“I am not emotionally prepared for Christmas to be in December this year.”
I heard a friend say that. He’d waited so long to become an adult, only to discover that he wasn’t good at it.
“When are you going to put the Christmas lights up?” his wife asked.
“It’s too cold,” he replied. “I’m waiting until summer.”
“Then it will be too hot.”
“OK, I’ll do it next fall,” he said.
“Fine! Why don’t you just leave them up all year.”
So, having the Christmas lights up all year was her idea.
Christmas isn’t all candy canes and tinsel. Hard candy is for suckers. Christmas began when the catalogs came – ponderous publications that gave every mail carrier chronic back pain.
Some loved ones live in memories and within frames on a wall. I remember Christmas plays at church and school where we’d learned our lines frontward and backward, but they always came out sideways.
Santa came to town each year. He smoked a pipe and told me he could blow smoke rings in the shapes of reindeer. He lied. He couldn’t. He lied about bringing me a new bicycle, too.
As any good father does, mine complained of being beaten centsless at Christmas. His presents were far-fetched – he hid the gloves and socks in the warm barn. It gave them the attractive earthy smell of alfalfa and cow manure. You’re a grownup when you like getting socks and gloves. Socks make great stocking stuffers.
As any good father does, mine told stories of his large family where they had the same thing for Christmas every year – relatives. As we gathered around and ate cookies like we were vultures on a carcass, he spoke of years when all they could afford to exchange were glances. Dad got shoelaces every year and it was always a surprise. He never knew if he’d get black or brown ones. Dad learned a handkerchief is a gift to be sneezed at. He got a wooden pencil and an orange for Christmas one year. Nothing more. I asked him if he’d made a joyful noise when receiving those gifts, as the good book tells us to. He said, “I said thank you. And I meant it.”
I had no deprived tales other than when a cousin ate so much that he turned green and people took turns hanging tinsel on him. Or the time I helped Mom wrap gifts by using my forefinger to keep the wrapping paper in place and was taped to a package for three hours while Mom answered the phone and talked with far-flung family members.
Shortly after midnight, it was a tradition for our cat, named Carlyle after Kitty Carlisle (actress and TV game show panelist), to consider the Christmas tree a climbing wall for cats and to knock over the tree without meowing “Timber!”
We watched “It’s a Wonderful Fife,” a movie in which Barney’s guardian angel showed him what Mayberry would be like if Barney had become a theoretical physicist instead of a police officer.
During his formative years, my neighbor Crandall put out cookies for Santa every Christmas Eve. One year, he dropped one onto the floor. “No problem,” he thought, as he picked it up well within the time allotted to the five-second rule and blew off all the germs before placing the cookie back on the plate. He figured Santa would never know, but then he realized that if Santa knew if he’d been bad or good, he’d know Crandall dropped a cookie on the floor.
Crandall solved the problem by eating the cookie.
One year, I wanted Silly Putty. It was silicone polymers crammed into a plastic egg and a more popular stocking stuffer than socks. I figured a plastic chicken had laid the egg. I’d press the putty on a newspaper comic and the image of the cartoon character came off with the putty. That was mystifying. It stretched, cleaned typewriter keys and it bounced like a rubber ball.
I knew I was getting it. The Magic 8 Ball I’d received the previous Christmas told me.
Remember, Burl Ives wanted us to have a holly jolly Christmas. He said so in a song.
Let’s make Burl proud.
Photo by Al Batt
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