Youthful worrying about what was wrong with the season was replaced by a resolve to help make it a better time for others
On that Christmas Eve in the 1940s there was not much stirring in our big old farmhouse.
It was a good thing, too, for behind the kitchen door, a trap baited with a dab of cheese waited for the resident mouse.
And lurking in the shadows of the stove was the family cat. He had just sharpened his claws on the wood box, stretched and ambled around behind the stove where the drafts were less noticeable and the floor was warm.
I stood at the window that night looking out across a pale landscape frosted in moonlight. Down in the dark recesses of the dug-out cellar, my father was rattling the grates of the furnace, scratching out the clinkers, stoking up the fire for the night.
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Warm air would soon billow from the single register in the front room, carrying on its current the smell of coal gas, and the tinsel on the Christmas tree would quiver in dizzy confusion.
At that moment, everything in my young life seemed to be a peculiar combination of comfort and disquietude: the contented purring of the sleepy cat behind the stove, but a poised mousetrap over beside the door; the silent blue-white landscape outside, but the angry tongues of a disturbed fire in the furnace below; the comforting blanket of warmth enveloping my shivering legs, but the nauseous fumes of coal gas in the pit of my stomach.
Even the holiday season had brought with it the bitter and the sweet: pride in a new plaid skirt meticulously pleated by my mother for the school Christmas concert, but pity for the girl who stood beside me on the stage, her thin legs clad in coarse brown stockings, her plain cotton dress stretched tightly across bony shoulder blades.
Despite her unkempt hair and ragged appearance she seemed just as excited as the plump, shiny clean children around her, and I was thankful, in a sorrowful kind of way. Maybe she asked for a new dress for the concert and maybe her parents said, “it doesn’t pay just for one night.” Trying ever so hard to believe them, but not quite succeeding, she had no choice but to make the best of it, so I imagined.
Her plight reminded me of the Christmas tree in our front room. Because this year “it didn’t pay” to get a thick sturdy evergreen, the tinsel trembled on the bare limbs of a scrub oak.
Although I tried to believe our makeshift tree was rather pretty, down deep I had a certain nagging anxiety that people might question its propriety, just like they questioned the circumstances of that girl in school.
When visitors spied the scrawny tree with its childish homemade ornaments, would they whisper behind their hands and cast patronizing grins in my direction? Or when they realized the uneven strands of tinsel were cut from the used foil saved from infrequent candy bar wrappers, would they pay compliments in voices too loud to be sincere?
Such thoughts had squelched my anticipation of our annual party on Christmas Eve. But in the end, it had been wonderful.
Instead of shame and embarrassment, there had been a host of family and friends descending upon our house in droves, scooping me up in their music and merriment, convincing me for a time that poverty had no stranglehold on pleasure.
But now they were gone. I peered out after them, watching their sleigh tracks slice through meringue peaks of snow piled high in the moonlight, listening to their laughter as it faded into the star-sprinkled night.
Long after the darkness consumed them, I stood with my face pressed against the windowpane, my forehead aching with the cold. And then across that pale stillness bathed in moonbeams, the gaunt spectre of loneliness began to stalk me.
I moved away from the window, only to be drawn back by the stark beauty of that wintry scene so softly framed by frosted feathers on glass.
My fantasies recently stoked by the poem, The Night before Christmas, I was sure that a formation of clouds passing in front of the moon bore a strong resemblance to a little old sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.
If only it were true; if every wish were my command.
We would all have pretty dresses for the school Christmas concert. We would all get presents tied in gift wrap instead of newspapers, chocolates instead of potato candy, a tall green Christmas tree instead of a scrub oak. There would be a sleek fat horse to pull us over the snowdrifts. And I would feel loved without feeling lonely.
Tears blurred my vision and when I blinked my eyes, Santa and his reindeer were wiped away. Only a clear silver moon stared down at me in cold derision.
I squirmed beneath its steadfast gaze, vaguely aware that I was at a turning point in my young life.
Staking my hopes and dreams on the fleeting clouds of wishful thinking would no longer be enough.
If there were to be new dresses and gaily wrapped parcels and treats and friends and festive times, I would have to stop dreaming and start doing.
I’d begin by befriending that poor girl in school. I would share with her my encouragement and understanding and laughter. I would think less about how she looked and more about how she felt. Believing that no act of kindness is too small for God to bless, I would concentrate less on fairy tales and more on faith, even if others thought “it didn’t pay.”
Suddenly the gaunt spectre of loneliness was nothing more than my own shadow of self-pity reflected in the moonlight.
Almost defiantly, I turned my back on that magical scene outside and climbed the stairs to bed.
Far below I could hear the furnace door bang shut and my father shuffling up the cellar steps. There were muffled whispers, the sound of the big old trunk creaking open and closed and the noise of paper rustling near the Christmas tree. Soon a current of warm air and a whiff of coal gas rose simultaneously up the open stairway. Imagining the tinsel quivering on the scrub oak, I snuggled down in bed on Christmas Eve like the child I was, and never again would be.
“There is a time for everything.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)
