Christmas Memories: No Harm in Looking Back.

On Christmas Eve, back in '75, my mother and I stayed up late, drinking a bottle of German wine, and had a conversation about the holiday season and what it meant to her. A cocky young man of 20, I'd long shed any giddiness about the magical day, and after the two of us exchanged modest gifts, she explained why Christmas was the most melancholy time of year for many people of a certain age. Those who, as the cliche goes, have more yesterdays than tomorrows in their life-expectancy bank account.

It was a fascinating, if sobering, evening. I was spellbound by the reminiscences of her Depression-era childhood in the South Bronx; the delirious days of carefree young adulthood after she'd met my father; the first batch of Christmas Eves when they happily hung stockings and made cookies and cocoa for Santa Claus, after the kids were finally asleep. One of my brothers still has the flickery home movies of that era, with the older boys hamming it up for the camera while ripping open gifts; my mother and uncles laughing in the background, usually with a baby on someone's lap; a shot of my dad making pancakes for breakfast. There are black-and-white photos of parties at my Uncle Joe's home in Glenhead, with the extended Smith/Duncan clan taking turns at the player piano and pingpong table while the grownups drank Manhattans or martinis, the kids 6.5-ounce bottles of Coke.

We were all so young back then, she said, referring to her contemporaries, and pretty good-looking, too! I swear it wasn't the wine, or the reefer I'd been smoking most of the day, but this was baffling. Granted, Christmas was for kids, but jeez, Mom, lighten up! But as we chatted into the night, I began to understand. It wasn't just that my father had died a few years earlier, although that was paramount in her mind, but also that all the other relatives and friends with whom she'd shared so much were no longer alive. Don't get me wrong. This wasn't a morbid soliloquy, but rather an explanation to her youngest son of why a holiday like Christmas?the Big One in our family?elicited weird emotions. There wasn't a trace of bitterness about her memories or her current life in Princeton, NJ, where she worked at the university's library. It was just straight talk.

I loved hearing once again the old yarns, thrice-embellished or not. On Christmas Days in the 1920s, my mother, Joe and Uncle Pete would each receive a plump orange in their stockings, apparently a rarity back then, which was hard for me to grasp. And this was the mid-70s, when produce was still purchased in season, rather than, as it is now in Manhattan, year-round in those ubiquitous warehouses that used to be called "gourmet stores." Winter was for oranges and grapefruit; late spring brought cherries and strawberries; summer was the motherlode with peaches, plums, corn and tomatoes; and autumn (my favorite) had that monthlong window when every McIntosh apple had a popping crunch and sweet-sour taste that I'll never forget.

Once in the early 50s, there was an explosion at the Bakelite factory where my father worked. Mom heard about it on the radio, listened as the announcer gravely intoned that indeed there were casualties, and waited nervously by the phone. As it turned out, my dad was on lunch break, buying a Christmas present?toy soldiers?for my brother Doug. Once back at the building, where firetrucks, ambulances and police dominated the block, he and other coworkers helped the injured, and tried to locate those who'd vanished in the flames. He didn't have the time or presence of mind to phone home?might not have even known the disaster had made the radio or fledgling tv stations?but of course my mother, with four young boys at her side, was beside herself with worry. When Dad came home that night, sooty and dazed, it was an occasion for profound relief for my mom, the joy tempered by the thought of the awful accident that had just occurred.

She spoke about the War, and all the friends who never came back from Europe or the Pacific. Young men frozen forever in her mind, as she recalled events from the viewpoint of a 58-year-old grandmother. And more stories about her parents that I was eager to hear, even the 10th time around, for I didn't know either of them. My grandfather Peter Joseph Duncan, born outside Dublin in 1868, was a New York City cop who didn't marry until he was 45, to another Irish immigrant, Catherine O'Neill, born in 1879. He died in 1948, seven years before my birth; my grandmother, who I'm told called me "Porky," since I was a 10-pound baby, passed away in 1956.

That night, for the first time, I learned about my mother's second-trimester miscarriage in 1963, and how Doug had to rush her to the hospital. "That was the day he grew up," she said with a mixture of pride and sadness.

?

But what joyous Christmas Days my brothers and I experienced as kids in Huntington. There wasn't a lot of money to go around, but each boy had a discrete part of the living room where gifts would be laid out; since I was the baby, mine were always under the tree. We'd get transistor radios, athletic gear, comic books, clothes and, every year, a bag of caramels, the brand of which I can't remember, although I'm sure it's out of business today. The boys and I pooled together savings to get gifts for our parents; some were losers, others more successful, but I can still recall the smiles on their faces no matter what was inside the crudely wrapped boxes.

