By Jeff Guy
Hi, happy holiday season everyone. I picked up the toy soldier soap dispenser at Target. Clearance sale. Yellow tag. $3.50. It looked Christmasy, yet can be used all year round. “Let’s do it,” I said to my daughter, Kenzie, tossing it into the cart.
As evening approached and we’d been to Target, Goodwill, Braum’s Ice Cream (where I got a day long belly ache from a shake) and Aldi’s Grocery, I’d had it. “I feel like such a capitalist,” I said, getting into the car.
At Mom’s funeral last year, Pastor John Bassett said, “She loved Christmas. In fact, her kids said she went overboard with it. I’m not sure what that means.”
Well, she did go overboard & I used to call Mom’s annual acquisition of evermore Nativity sets, ornaments, lights, miniature Christmas trees, Santa and reindeer figurines…(just say decorations, man)...“materialistic.” I mean, hell, if you collect enough Santa bric-a-bracs, invariably you’re gonna get some creepy looking ones. You get the mountain man Santa, the gothic Santa, the druid-like Santa, the Medieval looking Santa and while her baubles of Santa praying over the baby Jesus in a manger didn’t look creepy, it was awkward.
But it doesn’t bother me anymore. Christmas tackiness just calls Mom to mind and all the silliness. There’s a memory component to the yuletide season that’s integral to the Christmas experience. It makes up for whatever magic you may have lost when you stopped believing in Santa Claus. Children still believe in Santa, but they don’t yet have the memory frame of mind because they’re experiencing everything for the first time.
When you’re older, you remember Christmases with the family members who’ve passed away and all the excitement from when you were a child so there’s this poignant mixture of joy and sadness, the ingredients that create nostalgia. It’s like the song, “White Christmas.” I remember the class above mine singing that song for a Christmas concert at Robinson Elementary, but we were all too young to grasp what the words, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know” meant. Released by Bing Crosby during World War 2, millions of soldiers, sailors and people working for the war effort stateside deeply felt the longing conveyed in the song.
Today, in the middle of a wicked pandemic, people are making sacrifices and forgoing togetherness again because it’s the right thing to do, albeit a hard thing.
I’ll be honest. There have been days this holiday season when I wished I was still living with a wife, small children and black dog, assembling a little girl's new doll house on Christmas morning in Rusty Waters, Kan. (pop. 1,000) instead of being a divorced man living with a moody teenage daughter and a young adult son, whom I get to see catch-as-catch-can, but I’ve learned to be thankful.
Home for Christmas
Facebook keeps reminding me of posts I shared five years ago. I was alone. Literally, not figuratively, by myself. Alone. Going to the laundromat on Christmas morning and remembering I’d once lived in a house with a family and a washer and dryer in a utility room behind the kitchen made me cry. There was no Christmas tree in my rental -- a gray house that had been divided into apartments. No extra bedroom for my kids. No dishwasher. No washer and dryer hook-ups or even room for them. You never really appreciate those things until you’ve had to live without.
My posts, my way of communicating something to somebody -as I’ve been reminded - was stuff like this.
I got on my knees multiple times a day & prayed to God. God didn't answer my prayers.
You can't have love without pain.
I've complained too much in life. There were times I didn't realize how happy I really was.
We worry about so many superficial things when what matters is love & human connection. I had to learn that.
My friend, Betty, in El Dorado, commented at the time, “You sure have been on roll with wiseness lately.” But remember the lyrics in that feminist anthem from the ‘70s, “I Am Woman” by Helen Reddy? “Yes, I am wise, but it’s wisdom born of pain.”
I have so much more in life now and I want to keep it. Just having a new job is awesome. Socializing with co-workers, even though they occasionally get on my nerves, is joyful. Leslie, one of my coworkers, gave me a box of Jimmy Dean Sausage Biscuits. Once I’d eaten all those, I was hooked.
I had business to take care of in my hometown of Jett, Kan. (pop. 4,000 in the ‘70s). Just as I was pulling into a parking space in Dillon’s supermarket, Kenzie turned off the radio as the classic rock station was playing U2’s version of “Christmas, Baby Please Come Home.”
“Hey, what’d you do that for?” I said.
“I hate Christmas.”
“I understand why you hate it, but don’t you think it’s getting better?”
“No,” she said. “Nothing ever changes.”
“But things do change. Remember when we didn’t even have a tree and I couldn’t buy you and Sam presents?”
“I don’t need presents.”
“Okay, you don’t need them. But aren’t they nice to have? Isn’t it nice to know someone’s thinking of you?”
“It’s all a lie,” she said. The irritation in her voice. Volume rising like a radio dial.
“So you think Christmas is all an illusion?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s not. It’s real.”
“I’ve had the worst Christmases.”
“I know, but look at all the space between where we were and where we’ve come.”
“Bad things are still happening.”
“Okay, I know irritants and stressful things still pop into our lives. They always will, but we could focus on the bad stuff forever. We should look for things to be thankful for.”
“Nothing ever changes,” she said, obstinately.
“Okay, Kenz. Well I’m going into the store. Do you wanna come in with me?”
“No.”
“Do you want anything in there?
“No.”
I went in, grabbed a box of Jimmy Dean sausages and ended up buying a few other items for cooking in the crockpot. On the way out I stopped and talked to somebody I know because that always happens in Jett., Kan. Then I went back to the car and Kenzie’s face looked more at ease, muscles not so tight.
“I’m sorry I was a jerk,” she said.
“I accept your apology,” I answered. “I understand why you would hate Christmas, but things are gonna get better. I promise you.”
“They never get better,” she said as I drove out onto Ohio Street.
I’ve had some traumatic life experiences connected with Christmas. It’s been over 30 years and I thought I’d pushed it all out of my mind. The truth is I don’t remember much, but there’s a little bit there. I said it didn’t bother me, but I might’ve suffered PTSD and not realized it.
But after all this time, I feel like I’m home. Or at least in the home stretch. I haven’t let this f’d up world take away God, Christmas or anything else from me. I feel like there’s a future.
"Ave Maria" -- Chris Cornell
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