Hey.
When I was a kid,
I liked Christmas.
I had a few nice toys,
a Motorific slot car track, with a battery powered Mustang.
A metal Erector set,
(You can right click on that, and select, “open image in new tab”.)
that I used to build a working battery powered car,
using wheels and rubber bands to make a gear reduction,
so it moved, slow but sure, across the table.
We had an aluminum tree, with a color wheel aimed at it.
www.amazon.com/…
I also enjoyed assembling jigsaw puzzles,
the 1,000 piece puzzles were my favorite.
(Nowadays, I assemble puzzles on my computer.)
And, most dramatic of all, we went to Grandma’s farm for Christmas.
Grandma was born in 1901, on that same farm, as I understood.
And my mother was born there, in 1924.
The farm is in Hickory County, Missouri.
All my grandparents and both my parents were born in Hickory County, Missouri.
We arrived at Grandma’s farm,
and she came out the front door, and gave us a hug.
Her house was heated by a pot-bellied stove in the front room.
My father would split kindling,
to make sure we had plenty of fire wood during our stay,
and so Grandma would have firewood for a while after we went home.
When I was very young,
Grandma and Grandpa would go to the barn and milk the cows,
I think it was at 4 AM and 4 PM.
They took a nap in between,
besides going to bed early, in the first place.
Grandpa died in 1968,
and Grandma sold the cows at that time, as I recall.
We kids slept upstairs,
and some of the heat went up the stairs,
but not much.
We were on featherbeds,
under quilts,
but it was rather chilly.
Christmas morning,
we came down stairs,
and gathered around the pot-bellied stove,
as my father added more wood to the fire.
Grandma gave us socks,
and we were very pleased to get them.
Our parents got us a few toys,
as I wrote above.
Grandma fed us very tasty home cooked meals.
We may have had mincemeat pie for dessert.
www.allrecipes.com/…
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 pounds round steak, cut into small pieces
- 1 cup apple cider
- 4 Granny Smith apples - peeled, cored and finely diced
- 1 1/3 cups white sugar
- 2 1/2 cups dried currants
- 2 1/2 cups raisins
- 1/2 pound chopped candied mixed fruit peel
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1 (16 ounce) jar sour cherry preserves
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 (16 ounce) can pitted sour cherries, drained with liquid reserved
- 1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie
- 2 tablespoons heavy cream
-
(Not this exact recipe, but you get the idea.)
The long drive from Salina, Kansas, to Grandma’s farm,
and the long drive back,
that was a very big part of our Christmas.
Over the river and through the woods,
indeed.
In 1972,
after my older sisters had moved out and gotten married,
my parents, me, and my brother,
moved to Hays, Kansas.
I do not recall us going to Grandma’s house any more after that.
I’m not certain why.
Just a few years later,
I got engaged to my first wife, Pam,
and we got married in 1977.
Pam was Catholic,
and I soon became a Catholic,
and my Christmases began to center on the Midnight Mass.
Picture it:
You show up at 11 PM, to get a good seat.
They give you a small candle as you go in.
The large church is crowded,
with hundreds of folks, in from the cold, during one of the year’s longest nights.
The church is pitch black, the lights are off.
Then you hear this Bible reading:
usccb.org/…
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom
a light has shone.
Then the pastor comes in the back of the church,
with a candle,
and he lights candles that light candles,
and the light spreads,
from candle to candle,
to each candle held by each adult in the pews.
Gradually gets brighter in the church.
Very dramatic.
I was a Catholic for about 20 years.
Then, in 1999, I became an atheist.
My mother died in 1999, but that was not the cause of my change of heart.
My father died in 2001.
I began to feel, deep down,
that I was now in charge of providing “Christmas,”
whatever I was going to make it mean, for Pam and I.
Pam died in March of 2008.
I was so desperate for emotional comfort,
that on Christmas of 2008,
I spent Christmas day with the family of my girlfriend of that time,
Beverly.
We were strictly boyfriend and girlfriend,
with no plans to marry.
I had a second girlfriend,
who was an old friend from years before,
but she lived far away,
but Beverly understood she was not my only girlfriend.
Because of that,
she later told me,
for Christmas of 2009 and later,
I was no longer welcome at her family Christmas.
Fair enough.
After 3 years of that arrangement,
I married Tonia, in 2011,
and we found comfort together on Christmas day,
by investing in a nice meal at a Chinese restaurant,
with one or two of her uncles and aunts joining us.
Nowadays,
we stay home for Christmas,
or at least we did last year,
and plan to this year.
“Home,” nowadays, is a small house with seven of us living here.
And, for Christmas,
we fix a big meal,
and invite several uncles and brothers and cousins and nieces and nephews.
So, that’s our Christmas.
But it’s just a big meal, along with a small family reunion.
How is that Christmas?
What is “Christmasy” about it?
We don’t exchange gifts, since we don’t have money to spare for all that.
We feed them a nice meal, and that’s enough.
We don’t decorate, and I don’t want to decorate.
I work at a big Walmart store,
in the holiday department,
and I get burned out on decorations.
We can play Christmas music,
and I can even play the violin.
But lately, I like Christmas songs, less and less.
The Jesus songs bother me,
since, lately, I realized, that if Jesus actually did what it says in the Bible,
(minus the supernatural, such as rising from the dead,)
if Jesus died the way it says,
that was suicide by cop.
And the Christmas songs are all about the birth of the Messiah,
when there can be no messiah,
since there is no god to send a messiah.
Each of us can be a minor messiah, to those we help,
but the grandiose nature of the Christmas theology,
just makes me sick.
Jesus was a nice guy,
had a lot of good ideas,
such as,
“Rebel against religious leaders who put on a show,
but do little to help anyone.” (paraphrased)
But he was not some grandiose messiah.
Nobody is.
Santa?
Frosty?
Rudolph?
May as well say,
the Hulk,
Spiderman,
Batman,
etc.
I simply don’t get much pleasure, nowadays,
from fixating on children’s fairy tales.
And, I get a little sick and tired of “snow songs.”
I like snow, but we get very little snow here in Wichita, Kansas,
and, for sure, not “just in time for Christmas.”
White Christmas, sleigh ride, sick of it all.
Christmas time in the city?
Way too much traffic in the city,
an electric sign posted near our closest super market,
stating, “watch out, high crash area.”
Stress and misery, just driving to the store.
I just want to relax with my family.
There is no Christmas here.
Family, yes, but family is always family, never a Christmas family.
I am schedule to work Christmas eve at Walmart.
I enjoy helping customers,
I have been a customer service worker for thirty years.
But doing it on Christmas eve is less satisfying,
trying to help last minute shoppers.
It’s hard for me to emotionally connect with last minute shoppers.
I just want to tell them they should have bought everything in November.
I can’t find Christmas anymore.