A Christmas Story

I was going through my old writings and came across this Christmas story from 2001. With only minor editing, I decided to post it here in its entirety. So in the spirit of the season, I bring you this story...

A Christmas Story

2001 has been a difficult year for us all. We've all been ripped from complacency by horrible acts and devious deeds seeded across the world. Anger, fear and righteous justification have all been brewed within us. With such a backdrop, I would like to speak of Christmas, my own little tradition born in family and love.

I always had two markers of the Christmas season when I was a child: lighting the Advent candles and soaking the lonely tree in the bucket. Four weeks prior to the big day, my mother and father would haul out the styrofoam circular base and solidly plant four tall pink and purple candles. Each successive Sunday in December, one candle would be lit until the royalty purple candle would catch fire on the last Sunday before the big day. For me, that wait to light all four candles seemed to take an eternity.

Sometime during that stretch, we'd go out and snag our Christmas tree. We generally weren't a tree cutting family. We'd scour the local Winn Dixie grocery store, and look for that special tree. Every few years, my father would take us out on an expedition to some far away place to chop down our Christmas tree. These adventures usually produced a tree just like the trees we got at Winn Dixie. Invariably, my father would take our tree, whether the grocery store or natural version, and place its trunk in a bucket of water. Then my brothers, sisters, and I would begin heckling him to set the tree up. I honestly believed that if he weren't heckled properly, that tree would sit in that bucket of frozen water behind the house until after Christmas. Eventually, my siblings and I would persevere. We would break my father and force him to set up the tree. Strange though, we never broke him until about December 20th.

After the tree was up with bubbler lights bubbling and the purple candle had been lit, I knew that the long wait was almost over. All that was left was the timeless wait through Christmas Eve.

My sister, Becky, set the tone that day. She'd begin working on my parents, trying to get them to allow us to open at least one present. My brothers and I would all join in on the effort. Sometimes, although my mother would like to think otherwise, we wore her down and got her to allow us to open one present that evening. Those victorious times were fleeting and the satisfaction gained was often disappointing. I learned on those rare occasions that the most exciting presents were not always in the most curious packages.

Bedtime on Christmas Eve for me was wait time. I'd go to bed and lay there for hour after hour listening for any signs of Santa Claus. One year, I remember seeing a red light outside my window. I was absolutely convinced that I'd seen "The most wonderful reindeer of all."

Every Christmas morning, my sister, Becky, would begin stomping around in her room in the pre-dawn darkness. When my sister, Libby, was old enough, she'd join Becky. Soon, my brothers and I would take up the chorus of foot stomping. I'm sure that my parents got a chuckle out of our morning rustling. Between noisemaking, we'd hear the telltale signs of impending present feeding. A rustling here, a scurrying there.

Soon…not soon enough, my father or mother would call upstairs for us to come down. Moments later, the stairway would be bathed in 8mm camera floodlights, and we'd form a single file line arranged in order of seniority: Becky, Jody, Greg, Tommy, and Libby. Together, in unison, we'd march downstairs in the movies and proceed to be shocked and amazed.

While my father etched those moments on film, I need no film to recall them or the innocence surrounding that time. That's my Christmas story. I suppose that it's not altogether different than anyone else's.