Lakewood Lore

Christmas memories warm the cockles of our hearts

Somewhere over the rainbow of childhood memories where troubles melt like lemon drops are the Christmases of yesteryear.

When I see a Christmas tree today in full regalia, I'm reminded of a morning 70 years ago in the living room (then called a parlor) of my grandmom's home.

Thumb-tacked forever to the corkboard of my mind is the scene of my two aunts, young girls then, lacing strings of colored popcorn through the green boughs of a short-needle spruce.

They were barefooted, still in their long nighties, hanging cardboard cutouts of angels and wise men. They were standing on a chair on their tiptoes, straining to place the Star of Bethlehem at the very top.

To Kathryn Coleman, 90, of Lakewood's Northwesterly Apartments, the yuletide season of 1914 is a memory standout.

"We Campfire Girls sang carols along Detroit Avenue that yearend," she recalled.

"After we performed in front of Lakewood's oldest home, the Nicholson House, a woman came to the door and said: 'Oh, girls, your singing is so beautiful that my mother, who is in bed and very ill, thought she was in heaven. Will you please sing us another song?'"

The daughter at the home probably was Josephine Nicholson, wife of Ezra Louis Nicholson, whose grandfather James built the landmark residence in 1835.

Josephine, or Josie as she was generally known in Lakewood, lived there many years during which the home was divided into several rental apartments.

Former Lakewoodite Gladys Pickard, 76, who, as a newlywed in 1937, took an upstairs apartment there, remembers Josephine as a "very tall widow with a great sense of humor."

Also recalling Josephine, who died in 1947, is Edward Saxton, 64, president of Lakewood's Saxton Parker Daniels Funeral Home. He delivered the Cleveland News to her in the 1930s.

"Josie was in failing health, herself, at the time," he recollected. "Every week, as a small boy, I was ushered up to her bedroom where she would pay me 18 cents, which covered the cost of six papers at 3 cents a copy."

Kathryn Coleman, as well as Beatrice Folino, 88, of Lakewood's Westerly Apartments, remember when Christmas trees had small lighted candles as ornaments.

"We children had to sit in chairs at a safe distance from our tree when the candles were lit," said Kathryn. "Only one who paid no heed was our kitten, who liked to bat an ornament that was hanging low."

Beatrice noted that lighted candles had to be spaced very carefully so as not to cause the branches above to catch fire. Also, she recalled that during the holiday season of 1923 her mother entered a loaf of homemade Christmas bread in a contest in downtown Cleveland.

"She won," said Beatrice, "and her prize was a 25-pound sack of flour."

Kathryn has her tree up again this year, trimmed with many of the same ornaments that have been in her family for decades. These include decorated egg shells with scenes handicrafted inside them. Making them was a hobby craze many years ago, she explained.

At the base of her tree is an original cover of a 1934 Saturday Evening Post -- a Norman Rockwell drawing of Tiny Tim, of Dicken's Christmas Carol, perched on the shoulder of Bob Cratchit, the boy's father.

"It's a tradition with us now," Kathryn pointed out. "I've put that picture in the same spot under the tree every Christmas for the past 58 years."

Dolores Schoenbeck, 69, of the Westerly, thinks back to a particularly sparse Christmas for her family in the late 1920s.

"There were seven of us children, and the only gift each of us received was a dish with a few pieces of hard candy, one small chocolate and an orange," Dolores said.

"We couldn't afford a tree that year, so we decorated a floor lamp instead," she added.

Many of us assume that Santa Claus was always, going back to antiquity, a merry, round, bearded figure with twinkling eyes and red snub nose.

Actually, he was first pictured in a drawing done in 1863 by political cartoonist Thomas Nast for Harper's Illustrated Weekly. In it Santa, except for size, was pretty much the same as he is depicted today. Nast's Claus, however, was smaller in stature -- more like an elf.

In 1866, Nast, who also originated the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey, ran a follow-up cartoon series of Santa, also in Harper's, showing the jolly elf in his workshop with a long scroll listing the good and the bad deeds of all children.

In addition, the series featured other familiar trappings -- Santa's sleigh with reindeer, his pack of toys, stockings hung at the fireplace, and our most manifest secular signpost of the season, the Christmas tree.

This article by Dan Chabek appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post December 17, 1992.

Reprinted with permission.

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