The spirit of Christmas is alive and well, and it doesn’t look a day over 5. That’s how old I was when I first caught it, and it hasn’t worn off yet. True, I’ll never again hear “Joy to the World” for the first time. And I can’t match the sparkle of a child’s anticipation: Every day, a new door peels open on the Advent calendar! The vacant lot down the street suddenly bristles with trees! More and more lights appear at the neighbors’ houses!
I always lobbied for more lights. We had just the one string for the porch and a plug-in candle for the window. If that was good, wouldn’t more be even better? At our house, I was given to understand, a child’s college fund was more important than excessive decoration. “Excessive” was not a word that made sense to me at the time, and a college fund was nowhere in my zone of anticipation. But – it takes a while to realize it – not getting everything you want is a gift, too.
Another gift: I was unburdened by specific desires. Our television could barely deliver us a picture, let alone saturate us with images of things we were trained to covet. So maybe it’s not remarkable that the things I carry in my memory are not things. Stuffed animals, yes: They are key members of my Life Advisory Board to this day. But I don’t remember pining for some particular item and being disappointed. What sticks with me is being with my people, all of them, even the much older brother and sister who lived on their own. And all those lights. And the glorious debris field of Christmas. That’s where a lot of the spirit hid out.
Why We Wrote This
Wading through a crinkly sea of wrapping paper. Scavenging frugal gifts for college flatmates. Mailing Christmas cheer to marooned bricklayers, far from home. Sometimes the sweetest holiday memories are the simplest.
Mom was reflexively tidy, so I had to petition her every year to allow the detritus of Christmas to remain for a little longer than she preferred. The living room would be ankle-deep in the crinkly ecstasy of wrapping paper. She’d indulge me for a few hours. (Then she’d smooth out the least damaged bits and fold them for future use, while another penny rolled into my college fund.)
Years later, that college fund had been tapped. In my junior year, I found myself in London with three flatmates. My new people! This was the first Christmas any of us had spent away from home. We didn’t have much money, but we had one another, an 8-inch-tall pine tree in a ceramic pot, and a yearning for Christmas.
So we plotted one up. We were co-conspirators in the pursuit of joy. The idea was, we would give each other as many presents as we could without spending more than 2 pounds sterling – about five bucks at that time. And we would decorate our tiny tree without weighing it down.
The hunt was on! Our eyes were retrained to see the small, the shiny, the lightweight. There was treasure in the secondhand charity shops and even in the rubbish bins. By the time we opened our presents and discovered we’d each independently thought to wrap up a chocolate Mars bar, it was high comedy. Laughter comes easy when you’re with your people, and bent on joy.
We sat around in the happy debris field, admiring our tree – topped by a splendid angel that started out life as a coffee filter. I had more fun scavenging that lean Christmas than I ever had shopping in a mall.
Ten years later, I was married to a man who had my back every day, except holidays. Dave worked “shutdowns.” When a furnace or a limekiln or a boiler shut down for maintenance, his crew was there to chip out the old masonry and install the new.
This was always during holidays, when the employees were off. The facilities never had a chance to cool down, and if Dave and his people didn’t personally burst into flames, they still had to keep at it until their juices ran clear. It was rough work. One Christmas, Dave went off to a shutdown at a paper mill. The crew filled up the only motel in town. Then, there was no room at the inn, and that’s about as festive as it got.
But I knew something about Christmas spirit, and it’s mailable. I bought a 12-inch plastic Christmas tree and wired dozens of tiny hard hats on it. A toy backhoe with a working bucket graced the top, representing the cleanup probably required around the manger.
The hunt was on! I didn’t buy a thing over $1. A cheesy paperback, a “Bigfoot” action figure, wax lips, windup toys, stick-on tattoos, a butterfly barrette, a fake mustache, a rubber ducky, bacon-strip bandages. Small items only, each neatly wrapped in my own heritage stash of gently used gift paper. I splurged on a string of lights and mailed it all to the motel: crinkly ecstasy in a box, some disassembly required.
I don’t know if the stars were brightly gleaming where they were or not. But for one night, some tired bricklayers far from home were little boys again, drifting to sleep in heavenly peace, under the steady, warm pulse of a no-vacancy sign.
God rest ye merry, gentlemen.