On Long Island, all those years ago, it snowed a lot more than it does today, which is puzzling to my sons, who as New York City residents are lucky if they see more than 15 inches in a complete winter. Because we lived on a steep hill, there was always sledding, although once you reached the bottom of the street, you had to dodge the cars that were stuck in snowdrifts. We also twirled around in the woods on flying saucers. I think those discs had just appeared on the market. They were made of metal, so more than one kid each winter would chip a tooth or two. Just a two-minute walk away, on Southdown Rd., was a small pond, where kids would skate on the (usually) solid ice, invariably getting in the way of a hockey match.

One of my favorite rituals of the holiday season was picking out a Christmas tree. It was my dad's job, along with a few of his sons, to drive out to the nursery?as I remember, somewhere near the Security National Bank, Bohack's and Trunz's Butcher Shop?and choose a spruce or Scotch pine, while my mother unpacked the bubble lights from the attic. We always had an eclectic bunch of ornaments with which to dress up the tree: a mixture of WWII plastic stars (glass had to be conserved during the war), musty cloth pears from the 1920s and a preponderance of 1950s-style numbers that Mom would buy the day after Christmas for 80 percent off. In our household today, there's a mixture of some childhood ornament survivors, items from my wife's youth and a handsome array of artifacts we've picked up together on trips to South America, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. Not to mention Bergdorf's.

I was talking about this with Junior and MUGGER III on the way to school the other day, since we'd just received our tree for this year, a fresh specimen from Vermont that Mrs. M had purchased online.

(What a world. The very idea of not inspecting the wares was anathema to me?it seemed just one step away from having an artificial pink tree?but the evergreen is a beauty. And I didn't have to cram it into the elevator after freezing for half an hour on the West Side Hwy. picking out an appropriate tree. That's some noodle my gal's got.)

Anyway, we'd travel to the makeshift Christmas market, and my dad would take his time, ask our advice, settle on a tree and then negotiate with a guy who'd been freezing there since that dawn. One year, we found a 10-footer, and the asking price was eight dollars. Dad said he'd pay four. (Both my boys, when I related this story to them, were dumbfounded. "Why didn't he just pay the eight bucks?" Junior asked. "Because that's not the way things were done," I calmly replied.) The seller grunted and said he'd bump down a dollar. My father countered again, was refused, and then we walked away. Two minutes later, inevitably, a compromise was reached, six dollars were forked over, and the tree was tied up on top of our Dodge station wagon.

By the time I was 15, my two oldest brothers had their own families in New Jersey and Mt. Kisco; my third was over in Afghanistan with the Peace Corps; and my fourth had come home for the holidays from school, the University of New Hampshire, and we had a ball talking rock 'n' roll, radical politics and the merits of Dylan Thomas, Richard Brautigan and Ezra Pound. It was Purple Haze-ville, even though Hendrix and Joplin had checked out just months earlier, Brian Jones just a year before. I remember spending one afternoon at a nearby church, riding on a toboggan that fit four, hearing the gossip about a makeout party the night before from my buddies Howie Nadjari and Rob Walton. "Yeah, Lisa was so bombed she went up to that asshole senior Mike?you know, the guy with those new Adidas sneakers?and said 'Fuck me! Please!'" We all laughed and laughed, went down the hill a few more times, and then I went home and read the first part of John Lennon's vitriolic post-Beatles interview in Rolling Stone, while polishing off a jar of jumbo cashews.

?

I'm now 45, with a family of my own. And who knows, given the continuing advances in medical science, whether I haven't got more tomorrows than yesterdays in my bank account. It is what it is, as Dad would say, and there's not a darn thing you can do about it. So why waste time thinking about it?

But I now fully understand what mother was talking about on that Christmas Eve when I was 20, immortal, and actually believed the Red Sox would win a World Series before 1980. A finger in the eye to you, Mr. Bucky Dent.

Just earlier this week my longtime chum from Baltimore, Michael Yockel, e-mailed me with the tragic news that Kirsty MacColl, one of my favorite pop singers, was killed in Cozumel, Mexico. While scuba diving with her two young sons, MacColl, 41, was struck by a speedboat that entered an area reserved solely for swimmers. The boys, Jamie and Louis, watched their mother die.

Her first hit, "There's a Guy Works Down the Chipshop Swears He's Elvis" came out in '81, and was a knockout tune. But I always preferred MacColl's interpretations of other writers' songs, like the Smiths' "You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby," Ray Davies' "Days" and Billy Bragg's "A New England."

However, in my view, nothing tops her duet with the Pogues' Shane MacGowan on 1988's "Fairytale of New York." "Ironic" is a word that's been watered-down to meaninglessness in the last 12 years, but the timing of MacColl's death, in conjunction with this Christmas song, is ironic in the old-fashioned sense.

The pair alternates stanzas during the song:

MacGowan: "It was Christmas Eve babe/In the drunk tank/An old man said to me, won't see another one/And then he sang a song/'The Rare Old Mountain Dew'/And I turned my face away/And dreamed about you/Get on a lucky one/Came in 18 to one/I've got a feeling/This year's for me and you/So happy Christmas/I love you baby/I can see a better time/When all our dreams come true."

