I am not ashamed to say that I am an unreformed Grinch / Scrooge. I never really get in the Christmas spirit. I like the song Little Drummer Boy and it can get me from somber to misty-eyed too quick, but the rest of the Christmas songs just annoy me as they blare from department store speakers. I absolutely HATE decorating a tree - one of the few deeply emotional rifts between my tree loving wife and me.
I had wonderful Christmases as a kid. I have no idea how my mother was able to put so many things beneath the tree for us three boys. My parents did not have a lot of money and were not credit card type people. We got toy fork lifts from Tonka with forks that raised up and down from a crank at the top of the overhead guard. We got an Atari that featured Pong and the militaristic prep test, Tank Pong. We got cap pistols with fake leather holsters, cameras with something called film, tape players that played tapes of Olivia Newton John and Michael Jackson and Duran Duran. We got a Commodore 64 that played Wing Commander and did absolutely NOTHING else EVER.
And I give almost all of that credit to my mom. My dad would sit and drink his coffee and smile at our excitement but also shake his head at the excess. Mom had saved the money all year and was determined to spend every cent of it on us. Dad could not help but see it as a waste.
Which causes me to shake my head. Dad was no stranger to wasting money and was pretty incapable of saving too much at any given time. I inherited these traits from him and feel only a passing guilt at outing him about them. AAAANNND, truth to tell, they are not why I shake my head.
One of the things that sticks out in my memory is a time when I had been so rancorous and disagreeable and ungrateful that my father had to tell me just how good I had it. I had been fighting with Mom - because that is what we did from the time I was 13 until I was 19. He told me that I had two parents who loved me and would do almost anything to protect me. I had a family around me. I had all the necessities of life and many of the comforts too.
And then he said how he envied me. I had my mother a full ten years longer than he had his. He remembered being a little boy and losing his breath as his mother tickled him. He also remembered being a little boy and standing on a wooden tomato crate so he could look into the window of the tuberculosis hospital and see his mother's face. And it was not a straight on view. An aunt held up a hand mirror so that his mother's face was reflected back at him. That was the last time he ever saw his mama. He was five years old.
He continued to tell me how over the next year he was trying to hold the attention of another of his aunts to tell her what he wanted for Christmas. His voice broke as he said,"And I realized, she just didn't care." The emotion was raw and red on his face and the muscles in his jaw shivered under the pressure. My mom said in her most reassuring and placating and loving and softest voice, "Ray..."
And at the sound of her voice you could see the calm slowly flow back over his features. I was in shock. My eyes were wet and my mouth was open and I was ashamed that I had led my father to that memory. I also sat in awe at how easily and mysteriously my mother's voice speaking his name had soothed it all so completely. I could never figure out how that happened, how it worked, until I met Priscilla.
So.
My father's ambivalence and sometimes even mild hostility at the extravagance of the Christmases provided by my mother were and remain a mystery to me.
I called Mom this morning to make sure that other things did not remain a mystery for me. I realized this morning that I knew nothing about any Christmas my mom had as a kid. So I called today and asked.
Turns out that every year she and her sister Geraldine got about the same gifts since they were so close in age. Every year they would get a doll of some sort. One of the more memorable dolls was "Betsy Wetsy". It was the first doll she got that would take a bottle and later wet herself.
When I had first asked her the question, she started telling me things about how everyone would go over to Grandma's house on Christmas day to eat. They would not exchange too many presents but Grandma would fix the turkey and dressing and everyone else was expected to bring some sort of side. My mother being my mother, gave me the list of folks who came over to eat their fill and had not had the decency to bring so much as left overs to the event. I smiled at the remembered faux pas from what must be 50 years ago now. That's my mama!
It took her a while to get back to her childhood. She told how they were too poor to have the fancy stockings for decoration but still hung their actual socks up on the mantle. They always got an orange in their sock, she said wistfully. And nuts she said. Not a package of nuts, but nuts in shells so hard you had to have a nutcracker.
One year she had made known that she wanted a chalk board with an easel. She then went off topic (again, that's my mama!) to tell me how Granny Ethel used the area under a bed as a storage area. You could never hide under a bed in comfort during a game of hide and seek because you had to share the space with everything that later generations would have in an attic, basement, or garage. I was not prepared to find that this tangent tied back in to the main story she was telling - they almost never do.
But this time she pointed out that she found the chalk board and easel wrapped in a comforter under one of the beds. She then visited the chalk board and easel every day until Christmas. She never set it up or wrote anything on it. Just took it from its hiding spot once per day, looked at it, re-wrapped it in the comforter and returned it to its hiding spot. She never told Granny Ethel that she had found it. EVER. I find that endearing.
We talked about one of her sisters who would come up from Florida. If she did not bring something already prepared, she would cook in Granny Ethel's kitchen. She was the sister that Granny Ethel bought a box of chocolate covered cherries for every Christmas. They were never a surprise but rather a topic of conversation in the weeks leading up to the holiday.
This aunt, like the rest of her sisters, my mother included, was married to an alcoholic. I asked if he was drinking during the holidays. Would he drink in front of Grandpa Homer and Granny Ethel?
"Oh yes," was the reply. "He would sit there with his bottle,"
"His bottle? He wouldn't even have it in a glass?"
"Sometimes his chaser would be in a glass."
I asked if my father drank in front of Homer and Ethel. "Not that I can remember. I don't think so."
I have NO doubts about the honesty of those answers. My mother will tell you the uncomfortable truth even when you wish she wouldn't. I also have very little doubt that to put up with Ethel, my dad probably arrived AFTER having had a sufficient amount of social lubrication.
Again, I am Grinch before the heart inflammation and Scrooge before the ghosts showed up and I don't precisely know why. My Savior was not born on this date. That was sometime in April if you look at the history. We just had an emperor somewhere along the line hijack the winter solstice celebrations from the pagans. I look at the Christmas Tree and I wonder if it qualifies as an idol just like the golden calf that the Israelis made out pinkie rings.
I work in the warehousing arm of a major retailer and we jump through hoops to get televisions, head phones, treadmills, mixers, paper plates, plastic cups, X boxes, video games, and cookies out to the stores every year. It is long hours and tight deadlines and PRESSURE every year.
I live away from home and having changed jobs a couple times in the past 3 years, I have not had the vacation days to go home for Christmas in quite a while. My dad is gone. Died just around Thanksgiving in 1995.
But I do know that God loved us enough that he sent his only Son to save us. I know that shepherds were visited by a choir of angels who sang at His birth. I know three wise men followed a star and greeted the new born King and were not fooled by the humble surroundings. I know they brought priceless gifts to offer. And I know we emulate God's graciousness and the generosity of the wise men by giving gifts to one another.
I have never gotten frankincense or myrrh but I have looked goofy in some gold chains over the years. But I don't feel slighted in the least. The Baby Jesus never got to play Pong!
Merry Christmas!
