So very long ago now, the memories fade and become fuzzy recollections in the corner of the mind.  As it is in the beginning when the brain soaks up memories like a sponge and makes a human being what they are today, the nuclear family etches itself in the personality of the Wracks, but now it doesn’t matter anyway.  The Christmas season in the northern hemisphere is cold and families concentrate on celebrating the Christian ideal of ethics.   With the feeling and vision of something better and a king to guide us and rule the world as it is meant to be ruled, families give cheer to the yuletide season.

Rolls-Royce Lane in Eastwood looks like a small duplex colony set amid more duplexes that eventually were razed and made to be huge condominiums.  For now, the white buildings set with a lawn and a long driveway connecting two duplexes are the setting of a small family that comes together to have Christmas dinner.  Around the duplex is bare earth that grandma plants with garlic, parsley, and Swiss chard plants, to be pulled immediately and used as spices in Italian cooking.   The Wracks are outside picking some spices to be used with the Christmas dinner.  Inside the small duplex, painted in white inside and out are a kitchen, a large living room, one bathroom, and two small bedrooms.  A large white sofa and a large RCA television sit in the living room.   A portable hardwood table with replaceable leaves moves out from the wall and becomes the dining table for the Christmas feast.   The Wracks set the table, the Fonz watches television, and mother and father Wracker sit with their children waiting to eat Italian food with a French twist, in a simplistic fashion in the twentieth century.  

All things start small and it is so with this Christmas dinner, with silverware taken out of boxes several generations old.  There is rigatoni pasta in tomato sauce boiled with chicken feet set in cheesecloth.   Chicken feet make the best spaghetti sauce but must be kept in a cheesecloth nest because they contain many small bones.  In the oven roasts a small beef chunk, a top round wedge that Grandpa likes so much.  Peppercorns, sea salt, and mashed garlic cloves cover the roast, as Italians believe garlic lowers blood pressure.   The kitchen smells delightful, the tomato sauce bubbles away and the top round tip roast floats on top of the range cooling down.   Grandfather prefers a tossed salad as a vegetable for his meals so this is what is presented on top of the fold-out leaf hardwood table done in mahogany red.  The dressing is Italian with olive oil and small tomato pieces accentuating the green expanse sitting in a huge wooden bowl with wooden tongs set inside.  The food comes to the table.  The roast is divided into slices and everyone receives a huge bowl of pasta with tomato sauce and abundant parmesan cheese. The Wracks ground the parmesan cheese from a hard chunk on a steel cheese grate and the fresh cheese makes the red-covered rigatoni a superior meal in itself.  Hands clasped in prayer, the nuclear family thanks the maker for another year and salutes the birth of his delegated son. A red rose pours into stemware and the children get a separate glass of water and wine as is the aged old Italian custom.   Everyone eats and eats and happiness prevails at the table and the dessert brings vanilla ice cream with heated Hershey chocolate sauce swirled on top.   The meal is over and Father Wracks and Grandpa sit and smoke with the window open and the Fonz watches more television on the huge 25-inch television set.   The Wracks help Grandma do the dishes and then dry them with fresh towels taken from the linen closet in the master bedroom.    When all the dishes are dry and put away, and the silver loaded back into the reddish cloth boxes, the three-leaf official table comes down and slides back to the wall. 

As most children in the United States receive gifts on Christmas, the Wracks and the Fonz are no exception., The Wracks receives a blue .049 gasoline-powered sky raider with guide wires to be pulled around the parking lot, and the Fonz receives a tennis racket with a shopping bag full of tennis balls.

Both mother and father Wracker smoke, grandpa smokes, the window is open, and the perennial family show hosts on television on this, the holiest of Christian days.   The Wracks loves watching television and slowly falls asleep happy.   It is time to go says Mother Wracker to the Wracks and slips his Penney’s corduroy jacket over his shoulders.   Grandma kisses the children on the forehead, grandfather beams and the family gets into a Chevrolet Impala station wagon, in sky blue for the thirty-minute ride to Tranquil Hills.   The Fonz and the Wracks fall asleep in the back as the scenery wafts by on the moonlight road taking them back home.  The garage door opens and the kids and the mother get out and they enter the house through the back door.  Go to sleep says Mom, and Merry Christmas, and the stars outside the window in the garden glow and cast light on the child sleeping in a bed under the window. 

The temporal lobe houses the superego.  The superego is the sum of all life experiences stored in one place with immediate access that shapes the personality.   The frontal lobe is the processor or CPU and processes the memories as history into action.   Without a religious upbringing, the frontal lobe has no boundaries to designate, no rules to compel, no feeling to become and a human being without an ethical construct might surely become criminal.  This is the hope that Christmas brings that man somehow will muck through the extravagances and vicissitudes of life and with every generation become better.  So is the hope that Christians believe will endeavor through time.  This is a lot better than being thrown to hungry lions and we wish around the world whoever you are, a Merry Christmas.