Going on holiday and a lost gift from the past is discovered

“Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!” 

― Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

REVERE, Mass. — Blame it on the warm weather for my Christmas cheer and indomitable holiday spirit.

A week and half ago, we traveled Revere to celebrate the Yuletide with family and friends. It was the first Christmas I didn’t have to cook. I had become a man of leisure — at least for two days —and could enjoy the holiday without slaving over a hot stove.

You see, I didn't just survive the holidays. I enjoyed them for the first in a long time. Now I embrace the mayhem and the insanity that goes along with Christmas and Thanksgiving. I guess I always enjoyed the madness.

We left cloudy and cool Maine, and by the time we approached the Massachusetts coast on Christmas Eve, the warm embrace of a shining sun and a warm sea breeze greeted us.

The temperature rose to 70 degrees in the dead of a New England December. There have been warm Christmases in the past, but this was beach weather. It was astounding — and unheard of at this time of year. The warm sun put everybody in a good mood and the thought of

dreaming of a white Christmas would end up being an ordinary nightmare.

Before we checked into our room at the Red Roof Inn in Saugus, Mass., we had lunch with a generous cop friend of mine at the Prince Pizzeria on Route 1. The restaurant features a huge replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, only it is spelled pizza. My father took us there years ago, and of course, the fading memories of my parents suddenly became clear as we seated ourselves to feast on fried calamari and chicken wings.

After a small meal and trading tales about the old neighborhood, my friend and I parted company. We checked into our room at the motel before we made the three-mile ride to Revere.

We visited my uncle before we touched down at my sister’s three-story home, where 25 family members and friends waited to devour a 20-course meal complete with shrimp linguini and succulent stuffed mushrooms. The difficult part of my visit with relatives is glancing at our family home, which was sold eight months ago after my father died. It is next to my uncle’s house. When I stood before Al and Louise’s house, a house that once provided shelter to a loving family of six, I wanted to see my dad part the curtains at the picture window and beckon us to come inside to see mom, but my parents are gone.

The curtains were closed, anyway, and the my parents’ home, a loving, a modest home that was built in 1966, was occupied by new owners.

I turned and headed for the car, vowing not to spoil the holiday with my brief bout of melancholy.

I arrived at my sister’s home and was given a hero’s welcome. My mood improved with each hug I received from family members.

We ate, drank and we were merry despite the loss of loved ones, but I swear the warm weather helped us all feel better. We held a Yankee swap on my sister’s deck Christmas Eve. Nobody wore a jacket as a full Christmas moon appeared and lit up the yuletide sky. It was like a late spring day in the Greater Boston area.

A gift from the past

The kitchen table in any Italian home is a meeting place for the family. That was true for our clan as well.

After my parents passed, we divided up everything, including the Christmas decorations last April. When we decorated our tree and hung my parents decorations at my home, we discovered a Christmas ornament that my parents never gave their niece.

We gathered around at my sister’s home and presented our niece with the intended gift from her grandmother. I don’t know why the holiday ornament remained in a box downstairs in my parents’ home for the past 27 years. Perhaps, my mom forgot or she was waiting to give it to her niece at the right moment. The small mystery didn’t matter. The ornament has been delivered 27 years later.

Maybe, that small reminder of my parents was our small Christmas miracle this season. We certainly needed one after losing so many important people in our lives.

Christmas by the beach

Imagine walking the beach on Christmas day in spring-like temperatures with NO snow on the ground!

We checked out early and headed to Revere Beach, where the temperature was a balmy 65 degrees Christmas morning. Runners and bikers dressed in T-shirts and shorts wished us a Merry Christmas as they raced by on the boulevard. We spent over an hour walking on the sand and marveling at the warm temperatures. Winter set up shop by Thanksgiving and last Christmas was bleak and cold.

The walk, the sound of the waves and salt air presented us with Christmas morning that we would never be forgotten.

My mother loved the beach and my parents would buy coffee and sit on the wall during warm summer nights and chilly autumn days.

I felt them both in my heart this holiday. They were right there with us as we briskly walked along the sandy New England beach. My parents gave me life and a lifetime of love, and my sweet memories of them keep me going through each season of our lives.

