I don’t need a calendar to know that Christmas is near. I can tell by the nervous twitch in my right eyelid, the acid burning in my belly and the dwindling funds in my bank account that Christmas is close.
It’s hard to believe that at one time Christmas seemed to take forever to arrive. When I was a child, school usually let out around Dec. 21 and still it seemed like an agonizing wait until Christmas Day. Now I swear December gets shorter every year.
I remember getting home from school when classes were on pause for winter break. I’d put my backpack away like I wouldn’t be seeing it for a long time. I tried not to think that I’d be back in school in two weeks’ time. I would sometimes ask Santa for an early January snowstorm so that break would be extended.
I didn’t have to worry about buying presents. Usually my grandmother would buy something for me to give to my mother or my mom’s uncle would make a ceramic he fired in his own basement kiln so that she’d have a gift to unwrap from me. When I got a little bit older, I was able to buy gifts for her, usually with money saved from my allowance or from the $100 Christmas club my grandfather took out for each of the grandkids every Christmas.
Trying to get to sleep the night before Christmas was an impossible task every year. I’d be so full of sweets and sugary punch from my aunt Wanda’s Christmas Eve party the walls in my room cried uncle from my bouncing off of them. Many Christmas Eve nights I recall tracing the thickening frost on my bedroom window with an index finger as I listened to John Lennon sing “Happy Christmas (War is Over)” on the radio.
I don’t remember ever having visions of sugar plums dancing in my head as I slept, but sometimes when I awoke, everything seemed a dream. There were few things more exciting than waking up on Christmas morning as a child. I have never been a morning person, but I was able to let go of my tendency to sleep in when I knew that Santa had visited during the night and there were presents for me under the tree.
If I had known that Christmases like the ones I knew as a child were finite, I would have cast the last one in bronze. I used to wonder why my grandmother looked so sad sometimes on Christmas Day even as she was surrounded by the people she loved most in the world. Now I know; she missed the people in her life who were no longer there.
This Christmas has been particularly melancholic for me. I couldn’t figure out why for the longest time. As I was adding entries to the Christmas calendar in the special holiday section in the paper, I was fighting tears. While trying to sing Christmas carols at the candlelight processional and tree lighting in Hopkins Green, my throat tightened with emotion. I usually watch “White Christmas” on Thanksgiving evening, but I couldn’t bear watching it then because I knew it would make me cry.
I took pictures at the annual Christmas Basket Packing Day at the Virginia Horse Center. Hundreds of people of all ages showed up on a Saturday morning to pack boxes of food and bags of toys so that area families could have Christmas.
I stood there with my camera while the volunteers efficiently packed the cardboard boxes with shelf-stable food. Everywhere I looked, people were smiling. It was like I had stumbled upon the real-life Santa’s workshop. Outside I saw some Southern Virginia University students loading a truck with packed boxes. Though the boxes were heavy and they had been at the task for a while, they did not look weary.
That foggy Saturday morning, the kindness of the people who woke up determined to be a part of a program that assists the most vulnerable at Christmastime helped slap me awake.
I know I’ll never again go to sleep wondering what Santa had on his sleigh for me and I do miss those who have passed who used to make Christmas so special for me when I was a kid. But oh, how lucky I was to have what I had and still have – the love of family, my life and my memories.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
