Christmases Past, Present and Future…
12/18/2006
This morning I checked out Meredith’s blog at http://www.metalmeredith.com. She has written about Christmas and the uncontainable excitement of a three-year old. Vivienne is actually three years, five months and one day and is very, very excited about the upcoming event. I love to be around children on Christmas Day, especially the younger ones who “get it,” far beyond those of us who have joined the ranks of “I am too old to believe,” that Santa is the spirit of Christmas giving.
All of us recognize the significance of Christmas, even non-Christians. It is the birthday of Jesus. Santa, on the other hand, represents the Christian ethic of giving and sharing. That is what the whole of Christianity is based on, thus, Christmas has become a day of giving. Enough pontification, and on to the good stuff…
Christmas in my boyhood home was a joyous time of family and friends and good food and lots and lots of cookies, and even fruitcake. It was the time of year we had soft drinks (Coke or Root Beer for you younger folks) in the house, and if we were really lucky, Potato Chips.
Late Christmas Eve night my brothers, sisters and I would go to bed leaving the undecorated downstairs of our home for our small, almost warm bedrooms on the second floor of our modest home, and attempt to get to sleep. Early Christmas morning, after a restless night filled with dreams of what was to come, we would awake before the sun and make enough noise to arouse everyone in the house. It was still dark. Dad was always the first to go down stairs, and after what seemed an eternity, he would give the “Okay” and the rest of us would make our way down into a Winter Wonderland. A beautifully decorated tree full lights that bubbled, and loaded with ornaments of many shapes and colors that glittered as they lay beneath “Tinsel” (you might call them icicles) that reflected the light and sparkled as they moved. There was the mellifluous scent of fruit and candy and nuts and cookies throughout the house mixing with that of sweet pine. It was Christmas, a time of wide grins and huge smiles.
The tree was set upon a “Christmas Garden” that was about four feet by six feet. It sported a Lionel train, with a steam engine and about six or eight freight cars. The engine puffed bluish smoke as it traveled around the oval track that surrounded a village of little houses and buildings sprinkled with “Ivory Snow” flakes and situated on roadways made of salt or fine sand. Tiny trees made of some kind of moss added a little realism to the village, and each sat upon a little light that gave them a homey, lived-in effect. I used to stare at it almost in a trance as the train went round and round.
We did not get a lot of presents, certainly not the quantity of what I have seen the grandchildren receive. There might be three of four gifts for each of us; one big one, maybe a bike or wagon, and some smaller, more practical stuff like pajamas or a shirt, or perhaps a sweater. The joy of Christmas, as we realized later in life, is not what we got, but who we got to enjoy it with.
Those were great Christmases. Mom and Dad have been gone for nine years now. My brothers and sisters celebrate the Holidays in other cities with families of their own. We now get to celebrate Christmas with kids and grandkids. Our lives are so much more complicated, we believe, but not really. We make them that way…that is a choice we make. Meredith speaks of Christmases Past. Her memory of them she says is vague. The vagueness is because they were pretty much the same from one year to the next. They ran together as she got older because of the sameness from year to year. It is what we call “tradition.” The way we celebrated Christmas changed very little, if at all, from one year to the next, and it was okay. We had good times.
I look at Christmas differently now, even though I have reached the age where an artificial “looks real” tree seems appropriate and is, at this moment and as I write this, being decorated by The Nancy, I love it all the more. Just a little over a week from this day, I will don the Santa cap and wear it wherever I go for about twenty-four hours. Though I appreciate receiving gifts, the best one is to be able to give them. My Christmas will consist of giving away hugs and smiles. I get to wish people happy times and tell them I love them, and best of all, I get Christmas Hugs – the best ones of the year.
As I approach the beginning of my sixty-fourth year on planet earth, I have come to realize many things. One of these is that Christmas gives the opportunity for introspection and transformation. It is about giving and not receiving. It is about sharing and loving. It is about Jesus and Santa. And, most of all, it is about kids.
And that is all I have to say about that…