Christmas In Cabrini 💚 Green

With Special Dedication to Derrick Savage, Dantrell Davis, Curtis Cooper and Sharoya Currie.

EXCERPT

Today, I would like to recall a Christmas in Cabrini that has been the
crescendo of any

Christmas that I have experienced throughout my travels. For thirteen
years of my life

I lived at 365 W. Oak St. which is one of the last “red” buildings
left standing in Cabrini.

 Every Christmas my mother Rosetta Ambrose would pull out the tree and
all of the children

would reassemble it. Then Ma would play Christmas records by Nat King
Cole, the Jackson’s,

Temptations, Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Kurtis Blow and Bing Crosby.

Simultaneously, throughout the projects you could hear Donny Hathaway’s ‘This

Christmas’ blasting on the

radio. My mother always played Akim & Teddy Vann's 45 Santa Claus Is A
Black Man

and James Brown's Santa Claus is A Black Man. I always enjoyed the week before

Christmas. I ‘d run home from school to watch all

the specials. I was especially fond of Charlie Brown’s Christmas.
Speaking of school,

 my two brothers and sister attended Richard E. Byrd and each school
year we’d have a

Christmas and end of the year party. We’d also have a party in the
recreation room of

365 W. Oak Street which was our building.

 On Christmas day our apartment was always filled with plenty of
eggnog, food and

family. Ham, turkey, macaroni and cheese, greens, candied yams, sweet
potato pies,

you name it and we had it.

 Ma shared with us how some of the Christmases that she experienced.
Ma said that

back when she was a kid they were lucky to have a roof over their head
and food in the

refrigerator.

Ma said that she didn’t want her children to have to go through what
she did. Ma said

that Christmas had become too commercialized and that the meaning has
gotten lost over the

years. Nonetheless, every Christmas that we had was the bomb! We may
not have gotten all that

we asked for but we got enough.

 This particular Christmas in the early 80's, Ma heard from a neighbor
that gifts were being

given away in one of the ‘white projects’ to children and Ma asked my
older sister Karen and