Somewhere somebody said that the wise men showed up at the manger along about the fifth of January.

Not so long ago I heard, though, that Jesus was really born in the springtime.

Who the dickens are we to believe?

The nuns told us faith was a gift, but as I have said elsewhere in these pages, I early on began to suspect that they were hood winking us.

Where, do you suppose, does the term hoodwink come from? Is it when someone puts a hood over the head of an innocent child and then winks at a partner so the kid doesn't know what's really what?

Whatever. Along about this time of year, when we were little tiny creatures our Polish aunts and uncles were given to traipsing around between the homes of close and distant relatives making sure that the numerals of the new year were inscribed above the door with chalk. They then imbibed together in the strongest spirits they could lay hands on, a favorite being "real" vodka (made in Poland). Whiskey was never turned down, though, if the truest vodka wasn't available.

Always a lot of laughter would erupt and whispers were hardly rare, you know how people are, they can't help but talk about each other and with all this inter-familial celebrating of the new year and all; a regular traveling gab fest was what it was.

Me in my little red velvet dress with a lace handkerchief pinned to my sleeve, my socks were always falling down and letting my knees show which bothered me more than the smell of whiskey breath when I got all those kisses from various kin folk who couldn't get over how big I had got, or how pretty my eyes were. (No wonder I became so shy) They called me bashful and Uncle Frank would hoist me up to his shoulder and give me money to put in the chains that held the lights above the dining room table at my Grandmother's house while she was serving up food for everyone. By the end of the meal there was always a lot of money up there, she never looked up, though, she was too busy letting in more company and feeding them or plying them with shots of the plentiful bottles being left on the counter next to the ice box, just outside of the pantry.

The kitchen stove had six burners and Leo was in charge of keeping the fire pit full, there were two ovens above and two below and a big pot of soup was always going on one burner, a big pot of coffee on another.

The house was glorious with the scent of fresh bread, pork chops, ham, browning sausages piled in an iron skillet, some smoked, some spiced, always a pan of pierogi (a kind of dumpling made of soft chewy dough stuffed with mashed potato or sauerkraut, plums or other fruit) steaming and ready for a dollop of sour cream. My favorite were a pair swimming in butter, one with potato and the other didn't matter, as long as there was a huge plop of sour cream on it.

My Aunt Martha always wore some kind of a fur that she said was fox one year and sable another but my cousins whispered that it was dyed rabbit. These were cousins who were proud to say they were from the "honest side of the family." The proofs being their cloth coats, hand-me-down best shoes and worn corduroy purses.

The feel of nubby wool hats, silk scarves long enough to wrap around the neck three or four times, pinches on the cheek and the sound of song fragments raised with the bubbling cups and ice cube tinkle of glasses...it all comes back to me over these many long years as if framed with gilt edges like on a rag paper greeting card torn out of a five cent stamped envelope cancelled multiple times after traveling all the way from Poland to Detroit in 1944.

Happy 2006, Everybody!

Basia