Dayton Stories Project
Story Circle Session #111495.2
Little Residence
Fairborn, Ohio
November 14, 1995
Holiday Celebrations
Interviewer: Tess Little Recorder: Sarah Sessions Transcriber Typist: Sue Broadstock
Participants: Colleen Levitan, Viola Fannin, Robert Fannin, Roger Osborne, Pamela Patrick, Tony Dallas, Marilyn Shannon, Kevin Keller
This session lasts approximately 1 hour and 2 minutes.
Due to its length the interview has been split into two parts.
PART ONE
PART TWO
The following transcription of the session has been edited, with repeated phrases or interruptions deleted to make the text flow more smoothly. It is suggested that visitors who find the text interesting take the time to listen to the audio portion of this session. A more detailed text will eventually be added.
Tess Little opened the story circle and the participants introduced themselves. Marilyn Shannon explained the Dayton Stories Project and how to conduct the story circle, and discussed upcoming events. Some stories were presented for the purpose of acting them out, but the participants were reluctant to do so. The topic of holiday celebrations was agreed upon for storytelling.
TONY DALLAS
When I was about 5, maybe, we always spent Christmas eve either at our house or these friends of ours’ house. And this is a family that, my father and the head of this family actually went to college together and when my parents ended up moving to Yellow Springs, he suggested that he come here with his family and they would come here to live. They had four kids who were roughly the same age as the four kids in my family. Mother Dewey, their grandmother always reads the Christmas story, you know the birth of Christ, from the Bible. My father usually would read Dillon Thomas A Child’s Christmas in Wales and we’d sit around an we’d drink mulled cider and sing Christmas carols and sometimes Christmas cookies and sometimes we’d go caroling down the street. Our houses were very near each other, you crossed a street that’s not very heavily traveled with traffic and then you go down a little alleyway behind this little house and you’re in our back yard. My father was a theater professor, an actor and a director. This one Christmas Eve we were over at the Dewey’s, and my father had to leave early to do something at the theater, he said he had to do some stuff to finish up. So we were singing songs and doing whatnot, and it was getting later. Somebody, I guess it was my mother, said that Nick, who’s my age and I, that she had left some Christmas cookies over at the house and I needed to go pick them up. So we ran over-when you run over, you run across the street and you run down this little alleyway and through our back yard and you’re into out back door and you go into the kitchen. We had to go the two of us ‘cause we were only six years old, you know it was a little spooky at night, you don’t know if the light’s going to be on and whatnot. So we went over there and we run into the kitchen and the cookies are there and we grab the cookies and all of a sudden we hear a noise in the house, upstairs. And, you know, we’re terrified. There’s a hallway that runs off the kitchen, and then at the end of the hallway the stair comes down and then sorta opens up into the living area. At the end of this hallway there’s a doorway into the kitchen which closed this way. So we’re in the kitchen side and so we’re hiding behind the doorway, looking through this little crack, and sure enough we see Santa Claus just make that little movement from the bottom of the stairs into the living room. You know, certainly enough to see that it’s Santa Claus, but not enough to....And whaaaaa, you know, your life is going to fall apart, you’re not going to live to see tomorrow. You’re starting to get a little bit dubious about whether or not there is a Santa Claus and all of a sudden your whole cosmology falls apart or else falls into place, whatever, it’s trauma time. We lickedy-split and ran out the back door and we’re running over there and “Santas’s over there, Santa’s over there!” And somebody says, “Well, why didn’t you invite him over?” “What do you mean invite him over, it was Santa Claus, you know?” So my older sister and my friend’s brother go over there to invite Santa to come over for some Christmas cookies. And so Santa comes in, and of course then I can see that it’s my father in makeup and stuff. And he keeps denying that he’s my father and tries to be Santa Claus through this whole thing. But just that moment of seeing him pass through that three feet of space was very magical.
MARILYN SHANNON
I remember when I was very little, in the days when I still believed in Santa Claus, I really used to listen for him. If I’d heard something, like some jingle bells or something, I probably would have died. But I kept listening all the time. At least we did have a fireplace, so that made it a little more possible if he was going to come down the chimney and so forth. The only thing I can remember about Christmas is that one year, I think I was about a junior in high school, or maybe younger than that. My mother said that she was gonna get my brother and me identical presents and my brother was two years older than I was and I really couldn’t imagine what this was going to be. The only thing I could come up with was that maybe we both were going to get a pair of Levis or something like that. I couldn’t imagine what there would be that she would give my brother and me the same thing. We were very different besides. Turns out that she gave us both rings. She gave me my birthstone, which was a topaz, and she gave my brother just ind of a lain ring. But I remember wondering if I was going to get a pair of Levis for Christmas.
