Dad was a retired chief accountant for the Legal Department of the Pennsylvania Railroad. He had a love of old-time Christmas villages, likely from his boyhood in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania.
Annually, it was one of his Yule pleasures to recreate a snow village under our tiny Christmas tree.
They were fanciful tiny communities, filled with a few rolls of cotton that made it look like a blizzard had just ended. There was a church, a few houses, and a little ice skater who spent many a holiday in the middle of a small mirror that was the replica of a frozen pond.
Dad’s greatest pleasure stemmed from making those little villages, which now rest only in my mind.
On the other hand, a seasonal task that Dad anticipated with the enthusiasm of an IRS audit was the day we would string the colorful lights around the windows on the sun porch.
As with many things in the past, as I think back on that annual chore, it wasn’t all that bad but could take a big bite out of a day’s joy.
There weren’t all that many lights, and they were those large, old-time variety. I doubt Dad could have had the patience for those mini strings from China that blink and then quit at the most inappropriate times. But Mom, Dad, and I were enlisted to help hang those lights.
The only part that wasn’t just a colored light was a molded plastic Nativity scene always hung in the window. God seemed to like that one since it never had trouble getting lit.
The rest, however, were the bane of us. For whatever reason, there would always be a few that would refuse to light. Dad would fetch some extras from a can where excess lights were reposed year-to-year.
For a reason known only to Santa’s elves, the lights always worked on the afternoon they were hung. Then, the Grinch must have snuck around and twisted them because, after dark, those same lights that shone brightly in the day went dark as coal when the lights were switched on and temperatures dipped.
That, of course, would test Dad’s good Christian nature. As light after light would go out, nasty words would be uttered. Mom would say something like, “Talking like that takes the pleasure out of the holidays,” but Dad was in a mode that wouldn’t quit until every blasted light would burn all night long.
Those lights would brighten 213 South Main Street in Court House until New Year’s Eve. Then, they would go dark for another year.
There are now stores at that address; the Christmas charm is long gone.
Mom and Dad are in a better world. All that remains are Christmas memories of tiny snow villages and days stringing lights that sometimes worked and still brighten Yules’ memories.
Campbell, the Herald’s managing editor emeritus, who retired after 31 years Sept. 1, 2019, writes from Court House.
