As the Christmas holiday approaches, and as the 2020 year comes to a close, the Prep News wanted to share some positive and heartwarming stories about the teachers at SLUH, and their favorite Christmas memories.

John Kavanaugh

One Christmas, my dad Tom Kavanaugh (SLUH ’68) and uncle John Kavanaugh SJ (SLUH ’59) conspired to amaze me and my siblings (younger sister Jenny and younger brother Tommy) by making it appear that our dad literally pulled a 7-foot balsam spruce tree out of his pocket!

That year, we did not have a tree yet, and it was Christmas Eve. After an evening late lunch of deli meats and crackers at our Grandma Julia's house followed by a gift exchange, and after the excitement of a full holiday table spread, late dinner, and raucous mayhem with our cousins in the basement at my Great Aunt Kay Connally's house, our parents brought us kids home around 9 or 10 p.m. 

Uncle John had hidden himself and the tree somewhere (perhaps stowed in the side yard). Our mom, in on the fun, sat us down in our front room and told us our dad had a surprise for us. Sleepy-eyed and nearly ready for bed, we were nevertheless definitely game for one last Christmas Eve gift. We were very young; all of us under ten, but attentively watching the front door mesmerized by the mystery. What could it be? Apparently my dad helped my uncle into position with the tree outside our closed front door, and then my uncle retreated to the base of the tree down the front porch steps and out of sight. Suddenly the door flung open, with our dad grinning mischievously in the doorway.

"I have a special surprise for you," he intoned.

He looked down, and with a magician's flair, reached into his coat pocket. We peered, squinted, and careened our necks to see what might be in his pocket. What was it??!!

Then, miraculously, the very tip of a massive tree began to emerge, it would appear, from beneath his arm, out of his pocket! He began pulling (the base of the tree being held and thrust forward by Uncle John unbeknownst to us) and pulling and PULLING!...until the full, massive 7 foot tree appeared before our eyes, coming right of his coat pocket! Keep in mind, we were very young, and wiped out after two holiday gatherings. But it was, indeed, a wonderous, marvellous, magnificent feat received with joyous cheers and shouts of pure amazed glee. 

Conveniently, our Uncle appeared at the house 10 or 15 minutes later, and we regaled him with our tale of the impossible Christmas tree that our heroic dad had made appear before our very eyes. We each got to select an ornament to place on the tree, firmly fastened into the base by dad and Uncle John. And miraculously, when we awoke, the tree was decorated and surrounded by piles of wrapped presents by Santa!

We unwrapped our gifts in our footed pajamas, ate a breakfast of fried savory meats and warm, sweet breads before heading off to Christmas Mass, re-telling the story to ourselves, and our Grandma Julia on the way to and from the College Church.

 

Chuck Hussung

As the Seniors might remember, in the fall of 2017 the Dauphin Players staged Romeo & Juliet to celebrate the school’s 200th Anniversary and Mrs. Whitaker gave me the great and abiding gift of playing Friar Lawrence. I took such delight in playing the part that my wife Marsha decided to give me a stone friar for Christmas. She went to Catholic Supply and found one that was just right. Then she began to worry that I might think the statue was cheesy. She need not have worried. The statue isn’t cheesy in the least, I loved it from the moment I saw it, and I treasure it as a symbol of her abundant love and of that happy time in my life.

 

Jon Ott

Christmas is veiled in secrets. Take Santa Claus, for example. It was not until my eighteenth Christmas that I discovered his proclivity for profanity.  

The Ott family Christmas Eve party was historically, like Santa’s vocabulary, not rated G. Or PG. Or PG-13. One year the party was soiled by a kidnapping. 

Nobody knew how it happened, but, at some point during the party, Uncle Mark’s five-foot tall light-up Frosty the Snowman disappeared from his front porch. Poor Frosty didn’t reappear until a Fourth of July party, when he was discovered at the bottom of Uncle Gary’s swimming pool with note cursing Uncle Mark for refusing to pay the ransom.  

Uncle Mark was so devastated by the incident he couldn’t bring himself to host Christmas Eve the next year, so Uncle Dave stepped up to fill the spot. In retrospect, that was a mistake. Because the crime of choice that year was arson. It was the late 90s, and Uncle Dave was a big Austin Powers fan, which explains the life-sized cardboard Dr. Evil that greeted guests at the front door.  At some point during the night, Uncle Dave must have taken his brotherly ribbing a bit too far.  At least that’s how I made sense of Dr. Evil ending up in the fireplace.  Believe it or not, Uncle Dave did not volunteer to host Christmas Eve the following year.

After eighteen months of mourning Frosty, Uncle Mark was ready to retake the Christmas Eve mantle. So, I was sitting in his basement when Uncle Gary read aloud a letter addressed to the entire Ott family that he had received from Kris Kringle himself. The specific content of that letter is not fit to be printed in the pages of a high school newspaper, or any publication, for that matter. But it resembled a Comedy Central-style roast of every man, woman, and child in the family. Except, of course, Uncle Gary.

