Written by Henry Steiner Friday, 11 December 2009
Many of us carry with us the remembrances of past Christmases − sometimes a particular one − sometimes a patchwork quilt of many.
Those of us who celebrate Christmas either as a religious or secular holiday may share many common traditions, but we may also recall a number of special rites that are more or less unique to our own families. I recently had an opportunity to speak with three of our lifelong, local residents about some of their Christmas recollections. They carry with them memories of Christmas past in their hometowns of Irvington, Tarrytown, and Sleepy Hollow.
Pamela Strachan, Director of the Irvington Public Library, grew up with her brother and six sisters on Croton Lane, just off Main Street in Irvington. Pam fondly recalls the season of Christmas in her childhood home and the celebrations at The Episcopal Church of Saint Barnabas on Broadway in Irvington. "My mother would rehearse the neighborhood children in caroling and host a party on Christmas Eve. She made presents for the children, too; it was great fun." Pam and her siblings regularly sang in the children's choir of Saint Barnabas, and that was an important part of Christmas for them. "We all looked forward to it. Following Christmas, St. Barnabas Church would have a pageant called the ‘Feast of Lights’. The event started with the Nativity and traced the Light of Christ going into the world; it was very exciting to me. All the other girls wanted to be Mary, but I admired Albert Schweitzer because he was both a doctor and an organist."
Pam still has the tiny apron her mother gave her at one of Mrs. Strachan's children's caroling parties. Mom made one for each child − all a little bit different. Among the carolers were Barry Marcantonio and Dr. Smith's children. Her favorite carol was "Hark the Herald Angels Sing." Later, with the church singers and the Scouts, they would carol at the Anne E. Poth Home (also named Villa Lewaro) which was then a home for retirees of the women’s group, Companions of the Forest of America. "And we had piano recitals at the home of our instructor, Betty Carter, who just passed away a few years ago at age 98. She lived in the old Presbyterian Church manse on Broadway, near Sunnyside Lane, and she would host a Christmas musicale. The children would wait nervously for their turn and afterward Betty Carter accompanied the group as they sang Christmas songs. This was followed by a Christmas party for her students.”
"I remember how exciting it was to see all the decorations in the stores along Main Street. And we always looked forward to the Firemen's Christmas Party in the Irvington Town Hall Theater in the late 50s. I can recall how much fun it was; there was singing and they had a Christmas present for each child." Pam attended the Irvington Public Schools, starting at Dows Lane, in the late 1950s.
"I remember one Christmas my mother stayed up all night painting the windows of the house with nativity scenes of shepherds and angels to surprise us. Christmas shopping was done at Woolworths, and Mom would take a few of her children at a time so they could have privacy.” Pam and her siblings saved through the year so they would have three dollars or so to buy gifts. Mother stood near the store's cash register to solve any last minute shortfalls. On Christmas Day, it was always roast beef for dinner.
Ann D'Esopo Phillips grew up in Tarrytown, the daughter of Dr. Lou D'Esopo and the granddaughter of Dr. Sweet. She recalls that if there was a "white Christmas," her father would be obliged to wrestle the chains onto the tires of his car to make his house calls. Dr. D'Esopo was one of the group who founded Phelps Memorial Hospital. The D'Esopo home stood at Benedict Avenue and Rosehill Avenue, a white house set way back from the road. On Christmas Day, the family would go to the large gathering at Dr. Sweet's home on Cobb Lane.
The D'Esopo family attended Christmas services at Tarrytown's Second Reformed Church. "I think that in the 1940s in Tarrytown, the church was the center of the Christmas season. Christmas was celebrated from the beginning of Advent, and the whole season was special − everyone was excited about it. In my young childhood it was of course about presents, but later it was about activities associated with Christmas − decorating the sanctuary with greens and poinsettias − and the four colored candles of Advent. Maybe decorating the church was a slightly pagan tradition, but it was part of the ritual. The preparation for Christmas was a whole season." Now, it seems to Ann, the season can be more like a month-long ‘Black Friday’ than the Advent of our youths.
"There was the preparation of the junior choir with its selection of hymns. There was a pageant, but today there are probably not as many angels and shepherds as there once were." The pastor of the Second Reformed Church in the 1940s was George Ammerman, who led the flock for twenty-five years. He and his wife lived at what was then the church manse in Tappan Landing. Ann adds that Reverend Jeff Gargano, the new pastor of the Reformed Church of the Tarrytowns, "is a joy."
