To the Editor,

The Polar Vortex is coming — it is going to be a real old-fashioned Christmas season. Who can forget rushing downtown from store to store and spending time looking at windows decorated at the Hub? The magical festive season, which greeted big-eyed children the same way they had welcomed googly-eyed great-grandparents and grandparents years earlier, who had traveled on icy train tracks, then on a streetcar, eating hot roasted peanuts. It was a time of second-hand trees, and homeless men holding a cup of soup from a gurgling, crackling caldron gathered in the Steubenville trainyard in the valley — people were laughing and talking as if these were prosperous years during the 1930s.

The shoppers always believed in counting the days to the 25th of December. Donning heavy vintage coats, the girls had on dresses sewn by their mothers, long white stockings, patent leather shoes, mittens and hats to match. Young Mickey Rooney want-to-be lads could be seen in newsboy caps and knickerbocker trousers. Christmas Eve shopping meant popcorn balls, and hard candy with raspberry, lime, pineapple and cherry flavors. Now, mothers and fathers were crossing the same street to the five-and-dime stores, where they had once ventured as youngsters. They were filled with the finest work any elf from Santa’s workshop could produce, and a Nativity display was in the churchyard up the block.

If you listen closely enough to the howling north winds, you are certain to hear the echo of festive season songs once sung by Dean Martin. His voice can be heard as if it were from one of Dean’s holiday specials from the 1960s and 1970s. It is unquestionably Dean’s voice: “Hear the snow crunch, see the kids’ bunch … Silver Bells … soon it will be Christmas Day. ”

It was a short distance, as we kids neared the Downtown Bakery, all the time hearing brave red kettle bell ringers from the Salvation Army, undaunted by the cold on every street sidewalk, who collected gifts of the heart from secret Santas. I recall finding myself lost in the intoxicating smells associated with Christmas baking, loving the fragrance wafting out of the pastry chef oven, and taking the visitor back to a time before central heating, when ginger and chocolate drifted from room to room. That was the fireplace of Victorian Yuletide. There is a special feeling of Christmas-time that kids get when the smells of vanilla and sugar fill their nostrils this time of year. I was not born too late to enjoy the memory of real coal furnaces that emitted black smoke that decorated the morning sky of the Yuletide. I remember looking up in amazement at smoke being belched toward heaven from the old smoke stacks of so many homes. Thinking back, I saw the same candle in the window as the snow was falling, as my parents hoped that God was planning for us a White Christmas.

The arctic vortex will bring back fond memories of “The Little House Christmas They Never Forgot,” that aired on Dec. 21, 1981, when young ladies wore nightcaps and granny white nightgowns, sharing tales as a white-out squall left them snowbound. With the blustering cold air once again upon us, we may find ourselves trading electricity for candlelight, and red long johns will be the order of the day, as well as Scrooge-era night shirts and caps for young boys and men. And the tales of searching for a marshmallow world known as Snowman Land, where Frosty goes after he has melted.

It is something I personally cherish, as I wait eagerly for the chance each year to leave Santa’s homemade treats and fresh milk in my red stocking, filled with red-and-white-striped candy canes hanging at the chimney world. I look for reindeer tracks again, as I once did as a child. You might think it silly at my age, but I still believe perhaps it is the eggnog or a desire to send the boy to Poulterer’s in the next street, to purchase the prize Turkey hanging in the butcher’s window.

I had been busy shaking my glitter dome filled with horse-drawn sleighs when, perhaps the greatest influence was the writings of Charles Dickens, who can be said to have almost singlehandedly created the modern idea of Christmas. I point out the fact that during the first eight years of his life, there was a white Christmas every year.

“As the shoppers rush home with their treasures …”

As a student going to school on a Basic Opportunity Grant, later known as a Pell Grant, at Jeff Tech for Christmas 1975, I got a Buffalo Plaid John Boy Walton from Santa through my grandparents Maloney. I was so happy, because I had absolutely no money!

Like Ebenezer Scrooge, who pledges to honor Christmas in his heart and keep it all year after learning from the lessons of the spirits, I know the only Christmas we have is this year.

Perhaps the time has come to write to the North Pole again.

Let me see how I shall begin …Dear Santa: Silver Bells …

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Michael Traubert

Wellsburg