 

Diego Navarro

I woke up first—before my brothers, before my parents—and slowly, silently made my way over to the living room. Had Santa come? What did he bring me?!? And when I turned the corner I saw them all under the tree—gifts, unwrapped, that had been squeezed down the chimney. Each had a tag on it with the name of one of my brothers or I. But then I stopped cold: there was a gift with all three of our names on it. Space Invaders! It was a handheld standalone game, and I wanted it all for myself. As if by practice I switched the tags on two of the gifts—now Space Invaders was only for me, and my brothers and I would have to share some other random gift. But because they were from Santa, I thought, no one would ever know the difference. And then I snuck back into bed, filled with glee.

Hours later we all woke up, the gifts were removed from their packaging, and the prize was mine. I ran to my shared room with the Space Invaders only to find that my mom walked right after me. She gave me a chance: "Santa told me that Space Invaders was for you and your brothers." Caught, I suddenly felt guilty. I hadn't anticipated that level of communication with someone so far away. I fessed up and returned the precious tag to my mother. After she set the record straight the three of us brothers took turns playing Space Invaders and even cheering each other on. And perhaps that's when the real meaning of Christmas began to take root, to take flesh, in me.

 

Lynne Casey

One of my favorite memories is displayed by a picture of my sister and me with Santa Claus at the downtown Famous-Barr sometime in the 70’s. Every year on the day after Thanksgiving—before there was such a thing as Black Friday—we would go downtown with my mom, aunt, cousins and grandma to see Santa Claus and start our Christmas shopping. Back then, downtown was a magical place at Christmas time, and for this country girl, it was like stepping into a foreign land. There were Christmas lights everywhere, Famous-Barr and Styx Baer & Fuller had elaborate window displays, and every department store would be decorated to the hilt and busy and bustling. Best of all, the stores had huge toy departments where I would begin dreaming and compiling my list for Santa. 

I remember often standing in long lines waiting to see Santa and passing through elaborate Santa Land displays of his workshop with animatronic elves, or some sort of winter wonderland.  This was a particularly good year for Santa—we were old enough that neither of us was frightened by him and screaming, and young enough that we weren’t embarrassed and rolling our eyes and scowling at our mother. 

I am as grateful as anyone for online shopping—especially this year, but I miss the days of big, glittering department stores when going downtown was an event––one you might even get a little dressed up for. And I miss the wonder of visiting Santa, asking for a special toy, and being dazzled by the bright lights and displays. I was able to revisit some of those feelings with my own kids—taking them to Marshal Fields (now Macy’s) in Chicago to see the windows, and visiting Santa at the mall, but none of that is happening this year, plus they’ve long since reached the rolling their eyes and scowling at their mother phase too.

 

Kim and John Walsh

I love Christmas!  But I have to say that last Christmas 2019 was one that Mr. Walsh and I will cherish forever. You see our twin granddaughters, Phoebe and Frankie, (after spending 3 weeks in the NICU) had just come home to our house (their mom and dad were living with us), and for their Christmas present we told them to sleep in!  With that being said, our grandbabies woke up at 4:00 a.m., we ran in the room, changed them, fed them, burped them, and then while holding the babies we looked out the window on Christmas morning, snow was falling and John and I looked at each other with tears in our eyes knowing how blessed we truly are. We thanked God for that moment. It was beautiful!

 

Addie Akin

When I was in college, my dad started this amazing tradition called Scott Campbell Christmas Trivia. He created an elaborate game full of Christmas trivia questions. He shopped for and wrapped gifts (some of them silly), came up with a whole set of rules, and played the role of emcee. My mom and I would take turns answering, and after a few right questions we'd get to pick a gift. Over the years, the game has morphed into family trivia, where the questions revolve around experiences from the past year. He's gotten pretty good at remembering random things we say or places we've been. 

Since marrying my husband, the trivia questions have also involved him, and starting last year there were questions about our then-unborn baby girl. We never expect it—he always says that year could be the last—but nonetheless we look forward to it every year. Of course we're competitive (I usually win!), and it's fun to open the gifts at the end, but the real fun is reliving the year together as a family and being grateful for all the memories and laughter.

Tracy Lyons

I don't actually remember receiving this Baywatch Ken doll as a Christmas gift, but my seven or eight year old self certainly seems excited! I love the green velvet party dress I have on in this photo. I believe it was a hand-me-down from my older cousins and I also wore it to a family wedding the month prior. Christmases as a kid were full of family. Both of my parents are from the St. Louis area, so Christmas Eves as a kid were always spent at G&G G's (Grandma & Grandpa Gassel's) house and Christmas Days were spent celebrating with the Lyons family. That's my Grandpa Lyons behind me in the photo, so my guess is that one of my dad's brothers gifted me with Baywatch Ken. I'm sure my parents were thrilled.