The Spirit of Christmas

TRUDY COXE,
executive director of The Preservation Society of Newport County

Coxe knows her way around Newport. She lovingly lords over the fabled mansions, and knows just where to entertain guests over the holidays.

‘‘I bring them to ‘Christmas at the Mansions,’ which we’ve done for 16 years: The Breakers, Marble House, The Elms, all decorated in holiday splendor, and on Dec. 19, they’d be my guests at the annual holiday dinner-dance at The Breakers, one of the best events all year,’’ Coxe said.

Thousands of poinsettias adorn the three mansions, along with evergreens, wreaths, and 19th-century ornaments, with dining tables set with period silver and china and great halls, bedrooms, and sitting rooms coming to holiday life.
Such holiday decorations take liberties with history, however.
‘‘These houses weren’t used in winter, they were closed down’’ when owned by the likes of the Vanderbilts, Coxe said. ‘‘The decorations are our fantasies, so we’re not being accurate. But we are having fun.’’
— Paul E. Kandarian, Globe Correspondent
(Ira Kerns/The Preservation Society of Newport County)
 
 
This was one of the entries for an article in the Boston Globe, where various correspondents asked a few famous Bostonians where they like to spend time with friends and family, especially those visiting from out of town, at Christmas. Since Thanksgiving will be upon us this week, I thought I'd not only start the enjoyment of the REAL holiday season, but get the drop on the Fall River Herald News in laying out some of my own views on this time of year.
 
I look at that picture of  Christmas at the Mansion's displays and THAT was what I thought Christmas was all about as a child. Maybe I spent too much time enjoying The Nutcracker, but to me, to see the greens of the tall-as-the-ceiling trees, bedazzlling with ornaments and tinsel and a Golden Star on top, lots of red and gold everywhere, and a huge stack of brightly and smartly wrapped presents under the tree made Christmas the day of the year I looked forward to the most. And of course , there had to be those Christmas songs always playing in the background too, with lots of repeats for any song by Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby with the occassional Arthur Feidler led Boston Pops along for the "Sleigh Ride". Whenever I closed my eyes that's the Christmas I used to want to see.  Maybe a couple more times I'll get to enjoy that kind of Christmas, IF my kids progress with their lives, which I'm sure they will, and they marry and have their own children, which I am also sure they will, eventually.
 
As a child my Christmas day was not much like my dream picture. It cannot be when one of your parents is an alcoholic. It's a better than normal day, however. You TRY to live in the spirit of joy and love and happiness, and enjoy your loot and booty,  but it's kind of  tough when Mom's not speaking to Dad, whose been sucking down Highballs since 7 A.M. , eyes and nose are redder then Rudolph's and your aunt and uncle are coming by with more booze. It was family tradition I grew to loathe as I grew older. And I began to grow angry that we could not even have a decent Christmas day, not one. Hell, I thought, even Tiny Tim had a nice Christmas at home, and he was a cripple! I didn't know it then, but so was I.

I think the turning point for me was the year my family moved from Dorchester, a part of Boston, to the, at the time, very rural community of Walpole. I'm 12, I barely know many other kids and 12 is one awful age to be "the new kid", my dad is a raging drunk, he lost his job, and to top it all off, we live in the woods. Or at least it seemed like the woods to me having spent my entire life in Boston.
One day I made the mistake, a couple of weeks before Christmas, to ask if we were getting a Christmas Tree. Can't possibly have Christmas without a tree I thought. Without missing a drunken beat, my dad put on his coat and gloves and disappeared for about 15 minutes. He then walked into the living room with, no word of a lie, a badly filled out small tree just like the one to the right. It was about 5 feet high and an entire air wing from WWII could have flown through the openings between the branches.  He had cut the tree down from our backyard. My Dad had even fashioned a base from four small pieces of wood laying around his workbench area. Dad's work done for Christmas. You could tell because he never came up for sober air again that year. I swear I looked just like Charlie Brown when I saw that "shrub" of a tree. It was a lousy sapling.  I had no desire to decorate it. I just grew sullen and angry.
Right then and there I decided to never let thet happen again. The next year I shoveled snow in the neighborhood, and then with my best friend,  around  town, and earned enough to buy a very big and very full Christmas Tree. I worked hard to make Christmas the best I could from that day forward.  But I was never really wildly happy.

AS I grew older and graduated college and grad school, and became married with a home of my own, I finally had the resources to do Christmas  the right way, or so I thought. Yes, I gave my wife great presents, then my kids. I spent far too much tagging trees, buying things to dececorate the house and entertaining people. But that hurt kid never went awway. Every Christmas, it seemed, was bittersweet. Some memories of the past just never leave you. You simply have to learn how to live your life around them, and not dwell on them, especially if to do so gets in the way of others enjoying their day. Adult responsibility makes it possible for everyone to keep the spirit of the day possible. Thank God I've learned that now. Today, I enjoy Christmas for what it is supposed to be, for me and those around me.

My daughter is working extremly hard while at college. She sent me an email asking, among other things, what I want for Christmas. I told her all I really wanted was to see her, that it would be present enough for me. I meant it. I 'm pretty sure she knows it too.
So when I think of Christmas today, I can close my eyes and not linger on the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree, or my Dad laid out plastered on the living room sofa, or of having nothing but bittersweet holidays until just a few years ago because I did not understand what was truly important in my life. I faked a lot of things in my life, and being joyful around the holidays was one of them. Not anymore. Now when I close my eyes and think of Christmas I can see that  room filled with gold and green and red of all sorts and shapes, a glorious twinkling scene, a magical day. But what I FEEL, is gratitude to be with my kids  and my loved ones simply enjoying a love filled, care free day when we can all be together because that is what we want . Presents given and received mean so much more now than they ever did. And I can honestly say that I look forward to Christmas even more than I did when I was a young man. I know what to treasure now. That's a present I gave to myself.