By Ida Chipman Correspondent
PLYMOUTH — Sue Frederick Read, of Plymouth, and her brother, Joe Frederick, of Claypool, reminisced at the Plymouth Duplicate Bridge Christmas party about Christmases past.
“I remember,” Sue said,” every Christmas Eve, standing outside at the Laketon, Ind. train station, waiting for the Lakawana Erie train.

“We had to go  there to pick up our family Christmas gift from our aunt in Batavia, N.Y.”
Joe said, “It was the traditional steamed plum pudding.”
“Neither one of us,” Sue added, “ever liked it very much anyhow.”
Another friend (who shall remain anonymous) told how his father would go out to party on Christmas Eve with his buddies.
“He’d come home, drunk, at 2 or 3 in the morning and wake us kids up to open our presents. We had a ball.”
Our friend went on to say that later his dad joined AA and got sober.
“Christmases weren’t as much fun after that!”
Kay Apple Finlay, whose family owned and operated the Apple Christmas Tree Farm on S.R. 17, said that, for her, Christmases were a lot of work.
“My parents, Garold and Eeleelah, worked together to get the trees sheared and greened-up in the summer and early fall.  Our Christmas season started before Thanksgiving when the dealer’s trucks came in and loaded up their trees to beginning selling the weekend after Thanksgiving. From then on –— through Christmas Eve — the whole family was working.”
Danny and Tom Flynn, about 8 and 9 years old at the time, discovered their mother Kay’s cache of gifts a few weeks before Christmas.  Inside, nicely wrapped, was a wonderful set of cast iron cars and planes. For days, the boys carefully unwrapped the box, taking time to meticulously peal back the scotch tape across the ends.  They played happily with their find and could hardly wait until Christmas morning when they wouldn’t have to conceal their pleasure.
A rocket scientist wouldn’t have been able to detect the difference in the wrappings.
But Kay had. Christmas morning came and the boys ran down to the tree to find…..nothing.
Of course, you couldn’t ask where the magnificent present was! That would be giving it away.
This is exactly what Kay did. She donated the set to a needy family in their church.
And Tom and Dan learned a valuable lesson.
“It is not wise to fool around with their mother’s things.”
My brother Jim and my Christmases were always special.  Santa never came until we were asleep on Christmas Eve.
There was nothing different at our house until Christmas morning. I don’t know how she did it, but Daddy would bring in a tree after we were asleep and Mother would string the lights (and that was when if one went out, they all went out) and decorate the house so that when we came down in the morning, there was a total fairyland. And all of the gifts were wrapped and/or put together.
The end kind of came for me when, one Christmas night when I, was about 9 (I believed a long time) and Jim was 6. I got up for a glass of water and looked around the corner and saw my mother assembling a bike.
I KNEW then — maybe had suspected for awhile — that there was no REAL Santa Claus. I was devastated.  So of course, I had to share the bad news with my little brother.
I am sure he has never forgiven me.  I’m afraid to ask.
Ida Chipman studied journalism at Queens University, Charlotte, NC., and the University of Maryland, College Park, MD. A five-time winner of the prestigious Honeycomb Award from the Women’s Press Club of Indiana, she has been writing feature articles for over 30 years. 
In addition to having been published in numerous national and international publications, including Chicken Soup for the Soul, she is the obituarist for the Johnson-Danielson Funeral Home in Plymouth. She and her husband, Eugene, have four children and 11 grandchildren and live in West Twp.
To contact: ichipman@thenetanywhere or call: 574-936-1125.