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Years ago I received a Christmas card with the text below. It remains my favorite Christmas message of all time. The card had a simple dove in flight, descending on the front of a navy card. Inside, it read:
“Remembering that once, long ago, heaven reach down and touched earth and Hope was born anew.”
Amen.
Here is one – just as my mother sent it to me:
“The eve of Christmas 1945 there was a knock at the door and I answered it. To my great joy and surprise it was my Daddy. He had been in World War II in Japan. I had been sick and they sent him home just at Christmas. What a happy time it was for my family.”
Packed with 10 year old energy and holiday enthusiasm, I went with my mother to buy presents for my brother and sister. I found a simple camera – plastic case, drop-in film (REMEMBER WHEN WE NEEDED FILM?), and a fixed focus lens – that I could afford for my brother. I was BIG TIME excited as we packed it into the bag with the other gifts in the back seat of the car.
I knew my brother (14 months older than me) would NEVER guess what I had bought for him. Christmas was one step closer to fantastic! Later, my brother walked out to the car and climbed into the back seat before my mother and I got to the car. The horror hit me. What if he looked in the bags and saw the camera?!
I rushed to the car, flung open the door and shouted, “Stop! Did you look in that camera?!” My brother just looked at me like I was crazy. Realizing what I had done – I was mortified.
I never have been very good at keeping secrets.
From this year…
My wife heard a crunching sound coming from the living room and after investigating caught her dog, Sunnie, (note when he is bad he is her dog) making a snack out of one of the ornaments. Sunnie was chewing on a low hanging Gingerbread Man Ornament – now a one legged Ginger Bread Man ornament. My wife recued the ornament and re-hung it higher on the tree – leaving the recent Gingerbread Man amputee for others to see and wonder about.
I guess that Ginger Bread Man didn’t “run, run, run as fast as you can” – fast enough…
There are so many Christmas songs. We each remember hymns, carols and tunes from year to year. They’re always one or two ‘new’ songs published each year as artists try to share new twists and themes for the season.
I’ll never forget the year I heard “The 12 Redneck Days of Christmas” for the first time.
12 pack of bud, 11 wrestlin' tickets, Tin a' Copenhagen, 9 years probation, 8 table dancers, 7 packs of Redman, 6 cans of spam... 5 flannel shirts..., 4 big mud tires, 3 shot gun shells, 2 huntin dogs, and some parts to a Mustang GT…
Certain Christmas gifts speak for themselves. It seems my grandmother and grandfather got on a gift theme for a couple of years – gifts that sing.
Two of my favorites were “Billy Bass,” the wall mounted bass that would fold out from the wall and sing “Take Me To the River” and the stuffed reindeer that song “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” when you squeezed its hand. My granddad, then pushing 90+ years old, would get endless joy from introducing each member of the family to the sounds of Bill Bass and Grandma’s Reindeer.”
Some Christmas gifts speak for themselves – literally.
It isn’t common to have animals taking up residence in your Christmas tree, much less reptiles! A while back, I took to owning an iguana. Purchased a couple of months before Christmas, the second Christmas found my iguana, Grendle, almost three feet long and prone to wander about the house when let out of his cage. He seemed to like sitting along the back of the sofa most, yet one day this mini-Godzilla disappeared. We all looked for him for hours. No luck. Then, my oldest step-daughter gasped and pointed in the direction of the Christmas tree.
Our iguana had nestled in among the branches and seemed to be enjoying the warmth of the lights. From that day forward, until the tree was taken down that year, he would blot for the tree whenever he was released from the cage. It was fun watching visitors discover the beast in the tree.
So, what’s in your Christmas tree?
His wallet was tattered, held together by carefully placed tape and a couple of rubber bands. Being a child of the “Great Depression” my grandfather never believed in wasting anything that had the least bit of use in it – including the remnants of his brown leather wallet.
My grandmother, Nana as she is known to all of us, rarely got the chance to surprise my grandfather. He was just too quick mentally and perceptive about his surroundings, but this year she knew she had gotten one by him. She had bought him a new wallet and carefully wrapped it and placed it at the back of the Christmas tree. Wanting to make sure her gift would be the only wallet, she had secretly told the rest of the family about her plan. Every adult knew – except my grandfather.
Christmas eve we all gathered and opened presents. My grandfather opened Nana’s last. As he carefully released the tape, unfolded the paper and lifted the gift from the box, we all saw his old, torn wallet. “Who in the world gave me an old rotten wallet,” he exclaimed. As everyone watched on shock, he continued, “Why, I’ve a perfectly good wallet right here.” As he lifted Nana’s gift from his pants pocket – it was clear to all of us that he had switched the wallets and rewrapped the box sometime earlier in the weeks preceding Christmas.
To this day we all still chuckle about it and Nana – well she still pretends to be mad.
My maternal grandparents lived in the motel they owned and ran on Ocean Boulevard in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The living room had a large picture window that looked out over the front porch and onto the street below. The Christmas tree always went in front of the window.
My grandparents were the first to get an artificial tree, and they went all out. The tree was silver metallic and had ornaments, but no lights. The lights were provided by a large floodlight sitting on the floor beside the tree, shining through a revolving color wheel that changed the light – and thus the tree color – from red to green to white to blue. It was amazingly different and I was enthralled for about 30 minutes. They only used that tree one year.
