December 5, 2011

On a night early in December the Miller family would gather in the kitchen. The stove kept us warm; the rest of the house had blankets covering the doorways.  My mother would open a quart of blueberries, gathered the summer before, and pour them over grandmother Hinckley’s ginger cake.   Along with her molasses (hockey puck) cookies, we plunged into a family ritual. This was a family tradition long buried in the canyons of my mind, only to be rediscovered last week while walking along the Delaware.

Sitting in a circle, we would carefully pick bouquets of lions paw (running pine), gathered earlier in the winter from Potter’s Mountain. My father would arrange the tiny bouquets around a stretched-out coat hanger until a gorgeous Christmas wreath appeared. Once the wreath was finished we would decorate it with pine cones and berries. My mother would then complete the task by attaching a ribbon fashioned on the sewing machine. In one evening we would create thirty wreathes. There was so much laugher and storytelling; my father never ran out of stories. The Miller boys believed every last word.  I still do!  I remember those days with great fondness and sometimes my eyes are filled with tears. We had so little and yet, so much.

The following day Dave and I would hang wreaths on a broom stick and market our wares around the neighborhood for a hefty price of fifty cents.  Mrs. Ramsey was one of our best customers; she always bought four wreaths for the Pittsfield cemetery.  She was an elderly lady who lived alone out near the Thomas Island Road. I never knew too much about her.

We sold a lot of wreaths and brought the money home.  I never realized that we were earning money for our own family Christmas. In those days our gifts were homemade, but this Christmas in ’46, my folks bought me a very special gift-a genuine purple leather baseball glove. Now I could finally play second base for the Boston Red Soxs. In retrospect this was one of the greatest Christmas gifts I have ever received.

With great pleasure our folks watched us open our gifts on Christmas morning. The memory of digging through the snow and stuffing the burlap bags with lions paw may have been forgotten, but  lions paw is still growing on Potter Mountain, the snow is still very cold; I suspect the old family house is still pretty warm-if only the walls could talk.

This year I plan to take four wreaths back to the Pittsfield cemetery for Mother, Dad, Audrey and brother, Dave. I’ll search for their graves in the snow. My hands will not feel the cold. On the way home, I may stop at the Taconic diner for some blueberry pie.  This year I might cross paths with a molasses cookie. Christmas is a time to remember. Christmas is a time to cherish loved ones lost and a time to celebrate the living with joy, affection and forgiveness.

Christmas is a time to rejoice in the Christ child.  Come, let us adore him!

Doug Miller