Episodic Christmas Trees

Dolly Baruch

December, 2011

Again, with the 4th grade – that year was important in my life – a boyfriend for the first time (I was in love with a boy named Romeo when I was nine years old). In 1948, a polio scare. I had awakened one morning just after the school year had begun with flu symptoms, and caused a panic in my family. I actually spent a night in the hospital with a stiff leg – and was sent home the next day. If it was polio, it was the mildest kind. I was unable to tell whether my stiff leg was real or I was faking it. It was also the year of my banishment to the janitor’s closet because of school prayers, but that happened in the spring, after the Christmas tree debacle.

So many shameful episodes that year. I was the most shameful and shamed child who ever lived. And I lied about everything. Including my family’s inability to afford a Christmas tree. Well, of course, we didn’t have a Christmas tree. We were Jewish. But when my teacher asked the class just before we left for our Christmas holiday break if anyone didn’t have a tree, I was the only child who raised her hand. So I was given the schoolroom tree – all six feet of it, colored paper chains and strung popcorn and tinsel and even a gold doily and lace placemat angel on top – to take home with me. I had loved and coveted that tree for weeks. It was beautiful and smelled so good.

There was snow on the ground that day, and I lived about three blocks away. I was so proud of myself. I dragged that tree home through the snow, shedding ornaments and tinsel as I went. I was done in as I finally negotiated our side pathway and towed the tree around to the back door porch, hauled it up the stairs, and was just about to open the screen door when my mother came out to see what all the commotion was. “What have you got? What have you done?” she screamed. What had I done? I was baffled and hurt and shamed. “I only told the teacher we didn’t have a Christmas tree and she gave it to me,” I wailed. “Well you just take that tree right back to that school.” Exhausted as I was, there was nothing for me but to trudge back to school with the tree. Don’t you know, I didn’t make it further than one block back. I left the tree in an alley, and then had to dawdle my way back home in the cold so my mother wouldn’t know I hadn’t dragged the tree all the way back to school. I lied my way out of it. “My teacher said I could have just left it in an alley and somebody would have had the use of it,” I told my mother. Somehow, she believed me, or was just glad to be done with this affair. I don’t believe she told my father about it, or I would have been punished, probably beaten. No, that was the end of it. This time.

We moved away from Johnson Street the next school year to a house my parents bought on the bluff, 215 Dechman Street. They paid $7,500 for it. Our neighbors were all Catholic or Protestant. Christmas came again, and everyone had not only a Christmas tree in their windows but also lights and other outdoor decorations, at minimum, a wreath on the door. Ours was the only unlit undecorated house on the block. And those years, we didn’t dare to put a menorah in the window. “Why advertise we’re Jewish” my mother opined. My father didn’t care. He was a scientist. Both Christmas and Hanukkah were superstitions anyway. He did hand out Hanukkah gelt. Shiny dimes for my sister and me eight nights in a row. Eighty cents was a pretty good haul when my allowance was only 15 cents a week.

I indulged my love for Christmas trees by visiting the neighbors’ houses every night for weeks – they were only too happy to show off their trees, sometimes lit with shiny bubble lights, sometimes only tinsel and homemade ornaments, but always dozens of gaily wrapped gifts under the tree. I was so envious. I wanted to be Christian in the worst way. They had all the fun. That sweet baby Jesus. All the carols that everybody (including me) knew and sang out joyfully. The wonderful decorations. Dressing up for midnight mass. Nobody said anything bad about your religion or called you a kike or thought you were rich and tight with your money when you really didn’t even have very much money. Being Jewish was no fun at all – we had to keep it quiet, we didn’t have a Christmas tree or an Easter basket, and I hated Sunday School – all those stuckup rich Jewish kids with their cashmere sweaters.

Well, to be honest, my mother did buy Christmas candy, particularly big five pound boxes of Brach’s chocolates every year and after Easter, she picked up sale candy by the pound. I even heard that some Jews had Hanukkah bushes decorated with a lighted Star of David on top. But not in our house. No trees for us. Envy and jealousy – and shame and lying. Boy oh boy did I ever hate being Jewish. And boy oh boy, did I ever want to be just like everyone else, especially if I could have a beautiful sparkly Christmas tree with dozens of presents under it, even if they were only socks and mittens and new pajamas. Sigh.