SARAH SESSIONS
I’ve been thinking about Christmas and unfortunately I think my Christmases have been skewered. I’m now among those who look rather dubiously on the holidays and with a certain amount of dread. And every year I try to dredge up the feelings that one is supposed to have. And I do, I mean honestly, I love my family and I do kina look forward to being with my family because the older we get the more spread out we get. Any time anybody talks about Christmas, I”m always reminded of THE WORST Christmas that I ever had. The one that just ended it all for me. It took all the romance and zip out of Christmas and probably made me somewhat cynical about it. It was a comedy of errors. I was just out of graduate school, it was not too long ago, and I had suffered a crushing defeat, I hadn’t gotten a job that I wanted to get, the weather was terrible of course, I mean the midwest in wintertime is not a pretty place. And I was faced with the prospect of returning home and living with my parents at the ripe old age of 27, with not much to show for it. That didn’t really make me fell very happy, or very prideful or anything. And my older sister and her husband, who after that Christmas I realized I don’t really like, and their little daughter came. And unfortunately, little Brennan, my niece, brought the plague with her. She brought stomach flu with her and it whipped through the house like a house on fire. And I got it on Christmas. And to say I spent the day retching and writhing in nausea is truly an understatement. I can remember laying down on the top of the stairs, groaning and moaning with my little thin of 7-Up, listening to everybody downstairs opening up presents. And really just feeling damned sorry for myself. And just a whole series of comedy of errors with that, and I tell you I just look back on it and think, “That was the worst damned Christmas of my life.” And thankfully, I’ve never had any other Christmas that bad. But it’s a little bit harder now, and part of it is I’m a little cynical about all the materialism that’s tied up with Christmas. I can remember nothing in particular, but lots of little instances that the absolute glee and surprise and wonder and thrill of coming down, and remembering as I’m coming down the stairs how empty the living room was before. And you go down and there’s just all this stuff out there. And I’d think, “How did it get here? I don’t care, I’m just going to rip it open.” And just that wonderment and fun of just tearing open a package and all that. And now it’s kind of replaced by I enjoy watching my nieces go and tear open presents. And I enjoy seeing the look on people’s face when you really kind of hit it on the mark with getting that perfect gift or something. But it’s getting a little harder to resurrect those feelings.
KEVIN KELLER
He began by commenting how his large family is still close and he tries to maintain the spiritual importance of Christmas, before relating his story: My story goes back to 1968, really, in the white house on Campbell Road in Syracuse, New York, where I grew up And it’s late, and in Syracuse the snow goes really high. And I was in my bedroom upstairs, and I remember we’d sneak out the window. Mom tells us to go to bed, and we were in bed, and as long as we were in our room, we were considered in bed. And I remember opening up the window and it was REALLY cold out there. And we used to take our blankets or a sock and go out there and get the icicles this big around and break ‘em off and bring ‘em in bed and suck on ‘em. I remember one day I fell asleep with one of those icicles in my bed. I was soaked! But I remember opening the window one day to get an icicle, and all of a sudden I heard jingles. Unbeknown to me what it rally was, but at eight years old, I saw read and green lights going through the sky with a big blinking light. Actually a red and a green light in the background and the light up top. A read light for Rudolph, and then the sleigh was green and Santa was the big white light. And I just heard it going through the sky. To my older brother, “David, look, it’s Santa, he’s coming! Look, I really saw Santa!” It was a plane. I didn’t know it was a plane. For that moment in time, I saw Santa. And that morning, I still believed in Santa. We went downstairs, we’re opening all the presents and Dad-I really hadn’t see my dad all morning-he would tromp downstairs and he’d be there, then all of a sudden he’d disappear. And theat next morning I was telling everybody about seeing Santa. And all these presents, my parents would always say, “Santa can’t afford a Christmas this year.” Because we had no money. Then the next morning, you could hardly even see the tree because there were so many presents. My little brother Michael, who’s three years younger than I am. He’s walking around the room counting everybody’s presents and then counting his. Just as I remember, him crying to my mom that so-and-so has six presents and I only have four. And mom was just getting ready to tell him to shut up and be thankful for what you have, and my dad comes down with this HUGE model airplane that he spent the last three hours building, upstairs. He brought it down and said, “Here, and shut your mouth!” And that was the last Christmas that I really remember that was purely loving and really...Christmas. Where we got together, had the Christmas picture a couple weeks before. My dad setting us all up nice and perfect on the bench, or near the fireplace. And Mike was sitting there crying and they could not get him to shut up crying, he was, like, three years old or two years old. So they took the picture and sent it out to all our friends, and Mike’s sitting there crying.