Perhaps Christmas also serves to remind us of what is truly important in our lives.

Sometimes, it is the most difficult time of the year

Christmas is a time when you get homesick — even when you're home.                   

                                                                                                                                    — Carol Nelson

Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we're here for something else besides ourselves.  

                                                                                                                                  — Eric Sevaride

When we recall Christmas past, we usually find that the simplest things — not the great occasions - give off the greatest glow of happiness.          

                                                                                                                                          — Bob Hope

AUBURN, Maine — I won't bother taking a head count at the dinner table this Christmas. Many of my loved ones are now a long string of fond memories and images bundled together and sealed in dozens books of photographs in our bedroom. 

There are piles of pictures of aunts and uncles, grandparents and friends mugging for the camera at barbecues or at holiday dinners. There are old and recent movies of them at the beach, pool or playing cards at our grandpa's home.

And all those Christmas cards have dried up. Relatives aren't around to send those thoughtful cards in the mail. That's what happens when you sneak past the high-water mark at 50 years old.

This is the most difficult time of the calendar when it  comes to missing all those familiar faces who gave us love and hope throughout the years. We feel pressured to celebrate a Martha Stewart holiday — where the hoity-toity fold their napkins a certain way and take hours arranging a perfect dinner table or preparing a meal that costs a small fortune. We are pelted with jewelry advertisements where a man dressed in a George Armani suit springs a diamond worth the entire budget of a third-world nation on his trophy wife.

Commercialism falls on us like a tree in each December. We watch people kill each other on Black Friday over a free DVD player. Next to war, this chaotic shopping day is one of humanity's aberrations in a season where we are supposed to reach out to our fellow man instead reaching for another shopper's neck.

I can see why some of us turn to the Dark Side like happy-go-lucky Darth Vader and go around pissing off loved ones with our Scrooge-like attitudes. I won't take that sinister to approach to Christmas, which for me, is a holiday that celebrates family — or what is left of my tribe. If I choose to become a prisoner of my past, I will miss all the those wonderful moments with my wife and son.

In some ways, Christmas is giant signpost on the side of a highway, refreshing our memory that we made it through the end of the year — intact.

There are numerous reasons why I put up a freshly-cut tree in the parlor and clutter the rest of our house with sentimental ornaments, which become more precious and priceless as time passes. There is the Dunkin Donuts coffee ornament, a cherish home-made decoration our son,  and the "Our First Christmas Together" that all hang with care on our well-lit tree. And when one breaks, I lament and move on because it is a thing, but the loss of relative or parent leaves a permanent hole in my heart.

It can be a cruel world, and death is a cruel hoax played on all of us at some point in our lives. But I have witnessed so many remarkable and loving moments from my family, teachers and students in my son's school. I cheer when a student, who has given up on himself, turn his life around on a dime and eventually go on to conquer the world.

Heartbreak and depression rises exponentially during the yuletide. I witness my father's memory disappear as Alzheimer's syphons off his precious recollections. I am helpless and it is hopeless to watch a good man's life dwindle away. I want to take Alzheimer's out for walk just like Michael did to Sal Tessio in the Godfather. Alzheimer's is a diabolical disease that not only destroys the brain but also emotionally scars entire families.

But this is also the season of hope. There are many remarkable people doing wonderful things for the greater good in December.

I still don't understand why it takes a holiday to bring out the best in most of us when we should ALL be helping out our fellow men year-round. One day of benevolence make any of us  Do-gooders of the Year. But if it takes a holiday to remind the human race to get off its ass, pick up a shovel, and dig in to make the world a more palatable place to live, what the hell, I am all for it.

Just remember this on Christmas Eve. When you are sitting at the dinner table with a family member as the turkey and corn come your, keep in mind the he or she might not be present next year. Nobody has lock on longevity and time has the final say in matters of life in death. Only time will tell.

So pull out that annoying camera, snap  a few hundred pictures, treasure every precious moment you spend with your family on this Christmas day.

When Dr. Seuss penned "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas," he had it right when he wrote, "Christmas Day will always be, Just as long as we have we."