MacColl: "They've got cars big as bars/They've got rivers of gold/But the wind goes right through you/It's no place for the old/When you first took my hand/On a cold Christmas Eve/You promised me/Broadway was waiting for me."

After a night on the town, with the two characters dancing through the night, listening to Sinatra and smooching on a corner, things turn ugly and they trade insults.

MacGowan and MacColl: "You're a bum/You're a punk/You're an old slut on junk/Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed/You scumbag, you maggot/You cheap lousy faggot/Happy Christmas your arse/I pray God it's our last."

And then the last verse, which would bring tears to the eyes of even Hillary Clinton.

"I could have been someone/Well so could anyone/You took my dreams from me/When I first found you/I kept them with me babe/I put them with my own/Can't make it all alone/I've built my dreams around you."

?

Chris Caldwell wrote a splendid essay in the Dec. 18 Weekly Standard about how an Upper West Side mentality has ruined much of what was once an innocent holiday. He writes: "At some point, we dumped the motto 'Tis the Season to Be Jolly' for 'Safety First!' and Christmas became wholesome, classy and risk-free... The earliest sign of a paradigm shift came around 1970 with the federal ban on that beautiful lead-based tinsel that hung vertical off a Frazier fir. We applied it in such profusion that our tree always wound up looking like some kind of warhead. The reason no one trims his tree with tinsel anymore is that today's 'child-safe' polyurethane substitute flies off the tree like staticky hair."

I was grumpy enough before reading Caldwell's words. Living in Manhattan, it's a heck of a chore finding the kinds of toys that preteen boys write on their list to Santa. Like cap guns. Who didn't have a couple of those six-shooters as a kid, with the rolls of caps that smelled so exotic, whether set off by the flick of a trigger, or the impact of a rock? It was only with the help of my colleague Lisa Kearns that I finally found a store that still sold the onetime staple of a rascal's toy chest.

Same thing with slingshots. And listen up, those of you in the "Disenfranchised Nation": I'm talking Dennis the Menace-type slingshots, not the serious stuff that militia guys in Montana (or Buffalo) keep in their war game lockers. Go to any major toy store in Manhattan and you're either laughed at, or worse, given a glare and told no, that's not the sort of item we sell. It's like I've seen 100 twin-heads of Katha Pollitt and Eric Alterman at places like FAO Schwarz and Toys R Us, to name just a few of the establishments that have shown me the door.

Luckily, one of Mrs. M's friends in Connecticut was able to buy the slingshot, no questions asked, for six bucks at a Wal-Mart.

?

But throw another log on the fire and bust out the bubbly! I've been rejuvenated, and all it took was a short holiday celebration yesterday, called "By the Light of a Star," at Christ Church, in which my sons participated with their classmates. Mrs. M and I were huddled in a pew near the back, freezing, until our hearts melted as the mass of boys marched down the aisle. MUGGER III, in a Santa hat along with his kindergarten mates, gave us a 1000-watt grin as he passed by, and then went to the stage to sing "When Santa Claus Gets Your Letter." Soon it was Junior's turn, and just before his class sang "Do You Hear What I Hear?" he gave a shy wave to Mrs. M and me, mouthing the family joke, "Dad, do you have a green butt?"

I walked out of the church feeling like a teenager again, with the memory of hearing the holiday songs performed with such innocent exuberance, and of kissing Mrs. M as we snuggled close peering at our children, etched in my mind forever. And all of a sudden, the fog lifted, and not even a snotty clerk at an uptown bookstore could dampen my mood. I cracked jokes with a Dutch salesman at Hermes, laughed with a Jamaican woman at the exorbitant prices for delicate glass ornaments at Barneys and speculated about how many games Mike Mussina would win for the Yanks next year with a cabdriver taking us back home to Tribeca.

My mother was right on the money when we spoke on that Christmas Eve 25 years ago: The season is an unpredictable box of mixed emotions. So cherish the past, live in the present and grab onto the future.

I'm getting a little corny here, so I'll up the ante once more. Last evening, Dec. 21, I saw an interview with former President Bush by Fox News' Paula Zahn. After a long discussion about his large family, the rollercoaster election and the shabby treatment his son Jeb received from the elite media, Zahn asked the first President Bush to imagine the scene on Jan. 20 when his oldest son is inaugurated. He hoped to have a back seat on the podium, the old man said, because the pride he'd feel at that moment would undoubtedly leave him in tears. And then, choked up at the mere thought, he said good night.

?

I'll be back to business as usual next week, with a nypress.com Web-only column on Thursday at 2 p.m.

In the meantime, as they said in the 60s, have a cool yule.

December 22

Send comments to [MUG1988@aol.com](mailto:mug1988@aol.com) or fax to 244-9864. Please include your full name, town and state for publication.