Merry Christmas!
By David Myers
Merry Christmas! I hope you’re enjoying a
very blessed Christmas season. Icy highways and forecasts of freezing rain have
left me home bound in Spearville on this Monday
morning, taking full advantage of my employer’s good will.
As I sit at my ancient home computer with the
reassuring hum of the heater in the background, I look out my window and can
almost see Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the gang making their way to school.
Spearville is the
closest I’ve ever seen to a town appearing like that of Charlie Brown’s world
-- that little world of childhood where the only suggestion of adulthood is the
strange trombone-like sound adults make when they speak.
“Waa wa wa waa wa waaaaa,”
Charlie Brown’s mother says when her son forgets to feed Snoopy.
“Waa wa wa waa wa waaaaa,”
I say to a neighbor child asking to scoop my walk for a dollar.
I spend most my hours feeling all too much
like a kid myself. But when speaking to children, my words always seem to have
that same “Wa, waa waa wa waaaaa”
attitude. I guess that proves it. I’m an adult after all. (Sigh.)
As Charlie Brown and his pals pass by, I’m
reminded of those days when the feeling of Christmas magic came just as
powerfully from a song sung by Rudolph the Rednose
Reindeer about the pains of being a misfit, as it did from a church choir
singing “Silent Night.” The magic could
be found in Linus Van Pelt’s sweet soliloquy about
the birth of Christ, or in the magnificent aroma of my mom’s Christmas cherry
pie.
I look out the window and see Rudolph passing
by in this parade of memories, his nose aglow, his front hoof waving to me –
me, a bearded face peering through an ice-glazed window.
Next in this parade comes what appears to be
the toy department at Sears! There’s my Dad trying to calm his two young boys
as they race through the aisles like excited mice, visions of Slinkys and Hotwheels and
walkie-talkies dancing in their heads.
I’ve saved most my old toys – the ones I
didn’t break, anyway. I still have my old ViewMaster
reels, my Hotwheels track, and even my Willie Talk
ventriloquist dummy – the same one that I prayed for two hours would come to
life. Faith could move mountains, I learned as a young boy; surely it could
bring my plastic dummy to life.
And who’s that coming around the corner? Is
it...? Yep. It’s the very first Santa I shyly whispered my Christmas wishes to
all those years ago. I can still see the netting under his beard. I knew even
as a little boy that it wasn’t really St. Nick, but I didn’t care. It seemed to
be a means to an end, and that’s all that mattered.
Through the crystalline glaze on my window I
see a float passing by on which four children piece together a tall, plastic
Christmas tree. “That’s an E,” my sister says as I hand her a branch, “not an
F.”
“Who has a C branch?” another sibling asks.
“I’m missing a C! Does anyone have a C? Is that a C under your foot?”
As soon as all the As, Bs, Cs, Ds, Es, and Fs
are pressed into place, the oldest boy’s red and green construction paper chain
is placed delicately on the tree, followed by bulbs of red, blue, green and
gold.
I still have my brother’s old construction
paper chain, always the first to go on the tree, followed by the Santa ornament
I made of felt glued onto a cardboard Santa I cut from the side of a Ritz
Cracker box. Today, all that’s left are the torso and a bit of cotton beard,
but he’s up there still, and probably will be until all that’s left is his
pencil smile.
Concluding the parade, I see walking through
the wintry haze a haggard looking man with a young woman; she is riding a
donkey and embracing an infant. They are exhausted, their cheeks reddened from
the biting cold. I peer through the window, desperately wanting to invite them
in, yearning for a miracle that would allow me to give respite to the Holy
Family on their journey.
Then it occurs to me: Just what is
Christmas all about, anyway?
“Joseph, Mary!” I shout through the opened
front door. “C’mon in!”