The Roslevich “NOEL” Candleholders
 

The ‘Christmas Message 2021’ by Prior Michael Brunner which appeared in the pages of our recent Christmas issue reminded me of the weekly church bulletin messages he used to write back in St. Louis. For many years he served as the pastor of St. Anselm’s Parish, situated on the campus of Saint Louis Abbey and Priory School, and overseen by the Benedictine monks. Each Sunday message was a gem, so much so that the administrative staff collected and published an annual booklet distributed yearly as a Christmas gift for parish families. His talent for skillfully weaving the weft of his childhood memories, his German immigrant family stories, and his hotel management experiences with the warp of current world situations, social and pop culture concerns, and his respect for world religions created a rich tapestry which somehow illustrated and brought the Gospel stories fully alive for everyone, regardless of age. 

Although my own Eastern-European immigrant background leans to the Slovak/Polish persuasion, part of which I share with several of my Benedictine brothers, my family, too, had “a large collection of ornaments” handed down through the decades, and the same tinsel strips which Fr. Michael remembers (I think ours were lead tinsel, now banned), carefully removed from the tree and saved from year to year. We had all that, plus a small borough’s worth of cardboard houses, a handmade belfried church crafted by my grandfather, a legion of painted lead and pot-metal soldiers, and even sailors of a World War I vintage to parade through the town. At a time when so many things seemed out of control, tiny hands being allowed to arrange a tiny town of tiny houses, even temporarily beneath sheltering evergreen branches, afforded a sense of calm, control, yes, and maybe some peace on earth. 

The earliest tree-topper which I remember from my 1950’s childhood was an angel who looked suspiciously like Wonder Woman, with a headband holding her hair neatly in place (see the photo). This connection of identity may not be entirely coincidental since that Marvel character first made her appearance in 1942, ten years before my birth. Her dress was made of soft plastic, her wings of silver-foiled cardboard, and she had a plastic-disc halo which could be lit up from behind. To a 5-year-old boy she was magical but holy. No one knows where she ended up, but decades later I came across her sister in a Midwestern antique shop, her identical twin sister I might add, still in her original box labeled the “NOMA Illuminated Tree-Top Halo Angel” with a patent number suggesting her birth date as 1942. The box said “Made in U.S.A.”  and remember this was wartime America.  She was the original Angel in America. If you’re ahead of me in the story, you’re correct in assuming that I paid beaucoup more bucks for the memory, a memory I didn’t know I still held.  Just one more addition to the collection of props for the movie of my life. 
 

“Tree-Top Halo Angel”

As I write about her, that 80-year-old magical but holy Wonder-Woman angel sits atop the small ‘permanent’ tree in the church near the Marian altar where, at least 5 times every day during the Christmas season before beginning our prayers and Mass, I glanced or sometimes stared at her, transported to another time and place. This is her first and last New England Christmas. It’s time to put her up for adoption now to a deserving young great-nephew.  

Another memorable piece of décor unpacked by my mother every Christmas consists of four 1940’s ceramic candleholders which spell out “NOEL”. Mainly they are memorable because after being around for 80 years in a household full of four lively boys, not a single one is broken, missing, or chipped. Each is marked as coming from Japan and the sticker on the original box from the G.C. Murphy Co., a discount variety chain, lists the price as 98 cents (I had to write ‘cents’ because keyboards no longer display the penny sign). The other memorable thing is that no matter where my mother displayed them from year to year, my brothers and I delighted in making anagrams by rearranging the letters to spell LEON or LONE, no matter how high above our reaching distance she put them, even above the dining room archway. In those days we didn’t think of ELON, not knowing that it was a university and also a male Jewish name. So far, being displayed in the calefactory this season, not one of my ‘brothers’ here has thought to rearrange the letters. 

The point of this reminiscing, as the Baptism of the Lord approaches to mark the close of the Christmas Season and the return to Ordinary Time, is to underscore the rich personal stories we each hold dear in our own lives. It is good to share them and to discover our commonalities as a way to understand our differences and divergences, the distances between us, to look at ‘the other’ with less fear and trepidation. The distance from Fr. Michael’s hometown of Rochester, New York is now only a mere 4 hours by interstate from my hometown of Hazleton, Pennsylvania. We are contemporaries, being less than three years apart in age. Our separate life journeys took us to St. Louis only to land us here on the shore of Narragansett Bay. It’s only natural for two guys at this stage of our lives to look back once in a while, and Christmas seems like the perfect time to check the rear-view mirror and adjust it if necessary. 

Elsewhere in this edition you will read about some things on the Portsmouth horizon, some big, some not so big, but all important.  As I began working on this particular story, I was optimistic about being able to announce plans for a Lenten Day of Recollection here on campus for our oblates and friends. As you know, it is incumbent upon us to work within and around the School’s calendar given the changing guidelines regarding the COVID protocols. An e-mail on December 30 from Acting Head of School Matthew Walter to the faculty, staff and monks included a copy of a letter sent to all students and families. Suffice it to say that he relayed that, “The COVID committee has been grappling with the ever-changing landscape,” and that the reopening of the school will see “an increased focus on health and safety.” The March vacation will empty out the campus from Friday, March 4, through Tuesday, March 22.  As the weeks progress, we shall determine, with input from Prior Michael and the School administration, how wise and prudent it would be for the oblates to gather in person.

In the meantime, please be well and healthy as 2022 gets off to an uncertain beginning, stay safe, and continue to share those rich personal stories.