I’m
writing this on the second day of Christmas; you will be reading it on the
fourth or later, when the illusion I intend to describe below will be even
stronger than it is this morning. The illusion
is that Christmas is over.
The media are contributing to the
illusion. CBS’s morning news showed
hordes of shoppers returning gifts and offered advice for making it less
demanding, a mirror image of shoppers buying last-minute gifts two days earlier.
Advertisements for New Year’s programs filled the spaces between the news
segments, rushing us toward 2017.
The weather adds to that
impression. Skiers cast loving looks at
the Sierra, which were dusted white by the Christmas Eve storm. New Year’s Eve may have a repeat performance,
says the weatherman, increasing our anticipation. But in other parts of the country, the
weather is producing danger, not delight.
The upper Midwest is frozen solid, that cold air mass headed for upstate
New York and New England. Travel
advisories abound. It’s back to the real
world, folks: the magic is over.
I’m a minimalist when it comes to
Christmas preparations. I don’t bake
Santa’s cookies until the 24th, if at all. I didn’t decorate the tree until Christmas
Eve, and then only lightly, spare with the ornaments and lights, no
tinsel. My cards will go out this week
with a New Year’s message (I hope.) The season’s
frenzy I try to leave alone so the season’s peace can emerge like a flower
blooming, imprinting on my heart and mind.
Last week, while out participating
in that last minute shopping, I listened to NPR on Valley Public Radio. They re-played many old Christmas programs,
and two entered my consciousness like the smell of ham roasting in the oven. One was about the Christmas Truce of 1914;
the other was a story from a Texan tall-tale writer who captured the joy of a
poor rural boy in 1933 over the gift of an orange.
Starting the car Thursday, the sound
of men far away singing “Silent Night” in German wafted up from the radio over
the sound of the engine. Idling, I
listened while the story progressed to a British verse replying from the other
side of a frozen front line where the opposing forces had reached a
stalemate. Then soldiers, one by one
from both sides, approached each other, swapping rations and cigarettes,
eventually indulging in the freedom of a game of soccer before turning in for
the night. Although each nation’s
leaders and the Pope himself had been calling for a Christmas truce, it was the
soldiers themselves who declared and implemented it. The desire for peace was in the men
themselves, not the nations.
Friday I heard about a barefooted
boy walking down a cold December road. He caught the eye and sympathy of a man
driving a truck, who stopped to offer the boy a ride. The boy was taking his orange to show a
friend, and he volunteered the story of his country family receiving a box of
charity food from some good-deed-doer group in town. The family shared their good fortune with the
sharecrop family next door, who were Negroes, because they realized they
weren’t “eligible” for such gifts from folks in that town. The black family brought extra pots and pans to
the white family’s small shack, and the two mothers cooked Christmas dinner
together, which was shared around plank tables set up in the yard. “It was the best Christmas ever,” the boy
said ebulliently, “the best Christmas in America!” And through the voice of this Texan
storyteller, the story came to real life.
We don’t have to wait until next
December to experience the real meaning of Christmas again, any more than the
real meaning of Jesus’ birth disappeared when the wise men and shepherds
returned to their real lives. The desire
for peace lives within each one of us if we’re brave enough to experience
it. The joy of sharing is always
available, the need for it never ending.
The twelve days of Christmas don’t end until January 5. Let’s see if we can make it that far at least.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Trudy Wischemann is a wandering Christian who writes year-round. You can send her your post-season joys c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below. Many thanks to all you cashiers and shelf-stockers who worked Christmas Eve day.
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