By Michael Patrick O’Brien and Donald Raymond O’Brien–
One of the miracles of family history research is the chance to spend the holidays with family members you never even met, including the grands and the greats.
The last few years I have been collecting and chronicling the writings of my grandfather, Donald Raymond O’Brien. Don’s father, Edward O’Brien (my great grandfather), tragically died of tuberculosis at the very young age of 25, when Don was less than one year old. Don’s widowed mother, my great grandmother Annie McCarthy O’Brien, raised him, living with her parents (my great great grandparents) Jeremiah McCarthy and Alice Fitzgerald McCarthy (both born in Ireland). Jeremiah drove trains, Alice kept house, Annie sold hats, and Annie’s sister, my great aunt Mary “Mame” McCarthy was a tailor. The family got by, and lived in Burlington, Vermont.
From about 1947 to 1955, Don wrote a weekly column called “Vermont Vignettes” for his hometown newspaper, The Burlington Free Press. When he was not writing or newspapering, he loved to escape to his small wooden cabin on the shores of Lake Champlain, in Northern Vermont just a few miles south of the Canadian border. I never knew Don personally. He died in February of 1963 when I was not quite two years old. I do, however, have the vintage 1930s era typewriter he used for many of his writing projects.
His many newspaper columns have created a bond between us that transcends his death─our mutual love of writing. Next week, I will write about my own Christmas from a half century ago. One of my favorite of my Grandfather’s articles does the same thing, recalling in 1953 his family Christmas circa the late 1890s.
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(Vermont Vignettes, By Don O’Brien, Burlington Free Press, December 18, 1953)
They sold Christmas trees back in the childhood days of my generation, I suppose, just as now. But no exchange of cash was involved in the acquisition of our tree.
Grandpa, at the proper time, would go to the woodshed and pick up his axe, then beckon me to come along. Usually the summons found me ready and r’aring to go, bundled in leggings, heavy coat, wool mittens and toque.
That trek into the woods for the tree was a fascinating adventure. To begin with, it meant that Christmas was at hand and we’d come home with a beautiful, symmetrical spruce, towering gracefully to a point from its wide-spreading lower branches.
There was, however, another top attraction. My grandfather, a true outdoorsman, was also a master of the fanciful yarn. The bear stories he told me made me scan each bush and copse most carefully. But being with grandpa, I never was afraid.
This was in the kerosene lamp era and there were no strings of colored electric lights. The stores did offer a variety of glittering ornaments, of course. And there were tree candles – which we shunned as dangerous.
But none of the boughten stuff was good enough for our tree. Such cold commercialism was repugnant, for it would destroy one of the greatest joys of the Christmas season – the making of the decorations at home.
I wish I had a dollar – or even a dime for every piece of popped corn I ran a needle through to produce the seemingly endless strings of it we draped around the tree. Neighbors, I’d have a sockful!
Then, the cutting out of shiny “silver and gold paper” into stars and other suitable designs was a challenge to skill and ingenuity.
We– my grandmother and I – fashioned those gaily-colored horns of plenty, the cornucopias, to be suspended by ribbons on the tree and filled with confections. And gingerbread boys. Santa Claus cookies, and other marvelous products of my grandmother’s baking skill peeped out from the evergreen depths.
Could the brightest store tinsel compare with such inspired craftsmanship?
