I think it’s fair to say that with respect to most holidays my family did not celebrate them so much as observe them. Thanksgiving and Christmas were the exceptions. Also, I think everyone in the family rightfully celebrated April 9 of each year with joy and gratitude.

I was about 10 years old when I was first allowed to stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve. We watched Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians orchestra welcome in the new year. That annual show was the precursor to Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. For several years my father would carry out an Irish tradition, i.e., after the ball dropped on Times Square he would exit our house through the back door, walk around the house to the front, and ring the doorbell on the front porch. I would then let him in the front door and he would give me a dollar bill. The legend was that if the first person entering your home in a new year gave you money you would have a good year. I never believed that myth, but I also never returned the dollar.

We never had a New Year’s Eve party, or a party at any other time for that matter. Our New Year’s Day consisted of television watching, first the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena and then the Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Sugar Bowl, and Rose Bowl college football games. I particularly remember the year we got a color TV and were so fascinated to see for the first time on New Year’s Day all the colors in the parade and the bowl games. At some point in the midst of the all-day television viewing we did have a special meal featuring delicious baked ham, a New Year’s Day staple.

I am reminded of two other occurrences on a New Year’s Day. One was when the local undertaker showed up at our house to claim the body of my Uncle Joe Gallagher, as he had received a report that Uncle Joe passed away during the night. My Aunt Ann assured him that was fake news, pointing to Uncle Joe watching TV in the next room. The other occurrence sadly was the New Year’s Day when Aunt Ann did pass.

Valentine’s Day didn’t exist in my house. To the best of my knowledge no one ever gave or received flowers or candy on that day. I don’t think that was because there wasn’t love among the occupants. Rather, the lack of any acknowledgment of Valentine’s Day likely can be explained by the facts that we were just getting over the celebration of Lincoln’s Birthday two days earlier and were focused on the upcoming celebration of Washington’s Birthday eight days hence. Valentine’s Day was not a complete loss for me during my childhood, however, because for several years running in elementary school I got nice Valentine cards from the cute little girls in my class.

St. Patrick’s Day, of course, was a reason for annual celebration in my family and I have written about that in the previous chapter. The Easter season which followed was mostly about observance of holy week. Between Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday I put a lot of mileage on my alter boy cassock and surplice every Easter week. A highlight of the week was 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Good Friday when in commemoration of the lapse of time between when Christ was nailed to the cross and when he expired we were allowed to only breathe, and not speak to anyone or listen to any sound. The reward for being holy for a whole week was receipt of a basket filled with hollow bunnies, cream eggs, peeps, and jelly beans on Easter morning. We did not dye eggs or have an egg hunt as part of an Easter celebration. I do remember one Easter, though, when my Uncle Mike Gallagher bought some baby chicks which were kept on our back porch for a few days. I think the Easter connection with baby chicks is that they, like the Resurrection of Christ, represented new life. I don’t know what happened to those chicks. I hope we didn’t eat them since that would be such a contradiction to their renewed life symbolism. The family celebration of Easter was basically limited to a special dinner, again featuring a delicious baked ham.

When I was a youth Memorial Day was most often referred to as Decoration Day. In my hometown it was not a time to embark on a holiday weekend at the beach (or as some called it, the “shore”), nor were barbeques or cookouts prevalent. Rather, Memorial Day was a day to visit the cemetery and pay respects to the deceased. I always went there mid-morning with my father and we would stand guard under the blazing sunlight at the neighboring Tyrrell-Gallagher gravesites which were decorated with flowers that he and other family members purchased for the occasion. During the next hour or two my Uncle Jack and several of his kids and my Aunt Eleanor and perhaps my Uncle Mike would come by to visit our graves. They would stay and chat a while and then around 1 p.m. Dad and I would walk to other parts of the cemetery to pay our respects at the gravesites of extended family members. I remember that as we exited the cemetery around 2 p.m. Dad would stop at an ice cream truck and buy me an ice cream cone. That was how I celebrated Memorial Day which always provided me with my first sunburn of the summer.

We didn’t host or attend picnics and cookouts on the 4th of July either. It was just a day off from work for the wage earners in our house and a chance to watch a rare weekday baseball game on TV. We did not set off firecrackers or sparklers. There was a fireworks show at the stadium in the evening, but we never went. I’m ashamed to admit that the only thing I associate with that annual holiday for celebration of our independence is that we always had watermelon. Labor Day was very much like the 4th of July – another holiday that was not specially celebrated in our household or by my family. Actually, Labor Day was a downer for me because its arrival meant I was going back to school the following day for another long school year.

I don’t remember there being a Halloween party or parade at my school, but my family did allow me to don a costume and go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. Back in those days, however, and at least in my city, you didn’t just show up at a neighbor’s door and get candy. You had to earn the treat by performing for the neighbor, e.g., singing a little ditty or doing a little dance or reciting a short poem. More reckless kids took the “trick” part of trick or treat seriously. If they didn’t get a treat at someone’s house or were not satisfied with the treat they were given, they would respond with some mischief, such as draping your trees and bushes with toilet paper or chalking up your driveway. I never stooped to such shenanigans, of course, and was always excited about all the candy I got, so I have happy Halloween memories.

I loved Thanksgiving Day because it was truly a family day in our house. Aunt Ann was not a great cook but she always managed to prepare a wonderful turkey dinner with all the trimmings, and Grandma baked the best pies, usually three different kinds on Thanksgiving morning. Everyone in the family would watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. While professional football on Thanksgiving Day was not around when I was a kid, there were two local high school football rivalries that were played and avidly followed every Thanksgiving Day. One of those games was West Scranton versus Dunmore. My future brother-in-law played for West Scranton and I remember being excited on the Thanksgiving Day when as a senior he played in that game in the early afternoon and then joined us for our Thanksgiving feast. In the evening we would all watch Miracle on 34th Street for the umpteen time. 

The first signs of the Christmas season usually did not appear at our house until about 10 days before Christmas. That’s when Aunt Ann would send out our Christmas cards and when the Christmas candy would be delivered by our nice local candy man. With the exception of a wreath on the front door we did not decorate the exterior of our house. Inside the house, though, Joan and I applied Christmas stencils to the numerous glass panes on the double doors which separated the front room and the living room. That was always a favorite activity of mine because we were proud of how great it looked when we sprayed fake snow on the stencils. The next Christmas item to display in our house was a huge ceramic manger set that was given to my father by a customer. Another business contact of his had a large fruit basket delivered to our house every Christmas Eve. The Christmas tree did not arrive until the afternoon of Christmas Eve. My Dad always picked out the largest tree on the lot so it reached the ceiling in our front room. When I was very young the tree would not be decorated until I went to bed, and then, of course, it would be fully decorated in all its glory on Christmas morning, complete with those awesome bubble lights. The gift exchange occurred before breakfast. While Joan and Aunt Ann actually did some Christmas shopping for everyone my Dad gave wrapped presents only to Joan, Jackie and myself. He always gave Grandma and Aunt Ann a crisp One Hundred Dollar bill. I always wondered what did Grandma do with that money. I never saw her spend a dime. My guess is she gave the money to Aunt Ann for household expenses.

So this has been a synopsis of how my childhood family celebrated special days of the year. While it might have been more celebratory in several instances, I have no regrets because even when we did nothing on a particular occasion we were all together as a family.

Well, okay. I do have one regret. It would have been cool if even in just one year we observed and celebrated Festivus.