Ann attended Pierson School and then Washington Irving High School. Ann's mother was in WI's first graduating class of 1925. In that day, kindergarten was held in the Lyceum Building on Central Avenue. When Ann graduated in 1951, she was one of eighty-three graduates, the largest graduating class up to that date. There was, of course, a Christmas concert at the high school featuring the "Hudsonaires," the band, and the chorus, and the ceremonies were presided over by Mr. Clifford Dinsmore. Christmas holidays from school were spent with friends, like Ann's lifelong friend, Elizabeth "Bunny" Mack (Laite), who lived down the hill from the D'Esopos in Loh Park and who still lives nearby today.
In downtown Tarrytown, huge metal Christmas trees decorated the street lamps and gave Main Street a festive glow. The family would go down to Greene County on Cortlandt Street to shop for the well-loved traditional candy nuggets packed in boxes.
"I miss the old fashioned Christmas trees that had spaces between the branches, because they looked beautiful hung with the old tinsel. The modern Douglas and Frasier firs are too dense for that kind of decoration." And, unfortunately, the old metal tinsel was dropped from use in the 1940s, a casualty of World War II metal shortages. 
Patrick Munroe was raised in the Village of North Tarrytown (Sleepy Hollow) and he is a former Village trustee. In the late fifties and early sixties, Pat was an altar boy at St. Theresa's Church in North Tarrytown. He remembers the pastor of that time, Father Rudolph Kraus. According to Pat, like so many Catholic pastors of that day, you either loved him or didn't love him a lot. It seemed that Father Kraus made a habit of being very direct, but Pat got along well with him. Patrick attended St. Theresa's grade school and then went on to Xavier Jesuit Military Academy in Manhattan, where he perfected the technique of polishing his shoes. "Come on Father, you can do better than that," the altar boy would remark, critiquing his pastor's shine. Father Kraus was to donate an altar to the parish from his own funds; today it is still the altar of the church.
Father Kraus had a wonderful singing voice and the choir at Christmas midnight mass reflected his musical ability. The voices were auditioned and rehearsed rigorously, and the result was angelic music, sung in Latin, pouring from the choir loft at the rear of the church. George Glasheen, the parish organist, kept them to a very high standard. "The music itself was a draw, and the mass was standing room only,” said Pat. "The altar ablaze with poinsettias was the visual counterpoint." Many of the congregation were of Irish descent and there was a large portion of French-Canadians, many of whom lived at the west end of Beekman Avenue.
Little North Tarrytown had no less than three Catholic churches. There was Holy Cross, which stood adjacent on Cortlandt Street, and Immaculate Conception, now at the corner of Broadway and College, but formerly at College and Valley. At St. Theresa’s there were Nativity pageants and the church crèche; Pat remembers even the faces on the statues. There was another crèche at Patriot's Park that one day fell to a debate on the separation of church and state.
About 1960, the decorations on Beekman Avenue were "big silhouettes of Christmas trees; the foliage parts were big green garlands, and I think the flower pot sections were red. Their appearance after Thanksgiving was the announcement that Christmastime had begun."
Pat's family lived at the Van Tassel Apartments (the VT). The family Christmas tree was found on a local lot, and the ornaments packed away carefully from year to year. Each child had an ornament with his name on it. There were a number of different gangs/groups of little children living nearby − the Van Tassel gang, the Howard Street gang and the Elm Streeters and they observed a Christmas truce. In the days leading up to Christmas, there was the usual praying for snow and if the prayers were answered, a group of the children would head to the cemetery for snowball fights.
Christmas dinner was prepared on Christmas Day and that is when Pat, his older brother, and younger sister would open their presents. On one such year, Pat got his first two-wheel bike. One year his brother received a telescope that really worked. They took it to the roof of the VT to look at the moon and even spied the windows of skyscrapers in Manhattan. On Christmas Day, friends and neighbors from the VT would stop by to make their Christmas greeting. "Clem" Clement Quinn would stop by that morning with a loaf of the ubiquitous Alter's Bakery rye bread under his arm.
These then are three sets of recollections of Christmas past. I hope they may rekindle some of your own. Merry Christmas to all and Peace on Earth!
Henry John Steiner is the village historian of Sleepy Hollow and the managing broker of Steiner Real Estate Associates
henry@SteinerRealEstateAssociates.com
