kneeling before the tree

 Kneeling Before the Tree







 
   This one is in the spirit of holiday magic be it real or be it fake as a nativity scene. Christmas was a grand time in South Gate and everybody in our neighborhoods participated with lights and trees and parties where adults got soused and played the fool. We have some great 8 mil home movies of the old gang including John and Grace, Winny and Gordon, Bud and Barbara, Boss and Connie, Duane and Betty, Bill and Madeline getting into a yule mood with plenty of booze and cigarettes in front rooms that were part of the American post war dream. You had the dream and now you had to show it off was the theme of many of these couples. At my house BC went full  blast into celebrating the birth of the christ-tyke but in reality he didn't really have a religious bone in his sinner's body. He went on with the show to give the kids that platform of respectability. He made sure the house at 9400 Annetta stood out from the crowd of tract homes created for the wave of new home buyers with GI bills in hand. That also meant he was going to attire his children in outfits from fiine department stores and show our devout celebration in this time of the birth of the savior. When home movies arrived in the mid-1950's the pace for showing family christmases was accelarated and BC was standing or sitting in the directors chair ready to capture his perfect Catholic family. Problem was the guy knew cars, gin and whiskey but understood very little of the holy eucharist. So when the day before the morning arrrived and the gaudily decorated tree had not been cluttered with presents he got the idea we should kneel before the tree like we were praying and the Bell and Howell camera caputured the farce as we grimaced in discomfort and puzzlement. It is in the vaults and shall forever be seen by coming generations that might thnk this was a custom in old Southern California. It was not.




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