Last week we started our parade down memory lane remembering when holidays met school days. We ended looking at Thanksgiving with its morning parades, two days off from studies (unless those “mean,” aka overzealous, teachers assigned us something that wouldn’t be started on until Sunday night), and, of course, the artwork we all did with crayons by tracing our hand with fingers wide and transforming it into a turkey.
We’ll continue the year as the big one comes along: Christmas break, now called winter break to include Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and any other celebrations in December. It’s the halfway mark of the school year and a start of winter recharge before that long, stuck-in-the-classroom, cold weather stretch.
During my years at school we had plenty of Jewish friends in class with us, so when it came time for the Christmas chorus show there was at least one song that got included to include them, usually the “Dreidel” song. Hanukkah was explained to the gentile kids as a kind of “Jewish Christmas” since it occurred in December, but that’s not an accurate comparison. The non-Jewish kids were amazed and jealous, however, when we learned that Hanukkah lasted eight nights!
A Christmas caricature
Back when we were single digits in age, our class would do Christmas decorations for the tree. I still have a few that mom stuck back in a shoebox years ago. With budget limitations, we used what was around. Christmas crafts included a red-nosed reindeer made from popsicle sticks, a rubber baby bottle nipple, some googly eyes and pipe cleaners for the antlers. The nipple was for the face, with the bulb for the nose.
Another example, with Dalton being the Carpet Capital of the World, there was a lot of yarn around. The yarn was wrapped on stiff cardboard cones. With the broad base, the cone could stand on its own when emptied of yarn, the perfect item to create a decoration for the table. My decoration was a Santa. The pointy top made for a Santa hat, and some glued-on cotton for a beard and mustache created a Christmas caricature of that jolly old elf. Those two still get dragged out annually and bring a smile to my face. Meanwhile, as we approached the last “school’s out” bell of the calendar year, they also taught us how to play with a dreidel.
In middle school (junior high back then) I was in the band and we always had a Christmas concert. We played during the school day for fellow students and then in the evening for the parents, who had coughed up the dough for the instruments for goodness sake, and there were mimeographed programs.
Among the songs we played was a simplified version of “Sleigh Ride” with the trumpet doing a horse whinny toward the end. We also played the theme song from the TV comedy “Hogan’s Heroes.” It seemed to fit since the opening segment of the show showed soldiers running out of their prisoner of war huts in the snow. When you’re from the South, snow always equals Christmas. Granted, we never had a white Christmas when I was young, but a kid can dream, can’t he?
Included in the Christmas break was New Year’s. But because it came after Christmas and Hanukkah, I can’t remember ever doing anything at school for New Year’s. When you’re a little kid, New Year’s is mostly a grown-up holiday.
Later on, as a teenager, New Year’s became more of a thing as we thought we were “grown up” and finally got to stay up to watch the ball drop on TV. Then, in high school, when old enough to drive, New Year’s became a time for the classmates to get together during the holiday break and check in on everyone. “What’d you get for Christmas?” “Who’s together and who broke up?” “What do you think the rest of the school year will be like?” The questions were just as important to us then as anything we ask about these days, but we can see now what a simpler time it was.
One bright hope
Once back in school it seemed like the winter stretch to Easter/spring break was endless, a relentless grind of schoolwork only broken up by weekends which could be so cold or rainy as to be useless.
There was one bright hope that came to fruition once every so often, a snow day. That was a holiday that was never on the school calendar, but could be thrust upon us as a blessing at any time during the cold months. Living in Georgia, we never had much in the way of snow plows or salting the streets, so even an inch or two of snow got us out of school.
And a snow day was always a fun holiday. I knew there would be a snow day if I woke up in the morning and the big stereo console was on playing WBLJ. We never had the radio on in the morning and certainly not loud enough for the radio playing to be heard in my parents’ room, so when I heard it blasting I knew they were listening for the school cancellation announcement. I would lie in the warm bed with it still dark outside my window waiting for the magic words. When they came, it was waking up to the news of a surprise holiday break.
A snow day often lasted only one day before things cleared off so you had to make the most of it. After goofing off in the morning by watching cartoons and maybe even having some hot chocolate, it was time to get dressed in every warm thing you had and head out into the winter wonderland. Trudging around the yard with the dog bouncing through the sometimes four-inch deep drifts, it was off to make the rounds of the other kids’ homes in the neighborhood.
Soon there were snowball fights and then usually we ended up building snowmen. Carried away with snow building, twice I got my picture in the newspaper for my snow monsters. With help from friends my front yard became the home of a giant gorilla, maybe not as big as King Kong, but maybe Son of Kong. I made him bigger by having him sitting, so the legs stretched out in front while he rose from the white powder from the waist up.
Then, during another snow day, we built a dragon in the yard, using a ladder to extend the neck. Packed in snow, it gave enough support for the head to stick way out. We even used food coloring to dye him green. He was made of snow, so no fire-breathing thank you very much.
Candy is candy
You didn’t get any time off for Valentine’s Day, but we celebrated it in elementary school. I remember we got white paper bags, like from a bakery. We decorated them, put our names on them and then the teacher stapled them to the bulletin board.
The students were expected to give out a Valentine’s card for all the other kids in the class. I remember shopping with mom at a dime store, and the cards were sold in packs of 30 or so, just the right amount for a classroom. At that age there certainly wasn’t any romance on my part for anyone, I was too goofy for that. And besides, we gave them to our buddies as well. The point was to go home with a bag full of Valentine’s cards, mostly cute and/or comic. If you were really lucky, you got candy. It was usually those chalky little hearts that had things like “Be Mine” and “I’m Yours,” but to kids, candy is candy.
The holiday we needed
There are a couple of other holidays in there like Presidents Day and Saint Patrick’s Day, and those maybe got a few decorations up in the room, a picture of Lincoln and Washington for the one, and shamrocks and leprechauns for the other. But then, just as the weather was getting nice, and all the kids were going stir crazy with so much cabin fever that the occasional trip, weather permitting, to the playground or to outside P.E. class only made it worse, came spring break. Usually set during Easter, it was the holiday we didn’t just want, but needed.
Spring break came on the front end of spring, so there weren’t any band concerts or chorus shows leading up to it. Those came later in the spring, a few weeks before the end of the school year. I don’t remember any Easter decorations or anything that tied directly in to that specific holiday, but I do remember things brightening up in the classroom as we moved toward blooming flowers and warmer weather.
The main change wasn’t from the teacher, but from the kids, as we left our jackets at home and sometimes got badly-needed new clothes as by this time of year we had been growing. Spring break maybe meant a trip somewhere, but at least it meant a trip out of the classroom. This was the last pit stop on the way to the big holiday … summer break.
With the rush to the end of the school year there wasn’t much time to decorate or contemplate summer break. There were concerts and plays and award ceremonies. The summer would get attention when we got back to school and were instructed to write an essay on “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”
Mark Hannah, a Dalton native, works in video and film production.