The first Christmas song I remember is ?Santa Claus is Coming to Town?. My parents were pretty nice when I was little. They?re both profoundly deaf but they?d sing. Yes, sing. It?s hard to imagine a deaf person singing but there is definitely a precedent for composing: Beethoven.
Anyway, just as there are hearing people who are musically talented and who love listening to music there are also deaf people who are the same way. I was really surprised to learn my dad played the French horn and marched in a parade in New York City with other deaf classmates. There was a band at the school for the deaf! Pretty cool!
My parents are lovely dancers. They told me they feel the vibrations of the music through their feet. Of course, the volume?s got to be up loud enough for them to feel it. Instead of telling me to turn my music down when I was a kid, they?d be asking me to turn it up!
Anyway, getting back to Christmas ?
I think in those days my parents enjoyed Christmas as much as us kids did. At least, they acted like it. There were years where Santa was not so generous, mostly because they?d gotten into a financial bind. My mom said they felt bad at my first Christmas because they had nothing to give me except a Campell?s soup doll. My mom told me I looked so sad because the other gifts were all little baby outfits. I think my mom just feels bad about that Christmas because at just a year old, I doubt I?d know from gifts.
The next year was a lot better. I got a rocking horse and I sure looked thrilled about it!
Santa was a magical entity to me. I would try very hard to be well behaved after being warned that ?he sees you when you?re sleeping, he knows when you?re awake, he knows if you?ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake!? Maybe that?s why I was afraid to pose with Santa? I was afraid he?d see through me maybe? To avoid him, I?d start bawling. No parent, deaf or not, wants to drag a hysterically crying little girl to see the store Santa!
Once I became a mother, I liked to sing that song to my kids. Billy and Kristin didn?t seem to mind but Heidi didn?t like to sit with Santa either. Recently, she told me that the Santa story just seemed scary to her. What kind of a pervert goes into people?s houses to leave presents and spy on the kids? I never thought of it like that!
When I was little, my father would sit me and my brother on his lap and read ?The Night Before Christmas? to us. My father had a sort of monotonous tone to his voice but I found it very soothing when he would read the poem. It would put me in mind of getting to sleep so Santa would come.
I missed it when he stopped reading it. I?m not sure why he did, except maybe that was the year he was laid off and had to move to Baltimore. I asked him to read the poem and he seemed annoyed. He said I was too old. I think I was 8. I was so disappointed. That made him crabbier. For some reason, he thought I might make fun of his reading.
That surprised me. I don?t recall ever poking fun at my parents? speech and so I wonder where he got that from. Maybe from other bad experiences? After that year, he didn?t read to us aloud ever again. Oh well. He would still sing sometimes though, especially ?Let Me Call You Sweetheart? which he said was specifically for my mother.
Sometimes my brother and I would get so excited on Christmas Eve, we couldn?t sleep. Then we?d worry that Santa would skip over us because we were still awake. He never did, though. He always left us presents, even when we moved to Maryland.