East Village Christmas in the 1970's

I'm a bit fuzzy about the exact year--whether I was a new college graduate--or what exactly my sister was doing. At that time in our lives, we had multiple addresses crossed in and out of address books for each other--but we spent Christmas eve together in her fifth floor walkup on 6th Street and Avenue C. There were lights strung on a vacant loit across the street. Homeless people crouched in doorways asking for spare change and trying to keep warm under thin blankets.The day before we went to a thrift store and got small gifts for all of our friends. We spent that evening(x-mas eve) wrapping them with colorful paper, tied with ribbons and on each present, I wrote a small poem --like William Carlos Williams or Pablo Neruda--whatever mood overtook me. If it was a pair of gloves I might have written, "warm/wooly/gloves/wear /where to find solace" or if we were giving a coffee cup perhaps I wrote "Cup/of/dreams." I was particularly into one word on each line type of poems. But I don't really remember exactly what I wrote except that we had bought a very small, inexpensive x-mas tree and loaded it with tinsel and a few ornaments and lights and put all our wrapped poem/presents underneath the tree. The thrift store seemed to provide something for everyone. Our friends were mainly artists, mostly marginalized economically and in many other ways. Some didn't have families to go to; others would drop in for the evening and go to their parents' homes the next day as we would do. We served hot cider and after the guests left, my sister and I walked down 2nd Avenue and went into a small church. The service was simple. Something about a baby being born, not a specific baby but all of us.

The next day we would make the walk from 6th Street and Avenue C to 12th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue, a whole other world where the presents would be new----bought with love as well--but for some reason the love seemed more complicated then the love that night of a family of orphaned artists, unwrapping small gifts from the local thrift store, eyes wide with astonishment when they saw a poem written just for them.