TESS LITTLE
It was really important to Mother and Father that Christmas not be commercial. They knew that Christmas day was a Christian holiday. So they worked very hard to try to achieve that end while I was growing up. Much to the chagrin of the children, because we wanted to have all the other things that the other children had. So sometimes we were at odds in philosophy. And as I’ve grown up, of course, I understand and appreciate their philosophy much more that I did as a child. So there’d always be this argument every year as to whether or not we got a Christmas tree, because the Christmas tree is not Christian, it’s pagan, it’s from the Roman setronolia (sp?), and actually even goes back further than that. But we would have a manger, and then finally they did cave in when we were older and we had a Christmas tree. One particular Christmas, I can remember as a child, was that we had studied in school about the 12 days of Christmas. And so we badgered Mother and Father endlessly-there were the three of us, I don’t think Rick was born yet-into having a gift a day for the 12 days of Christmas. And Mother would tell us, “Now, you only have so many things, and if you have a gift each day for the 12 days of Christmas, then you won’t have a very much under the manger.” But we did it, and she gave us a gift each day. And I do remember being disappointed at Christmas, it was like there were only a few little things, but Mother had told me! You know, it was funny. We didn’t ask for that any more, just one time was enough. When I got married, it was interesting because we had to decide how we celebrated the family holidays, and Christmas was a very important tradition, of course, to both families. And Jim lived next door, and at that time they celebrated their Christmas on Christmas Eve, and Mom and Dad celebrated their Christmas on Christmas Eve, so we had to negotiate with families. And they were very cooperative, so we’d go to Christmas Eve here and we’d go to Christmas Eve here. And our Christmas Eve with our family was very different than the Christmas Even with his family, because in our Christmas Eve, it was a birthday, and singing happy birthday to Jesus and all that. And in Jim’s Christmas, his family was not religious at all, and so there was a huge tree with huge presents. You know, and it was just a real interesting thing for me to go back and forth between the two families, and see the comparison. We flipped, and now at this point in time we have his Christmas on Christmas Day and we have Mom and Dad’s Christmas on Christmas Eve with the family at about midnight Christmas Eve, and then Christmas Day with Jim’s family. So, I’m worn out! But it’s really a wonderful time, even though it’s a lot! But lots and lots of family, and it’s kina neat. I still treasure my Christmas Even with my Mom and Dad, because I really like the time of Christmas caroling. We sing Christmas carols for probably an hour, hour and a half. And it’s really kind of a beautiful time of sharing. And then at one point in time when the kids were young, every family gave a gift of performance or of song or poetry. So on Christmas Eve, like one year, our family rang handbells. And we sang some Christmas carols. It was right after the girls came to be with us, after we adopted the girls. And we all practiced this Christmas carol. And we did handbells. And somebody would play a clarinet song, and somebody would play a piano song, and somebody would sing, so everybody gave a fit of voice, not only a gift of a present. And that’s very special to me because to me, a gift of words or a gift of song is one of the most precious things, and I really cherish that. Somehow we’ve kind of gotten away from that, but it’s be neat if we could go back. And it was interesting because they worked very hard to keep the materialism out of Christmas, and last year, my little granddaughter who is now three, Rebecca, my daughter, was telling her about Santa Claus. Santa Claus is coming. And I think maybe we’re failing on the materialism because she said, “I don’t need Santa Claus, because I have gramma Tess and pappaw Robert.” So, out of the mouth of babes! I think we need to cut back and start teaching more values and less materialism!
