Without fail
This is the time of the year when our thoughts turn to holidays and holiday traditions.
In some families, the kids went Christmas caroling.
In some families, the kids played with dreidels and lit the candles of the menorah.
In some families, the kids made gingerbread houses.
In some families, the kids eagerly opened the little doors in the advent calendars.
In some families, the kids put out cookies and milk for Santa.
In The Legal Genealogist‘s family, at least one of the kids got sick.
No matter what.
No matter how healthy the whole family had been up until December.
No matter what my parents did to try to keep us away from anybody and anything that might cause even so much as a sniffle.
Without fail, at least one of the kids got sick.
Ah yes… holiday traditions…
Now, to be fair, the odds were very much in favor of some kid getting sick.
To begin with, there were an awful lot of kids. I am one of seven full siblings born over a period of a little more than 15 years. We had a full basketball team before the first kid was out of elementary school. So purely on the basis of numbers, it’s hardly remarkable that one (or more) would get sick.
Second, remember that we’re talking the Dark Ages of the 1950s and 1960s. This is well before most kids had the opportunity to be vaccinated for the wide variety of childhood diseases for which vaccinations are available today. So we had them all: mumps, measles, German measles, scarlet fever, you name it, we got it.
Third, remember that we’re talking middle class family here. No McMansion with individual bedrooms for each kid in my family history. If you were lucky, you had a bed to yourself. You sure didn’t have a room to yourself. No, in my family, we shared. Including contagious diseases, of course.
Fourth, remember that schools were then, are now, and forever will be basically germ factories. Kids may have developed immunities to the diseases they were exposed to at home, but man oh man… send a kid into the school system and there’s no limit to the germs that the kid gets exposed to… and catches… and brings home. Each new kid entering the school system just multiplies the chances, and it seemed for a while there like every year a new kid was entering the school system.
And then there’s the whole thing with Murphy’s Law.
You know Murphy’s Law.
That’s the one that says, essentially, that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong, in the worst possible way, at the worst possible time.
Which, in my household, meant a kid getting so sick sometime around the 15th to 20th of December that my mother had to abandon her annual plan of hauling an entire carload of kids some 300 miles or so from New Jersey to Virginia to cram into even tighter quarters with about a kazillion cousins, aunts and uncles at my grandparents’ farm.
Now in the ordinary case my mother was the best of nurses. A sick kid could usually count on being plunked into sleepers with feet (you remember those, right?) and tucked into my parents’ bed during daytime hours, with chicken soup and Vicks vaporub and room humidifiers steaming away at full blast.
Being deprived of a winter visit with her family, however, did not have a particularly good effect on my mother’s mood. The word “surly” comes to mind. And her nursing skills seemed to take a direct hit when she was called on to exercise them any time after, say, the 10th of December or so.
And heaven help the kid who was really really sick on the day when the go-or-no-go decision had to be made who then made a good steady recovery between then and Christmas Eve. The word “surly” doesn’t begin to describe it.
Ah yes… holiday traditions…
But then there were years when the kid who got sick didn’t get all that sick and was basically just doing the sniffle routine by the time the go-or-no-go decision had to be made. There surely were years when we did make that trip to Virginia.
And then there was a whole new set of holiday traditions.
Trying to convince all those kids that it would be a good idea to leave their own Christmas gifts at home and open them once we came back from Virginia (there was enough room, barely, for the kids in whatever station wagon we had at the time; there was not enough room for the kids and their gifts).
Watching my brother Paul’s lips once we got off the interstates onto the curvy bumpy backroads for the telltale signs that he was about to anoint us with his latest bout of motion sickness.
Being absolutely silent ourselves but listening to all those interesting words my father used while trying to get the station wagon up the unpaved, snow-covered hill from the big bridge up to the farmhouse… in the dark … after 10 or 12 hours on the road.
Ah yes… holiday traditions… Such a joy to recall…
Bah humbug.
Sorry, Judy! I have only great memories of Christmas, so it’s fun to read about the opposite.
Glad your memories are all good, Jeanette — and I love my memories, even when they’re not so good. They are, after all, what makes my family history what it is.
Oh yes the Christmas traditions and challenges with family. 🙂
Ain’t that the truth… 🙂
Made me laugh, Judy! I can imagine it, and I only had 4 kids and no long auto travels to contend with as well.
As I grew up, our tradition was about Christmas stockings: something to nibble on – a mandarin orange in the toe, a few nuts and Christmas ribbon candy; something to read – a comic or book; something to wear – socks for sure plus maybe panties (my 1st bra when I was 11); something as a big surprise – small of course so maybe a small toy or a piece of jewellery or mittens… I had an older sister (shared room of course) and younger brother, so we three shared all our stuff for an hour or so in the morning until Mom and Dad got up to make breakfast: bacon, maybe pancakes or very eggy-French Toast. And we were allowed to open one and only one gift before Christmas. Dinner was a big affair with other extended family members. Mom made mashed orange (parsnips, carrots, turnip mashed with bit of brown sugar & butter), and her famous hard sauce for the plum pudding – which always got flamed at the table of course!
Some memories of those traditions are quite lovely. Thanks for inviting us to remember through your post!!
“Shared room of course” — love it!!
Oh my! Your post brought back memories of many a Christmas in my family that was derailed by a bug or ill health. When I was ten I developed a horrible gum infection that resulted in the need for a shot of penicillin every day for two weeks and my Christmas dinner was tomato soup through a straw. Then there was the Christmas when I was trying to get a bathrobe made for my husband but the flu knocked me out for over a week and of course my kids caught the bug too. I got it done but it was touch and go there for awhile. I have lots of good memories but its interesting how we remember the disasters like they happened yesterday.
It is interesting that we remember the disasters so clearly, isn’t it? Guess they’re more indelibly recorded in the memory cells!
Glad our family didn’t travel at Christmas. BTW, Judy, you forgot about whooping cough – or did you not have that in your family? My poor sister… My memories revolve around our mother and her sneaky way of not labeling presents under the tree and yet being able to distribute them on Christmas morning. She usually put a few under the tree each day and the bulk on Christmas eve (we got a lot of school clothes for presents). It wasn’t until I was much older that I learned her secret – little codes hidden in the pattern of the paper! She would pick them up, turn them over in her hands, say, “oh, dear, who was this for?” or some such silly thing, then hand it over. My word I miss her!
I had whopping cough as a baby, Kathleen. My father brought it home from the students he taught at the Colorado School of Mines! But I don’t remember the others every having it. I know the first vaccine for pertussis was available long before I was born, but I wasn’t old enough to have been vaccinated yet!
Our family had the exact same tradition–only in the late 1960s and 1970s and frequently it was both kids who got sick! It happened every year and didn’t matter if we stayed at home or went to the grandparents, inevitably my sister and I ended up sick on Christmas day. My parents got to the point where a fever had to be above 104 before they would worry about it–let the cousins play with the sick kid, let there be running and screaming, and all that fun sick stuff. We all survived, so it didn’t do any harm. My sister and I still joke about whose turn is it to be sick when we are getting together for Christmas.
Oh dear… hope you’re both healthy this year!!! 🙂
Doesn’t time have wonderful way of putting a shine on stressful holiday memories? We made it through now we can smile during the retelling. I haven’t written on my blog for a year and a half, but when I read the Christmas memories of others, I always find myself going back and rereading what I wrote about my Christmas memories and laugh all over again. Thanks!
🙂