For most folks, Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the Christmas season. For me, growing up in a Catholic family, the holiday season usually began a couple of days later … on the first Sunday of Advent. For the unfamiliar, Advent, from the latin adventus, meaning “coming” is the four Sundays before Christmas, culminating on Christmas Eve.

I grew up in a small town in the center of the UP in the 1960s. A town which didn’t have cable TV (still doesn’t), shopping, (save for Larson’s General Store and the Rock CO-OP), a mall, movie theatre or any significant entertainment. That first Sunday of Advent was the signal that the Christmas season had started because there really wasn’t any other evidence.

Because of the nature of my father’s job, my family didn’t do any Christmas decorating or even put up a tree until that last week before Christmas. Advent, and the counting down that came with it, was the first tangible evidence that Christmas was coming. I was an alter boy at St. Joseph’s Church in Perkins (about 9 miles from my hometown of Rock) and as such, was a participant in the weekly lighting of the Advent candles. Each week, as another candle was lit, it brought more excitement as the big day grew closer and closer.

As the season progressed in my little town, more and more annual events ushered in the Season. One of the first signs, after Advent, was the departure of my best friend Perry Peltonen’s dad. Mr. Peltonen grew Christmas trees. Each year, he and his parter Bill would load a trailer with dozens of trees and head for Chicago. We’d send them off not knowing when they’d return. You see, they would set up in a parking lot and sell their trees and came home only when they had sold out. And Perry and his brothers, John and Ricky, wouldn’t know when dad would return. Sometimes just days later and sometimes a couple of weeks. I remember one year when their dad didn’t arrive back to Rock until Christmas Eve. The point I want to make is, the departure of John and Bill was a sign that Christmas was approaching, in a town where obvious signs were lacking.

There were no street lights to decorate, no garland hung across city streets (we really didn’t have any streets to speak of) and while most residents put up some lights, there really weren’t the over-the-top lawn decorations that you see today.

But as each candle was lit on Sunday, more evidence of Christmas began to appear. Mid-December The community Christmas Tree was put up and lit in front of Campbell’s City Service station (later Johnson’s Citco). That was the same site of the annual visit from Santa that occurred the Saturday before Christmas. Santa would arrive on a Rock Fire Truck and had out goodie bags (peanuts with a few candies) to all of us kids. That was a sure sign Christmas was near.

There were other events that ushered in the season, the annual Christmas concert by elementary students, an event I participated in several times. There were church programs and special parties by the 4-H club, church groups and others. In my teen years, my sister and I would help Santa at my dad’s union Christmas party. Kids would sit on Santa’s lap wile Cheryl and I would had them a giant-sized Hershey bar. A special side note. Santa was always Ed O’Leary of Escanaba who’s family I would become close to year’s later when I became involved in community theatre in Escanaba. Ed and his wife Gen and several of their children became very special to me over the years and as it happened I met the oldest daughter, whom I had never met before, two summers ago at the Keweenaw National Historical Park visitor center.

But back to Christmas. As the Advent candle burned down and big day approached. Actually it was the big night in my family. We attended midnight mass (in those days it was actually at midnight) and then we’d all gather at my house, my grandma Nellie would bring a meat pie, and my Uncle Sonny, Aunt Lorraine and my cousins Kevin and Carrie Ann, would enjoy a late night supper. Decades later I would learn that bringing a meat pie (Tourtière) following Midnight Mass was a French Canadian tradition. Which would make sense because my Grandma Salmi (nee Trombly) was French Canadian. I always thought it was just our family’s tradition not an ethnic thing.

Despite various family drama throughout the years, Christmas time in my little town was indeed magical, and for me, it all began four weeks earlier with the lighting of a single candle.