Christmas When I Was a Kid
A sneak peek into my life as the holidays draw near.
My parents were florists. By the time they eventually sold the store, I’m pretty sure they were in the top 100 florists in the United States, according to FTD. The company was founded by my great-grandmother, and eventually passed down through the family. Being in a family business meant that when Christmas Vacation started, so did “your time,” working in the stores.
When I was a kid, I hated working at the stores. H-A-T-E-D it.
You’d be up by 7:00 am, at work by 8:00 am, and working non-stop until about 10:00 pm. When I was young, my responsibility was making boxes and going out with the drivers to deliver packages. As I got older, my resume expanded to cleaning flowers, cleaning the flower buckets, and taking out the garbage.
The delivery drivers basically fought over me. It was a LOT better for them to just concentrate on driving while I run out into the snow and/or rain, knock on doors, wait for someone to answer in the cold…and wet. And then, if no one answered the door, you’d have to either drop it in the garage, back porch, or take it over to the neighbor’s house. That’d mean tromping through snow, shuffling across ice, and so on. And if no one was home on either side? It’s back into the van and leave a note on the door. A package not delivered meant a second trip to try again. We hated those.
Tips? They were rare. Like, exceptionally rare. A quarter, maybe a dollar.
By the time I was done, my feet were frozen and soaked. And that was the first day. Usually, we worked two full days, then a half day on Christmas Eve. So that meant that the next two days would be spent in damp shoes that would only become wetter, faster. You could put your feet in plastic bags before putting on the shoes, put waterproofing on the shoes—it didn’t matter. You had cold, wet feet by midday.
There was a brief period in the 70s when Moonboots were the fad. The were these big, fluffy snow boots that extended all the way up to mid-calf, covered in waterproof material. I owned a pair. They were clunky but beautiful in the snow. Dry feet through the next two Christmases! Then, they wore out, and my Christmas season misery would return. You’d be amazed at what you’ll put up with when you have to.
You’d go out with a load of packages in the back of a delivery van, and come back when it was empty (save for the packages that couldn’t be delivered). When you came back to the store, there was a literal sea of packages still waiting for you. It didn’t matter how many you took or how fast you delivered them; the packages seemed to multiply at an exponential rate. It never…seemed…to…end.
Now I know someone out there is clutching their pearls and simmering in post-modern outrage that an elementary / middle / high school student was engaged in forced labor and paid nothing. Stick with me. There’s a lesson to be learned.
(Believe it or not, I was actually paid, but not minimum wage {gasp}.)
My brother and sister also had to put in time. My sister usually worked in one of the stores, taking orders, cashing out customers, putting bows on plants, and wrapping deliveries. My brother was a driver. He was usually a grouch the entire time. To be fair, for a few of those years, he was working wounded. He had screwed up his knee at a summer job, and getting in and out of the truck was difficult for him. After my ordeal with my hip, I now empathize. But during that period, the more he suffered, the more I suffered.
The tide of multiplying deliveries was stemmed sometime around noon on Christmas Eve. Orders were cut off around noon, and by 3:00 pm, you would be taking your last load. By 5:00 pm, we were heading home. My parents usually brought in deli trays for the workers with soda and punch. Then, the stores all closed up, we’d head over to my uncle’s house (my mom’s brother) to spend Christmas Eve. Christmas Day was either hosted at our house or a different uncle (paternal), and we’d spend time with the other side of the family. The wretched ordeal of the Christmas Rush was finally over…until next year.
As I grew older, I’d become a driver myself. I took my own packages and mapped my own delivery routes in addition to tromping through the snow to knock on the doors. There was also unloading the fresh stock from the trucks and putting it away. A task that would leave your hands loaded with sticky sap for the next week or so.
When I was a kid, I hated every wretched minute of those two-and-a-half days. Now that I’m older, I’d just about kill to have them back.
Back in those days, the Detroit area had three rock radio stations: WRIF, WCSX, and WWWW (yes, one of these was the station that had Howard Stern on for a short period of time). WRIF also had an extremely popular morning show: JJ and the Morning Crew. On one of those days, they’d have the morning crew singing carols on the radio, which was great to listen to. This was the Golden Age of Rock Radio. The three stations often played Christmas songs:
Santa Claus is Coming to Town - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.
Step Into Christmas - Elton John.
I Believe in Father Christmas - Greg Lake (technically Emerson Lake & Palmer).
Christmas is a Time to Say I Live You - Billy Squire.
So This is Christmas - John Lennon.
Father Christmas - The Kinks.
Santa Claus and His Old Lady - Cheech & Chong.
Merry Christmas - The Waitresses (I think).
This is just the list I can remember. Later on, Gary Hoey would put out a bunch of Christmas covers that made the rounds in the 1990s, I believe. I own the albums. My family loves them.
Likewise, we’d have Christmas music piped into the stores: the Ray Conniff singers, Dean Martin, Bobby Helms, Bing Crosby, Burl Ives, Andy Williams—all the classic music you hear now on the “traditional” Christmas channels. Listening to this stuff on repeat, you’d think you’d get sick of it after a time. I never did. I love those old songs, and can’t wait to hear them when Christmas rolls around again.
And the smell of the flower shops. It’s a beautiful, indescribable scent that only a flower shop can hold. Roses and evergreens. Fake cinnamon and greenery. Even these descriptions fail miserably to capture the essence of what the back rooms and store refrigerators contained. When I was older and working in a career, a visit to the stores reminded me of what I had forgotten as I had grown up and grown away from the family business.
When the work was all done for the year, that sudden wave of relief was like soaking in a hot tub after a long, hard day of work. The next couple of days were spent with presents, food, and family, and nothing better to do than nap in the afternoon. No stress. No pressure. And warm, dry feet.
Now I’m the dad. My kids never had the experience of working in “the store.” Life is much easier now, by comparison. My parents have passed away, as have my uncles, aunts, and grandparents. My brother, sister, and cousins have all moved away. That tight-knit family disintegrated in time, and I feel like something wonderful was lost. I tried to preserve that connectedness, as limited as my capacity was to do so. The Christmas magic gets lost as you grow old. Only the memories remain.
Outwardly, I hated working when I was a kid. I would’ve rather slept in, stayed at home, and watched TV all day. While it would take some time to admit it to myself, I secretly enjoyed working. I might have made $10.00 that day (paid by my parents), and to me, that money was freedom. It was mine. I earned it. I enjoyed the bustle and the sense of accomplishment when it was all done. Those three days that played out year after year lit the fuse to both an ambition and an oddly unique work ethic that would be the foundation of my eventual career success in software. And, as I would later admit to myself, it was the toil that made both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day such a treat. It wasn’t the presents, the candy, and the turkey with stuffing. It was the time I now had to spend with my family.
Plus the afternoon nap.
As much as I hated it then, I remember it fondly now.
I remember hearing somewhere that the Amish teach their children to love work. Work defines us. Work keeps idle hands from doing terrible things. Accomplishments are things that love beyond our labor, the fruits of which are a gift from God that we are allowed to enjoy. I know there are people who dream of a life of idle pleasures—something I think would drive me insane.
There is a part of me that laments that my kids couldn’t experience my two-and-a-half-day descent into hell. I tried to raise them to have a decent work ethic, and I think it worked. These annual forced labor rituals shaped me into the man I am, for good or for ill. And if I had the opportunity, I’d do this with my kids, too.
Except, I’d make sure they had totally waterproof boots.
Merry Christmas.
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Thank you for sharing. Merry Christmas to you, your family, and all the florists out there.