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How It Began
In March of 1946 my husband Warren came home from the Navy. We had been married since the fall of 1943 and had spent about three weeks of that time in the same place, so that first Christmas was a great event. We had two rooms over a shoe repair shop, a tree about the size of a broom, and not one extra dollar. I was working at the telephone company then, saying "Number, please" eight hours a day, and on my lunch hour I bought thirty postcards with a sleigh on the front and thirty penny stamps. I never did care for the verses inside the boxed cards at the five-and-ten anyway, so I wrote my own, and copied it out by hand thirty times at the kitchen table. People wrote back to say they liked it. So the next year I wrote another. And I have written one every year since: fifty-three of them, through ten Presidents' worth of news and three houses and two children and four grandchildren. For many years a man at our church printed them up for us on good card stock. Now my daughter-in-law does it on her computer, and they go out to about ninety people. I used to send a hundred and forty, but that is what happens when you get to be eighty. The list gets shorter at one end, and I keep hoping it will get longer at the other. Warren signed every one of them with me until 1994. Since then they go out from me alone. My grandson Toby, who is twenty and studying engineering, came home over Labor Day weekend and typed fifteen of my favorites into the computer he gave me last Christmas, and then he made this page. I wrote a little bit about each year so people would know what was going on in our house when I wrote it. I don't claim they are great poetry. They are Christmas cards. But they are ours. Edith Curtis |
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1946 The first one. Warren was home, the war was over, and everybody we knew was trying to remember how to have a regular Christmas. I copied it on postcards with a fountain pen and smudged six of them. The ships are in, the war is done, My sailor's home to stay, And every wish we wished is one We're holding here today. Two rooms, a tree, a borrowed chair, A candle burning bright: We've little else, but we can spare A prayer for you tonight. |
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1949 We bought our first house that October, a little two-story on a hill street on the east side of town, with a coal furnace that sounded like the end of the world every time it came on. Warren carried me over the doorstep and pulled a muscle in his back. We had Christmas dinner for eleven. We have a house! A door, a key, A yard, a porch, a maple tree, A furnace in the cellar, too, That rumbles like a train come through, A kitchen window, deep and wide, To watch the snowfall from inside. It isn't much as houses go, But it is ours, and so we know There's room at last, so come and stay: We'll set a place for Christmas Day. |
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1950 Our Terry was born in November, six pounds even, and she did not sleep through the night until Easter. The cards went out the week before Christmas that year, which was late for me. Nobody minded. This year we have a gift to show That didn't come by mail: Six pounds of girl from head to toe, With lungs to shame a gale. We walk the floor at two and three, We sing, we hum, we pray, And then she smiles, and we agree She's worth it, every day. So from the three of us, this year (The newest one most loud), A merry Christmas, friends so dear, From parents tired and proud. |
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1953 Our first television set, a big wooden console with a little round-cornered screen. Half the street came over on Friday nights to watch. Warren spent a good part of that fall on the roof turning the antenna while I shouted up through the window. There's something new in our front room, A box with knobs and glass; It hums and glows and fills the gloom With pictures as they pass. The neighbors crowd in Friday night, The kids sit on the floor, And Warren's on the roof, to right The aerial once more. But on this holy night, we'll turn The knob, and let it rest, And light the candle, and relearn The old things are the best. |
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1957 That October the Russians sent up their Sputnik, and the newspaper printed the times it would go over. Warren took Terry and our boy Jay, who was three, out in the backyard on every clear night with a thermos of cocoa. We never did see it. We saw a great many other things. This fall they put a new star up To circle round the earth, And we stood out with cocoa cups And searched for all our worth. We never found it. But we found The old star, shining clear, The one the wise men followed, bound For Bethlehem, still here. |
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1963 A hard year. My mother died in May, and in November the President was shot, and I did not want to write a verse at all. Warren said, "Then write a short one." So I did. More people wrote back about this one than any other. This year there's little I can say That anyone would sing; We've lost too much along the way, And grief's a heavy thing. But still the candle in the pane Will burn on Christmas Eve, And still the Child is born again For all of us who grieve. |
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1969 Men walked on the moon in July. We let Jay stay up for it, though he was fifteen and would have stayed up anyway. When they showed the pictures of the earth from out there, so small and blue, I cried, and so did Warren, though he blamed the onions in the dip. This summer men walked on the moon And turned to look at home, And saw it, like a blue balloon, Afloat, and all alone. And I thought, watching on the screen, How small we are, and dear, And how the Lord of all we've seen Came down to find us here. So from our little blue balloon, Where all of us still dwell, We send you Christmas, none too soon, And wish you all things well. |
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