COLLEEN LEVITAN
I was trying to think of what would be a good Christmas story, and the one that popped up was the Christmas of 1973. We had had a family tragedy, at the end of October my 17 year-old brother was killed in an automobile accident. So the situation was one of well, how do you make Christmas a fun Christmas? “Cause I had two little kids, and I didn’t know how I was going to do this, you know, ‘cause we were so upset. This was in November and my daughter and I were in what was then Rike’s, downtown, and they had these beautiful dolls. And there was one doll from Italy called the ferga doll, and it was about this tall, and she had on a beautiful tangerine dress, it was huge, with puffs and flowers, and marabou fur around this, and her hair was all done up, and she had a little choker and a ring. So my daughter was just so enthralled with this doll, and I thought, well, it’s a little more than our budget can stand, but I’ve gotta do it. So I bought the doll, and then I got this inspiration to make her a dress that matched the doll. I went to Rike’s, I was able to buy the exact color of taffeta, the marabou fur, the stuff for the choker, the stuff for the ring the whole thing. And she would leave for school in the morning and then I would pull out yards of this taffeta, and get on the sewing machine. And, I mean, she came home and we had green shag carpet, and she could see all this tangerine debris, but she never knew what I was doing. And I made a huge petticoat under it with hoops and all kinds of things and I realized, you know, in doing this, that it was a way to sort of bring back the joy that seemed to be missing that year. And so when the dress was all done, and I did the little flowers and each of the little puffs, and everything was exactly matching, the doll was all wrapped, and under the tree. She got up that morning, and I only wish we had a video camera the, because she opened the doll, and she was so happy, and screaming and everything. And then I had wrapped the dress in the only thing I could think of, a garbage bag that was big enough to hold it. And I had decorated a garbage bag and hung it on a pole lamp. And I said to go ahead and open that. And she just tore open the garbage bag, and started screaming, you know, she ws so enthralled with this dress. And as it happened, I mean, it turned out to be a really fantastic Christmas. And many years later, I did the same thing for my granddaughter. She wanted to be Glenda from The Wizard of Oz. And so, I had yards and yards of net and taffeta and made this Glenda dress, which was huge, like this. My daughter said, “It’s not better than my dress, is it?” And actually, it was, because I was a more accomplished seamstress by then. It was fantastic to do it over again. She still has the doll, but we don’t have the dress because in moving once, my brother mistook the bag for trash and burned the dress up, and we all flipped out, but she still has the doll.
VIOLA FANNIN
Materialism in Christmas really bothers me, very much. And this year, every year, I feel like a Scrooge. Because when you get to thinking about it, I really don’t like Christmas. I don’t like the commercialism and the worry that the stores is not going to sell enough. It seems like all their mind is on is making money. We’re not good at picking out gifts, I always pick out the wrong gift. And that bothers me, because you know you want o pick out the special gift. But when I was little, Mother always stressed that Christmas was really the birth of Christ, and we should celebrate it that way. And if we talked about Santa, she said, “Now Santa’s just a story, and it’s good for you to read stories, but that’s not Christmas.” And she really stressed that. I remember one Christmas that I had, we rented and we moved around a lot, and we lived in this huge old house. It was a house dated back to the Revolutionary days, and it used to be an inn, and the upstairs was the little rooms, you know, that they rented out to people, and a post office, and downstairs they had a ballroom and a fireplace that all of us children could get in, we could even sleep in it, is was so big. And I remember that year, that we didn’t get a lot of presents. We got a candy stick, and an apple and an orange, and we got this celluloid doll, I don’t for the dickens know what a celluloid doll is, but it could be bent easy, and it could melt if you got it close to the fire. But I got a celluloid doll and I remember how pretty that doll was. And it meant a lot to me that we always had the Christmas story and we went to church, and even when we didn’t have no money at all, but maybe just one piece of candy that mother got for us, even still she stressed that this is Christ’s birthday. And if it wasn’t for his birthday, it wouldn’t be Christmas.
ROBERT FANNIN
Our Christmases were kina mixed from one year to the next. Maybe we’d have plenty toys, and maybe we wouldn’t. We lived on a farm, and the weather had a lot to do with whether you would raise very much crop to sell, and have money. And I remember, though, one year, I guess it was 1937, the winter of ‘37, Christmas was comin’ on and we were broke. But my older brother, who later went into the Army, he took a couple of big chickens to the store. And we would hang up our stockin’s, and everybody would hang up their stockin’s expecting something. So we had a couple of sticks of candy and an orange, I believe, or an apple. And that was just about it on one of the less fortunate Christmases, that we had a little something’. It seemed to be a disgrace to not have anything on Christmas. At that time we still believed in Santy Claus. My dad had a different way of celebrating Christmas than my mother and the children. He of loneliness on his part, and a feeling that you know that he is never sure whether or not his fries are there because of his stuff or because there’s a genuine desire to be with this person, to share with him emotionally. And I was aware of that always being a thing. And he’s aware of it. So you’re always dancing around it.
