very idea of it was magical. Of course, Mamma was the magic but I didn’t know that. Not then. Magical, too, was when, every Christmas morning when the cookies she’d left for Santa Claus on our kitchen table the night before had been eaten, the milk, drunk. Years later, Ma admitted she’d been the one who’d eaten the snack even though she was not a fan or either cookies or milk. I said to her, “But how come you didn’t just throw the food and milk away!” and she said, “In the Depression, we were taught never to waste good food.”

I still look back with fondness on the holiday gatherings Joe and his family included me in. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so well or found myself in the middle of such a spirited group of folks. One Christmas, Joe’s nephew, Peter, enlisted me as his coloring book partner and we must have worn down a couple of boxes of Crayola crayons. I remember Peter, who was maybe 5 or 6, chastising me, “You’re bearing down too hard, Leo!” Meanwhile, Joe was caught up in the obligatory holiday task of watching the same Christmas movie over and over with his nieces until dinner was ready “Can we watch it once more, Uncle Joey! Pleeez, can weeee?!!” Joe’s mother, who was, God Bless her, the world’s foremost authority on fretting, and who was always worried for things to go well, did the holiday pacing. One Christmas, amid a sea of guests, she loudly blurted out, “Who cut the cheese!” She meant the cheddar but of course it sounded like something else. Joe and I still have a good chuckle about this. All-in-all, these were good times, memorable parties. I do look back and realize the Markiewicz’s likely felt a little sorry for me and included me in

their festivities; strictly speaking, I was an orphan, Good Christians that they were, and are, they took pity on me. Heaven Bless them.

For so many years, the Christmas of the Bicycle was my most memorable Christmas. That is, until the winter I was so ill and found myself in recovery on Cape Cod, in Hyannis. Over the long weeks, it got lonely there and I was bummed that Christmas was coming and I’d be alone, without family. Diane talked Rico into making the long drive to spend Christmas with me. This brightened my spirits and on Christmas Day, I looked eagerly forward to their arrival. But, it started to snow and I worried they’d have a hard time making it from Lowell to Hyannis, or even decide not to come. I was an absolute wreck when four hours beyond their estimated time of arrival passed and they hadn’t shown up. I was so worried about their safety and was climbing the walls when Head Nurse, Jackie Fossiano, a force in and of herself to be reckoned with, worse even than the snowstorm, lost patience with my pacing and snapped, “A watched pot never boils, Leo! Go write in your journal!” and sent me to my room.

It was six in the evening when Diane and Rico pulled up in their SUV and spirited me away from the hospital for a few hours. The snow covered the landscape, making for a white Christmas. Rico drove to a spot near the ocean and parked. They brought out of the trunk all the gifts they’d bought me. I unpacked the bag of gifts I’d brought for them. The night was so silent and still. There, as we watched the boats on the water, decorated for the holiday with strings of colorful lights (a Cape Cod Christmas tradition), we opened our presents and ooh-ed and ah-ed. It was a freezing cold night; not even Rico’s heater could warm the car up. But I was so completely thrilled to have them there, have my sister

beside me, surrounded by all the festive wrapping paper and ribbons, the boats ahead bobbing on the cold, snow-capped water, that I was seized through-and-through by a joy I’ve never felt. Truly, a Christmas to remember…