Christmas Looks at Forty

Searching for Christmas at a Certain Age

I was going to write something different this month; something that didn’t make reference to, well, you know. It was going to take you on an imaginative trip to the beach, conjure the smell of burgers on the grill. Ah, since it’s only our imagination, why not make those babies fillets wrapped in bacon. It’s hard after all isn’t it; getting beat over the head with holiday cheer from roughly September fifteenth on.

No matter what one’s faith or social conscience holds, just as a part of our culture, we must all reconcile to ourselves just what it means to us; this season. For some, I’m sure, the answer is readily on their lips and anxious to trumpet out their love for Christmas like so many ringing bells buzzing in store fronts, held by freezing Salvation Army workers. Still, for others it takes a more meandering path through memories long past to evoke the old spirit.

So it’s to those people I write today; those of us who have to return to a certain place to find Christmas again; an annual migration, if you will. For those of us, this season remains in a child, not much unlike ourselves; unburdened by the trudgeries of the day, unaffected by gas and oil prices, and unperturbed by people with twenty items in the fourteen or less lane. It remains with that part of us who loved to see the snow plow because it made the biggest snowballs in it’s wake.

So, I’ll prattle on then for a bit. If you share any of these memories, smile a bit and remember that kid, undaunted by a frozen runny nose and bundled in a snowmobile suit complete with snorkel jacket with the cotton candy like faux fur trim on the hood.

Christmas for me began, not with a tree, but a ball of lights; carelessly jammed in a box the year before as if never again to be seen. My father and I would spend hours untangling, plugging in, and chasing after that one burnt out bulb, hiding among the healthy, that made the whole string go out. The tree would arrive and my sisters and I would assault it with a mix match of decorations garnered by years of our parent’s gathering and almost as many of our gaudy school creations. There were glass balls of unimaginable brightness of hue; iced with glittering white lace patterns. There was tinsel; both carefully laid upon bough and tossed by careless hand like a metallic snowball across bulb and ball alike. Together, alongside the colored lights, they made an explosion of brightness across the living room.

Out of a box would come candles and various decorations that, despite my few years, had already created a bit of youthful nostalgia. Garlands would wrap railings, stockings would be ceremoniously stapled to the annually assailed moldings, and records would come out. We all still hear Bing Crosby every year, but who remembers the vinyl that carried those tunes every Christmas? They all became stacked on the console television/stereo and were played in turn: Bing, Dean Martin, and Perry Como. There may have even been some K-Tel compilations in there as well.

All that was left to do then was wait, not for Christmas but the specials that were only shown once a year: A Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman… There weren’t 200 channels and if you missed them, you were out of luck and Christmas would somehow just not be the same.

So, there we have it and thanks for coming along. If you share some of the same memories, hopefully I helped you on your way. As for me, I’m off to find that kid; the one with moon boots and a towel stuffed in the neck of his snorkel jacket so snow didn’t fly down my back when I barreled down bullets hill on my magic carpet sled. Maybe I’ll see him when I drive through Brunswick and see the kids skating downtown by the gazebo. Perhaps I’ll pick his face out at the mall, staring at the decorations, never knowing that the colors will never again look that vibrant or that in thirty years time, he too will be searching the crowd for himself.

So, Merry Christmas everyone!

Nollaig Shona Duit

C. Douglas M^cIntire