"Magic"
This year I painted myself a Christmas present…a painting of our family home at Christmas time. There seemed to be no words to describe the joy of the Christmas season in our home. I now realize there is one word—Mom. She worked all year snooping for hints of things we wanted, making special gifts, and trying to think of new ideas to surprise us. New things were great…but what we loved the most were the traditions.
Mom’s excitement was contagious. With Thanksgiving out of the way…her magic would begin! She would gradually decorate the house. We would come home from school to find a new decoration. Each new addition would be as exciting as the next…despite the fact they were the same decorations each year. Most she lovingly made herself.
Part of her fun was making Christmas Cookies. She and Aunt Nina (…not really our Aunt but very dear to us) would spend the entire day baking batch after batch of cookies. We came home from school to the incredible aroma. There would be cookies heaped everywhere!! She preferred we eat the “ugly ones,” which was totally fine with us…they tasted the same as the pretty ones.
The season always included the Christmas play at church. I was typically an angel bedazzled with a silver tinsel halo. Following the play we would all go to the fellowship hall for refreshments (…usually included some of the cookies), caroling, and visit by the big guy himself! We all new it was Buster, but we were no less excited even though his skinny statue was comically padded in the middle. All of the kids got small gifts of candy and fruit….I can smell them now.
We would often go caroling through the community. Most often Everett would line his farm truck with hay bales and our church would pile on. The colder the better! We would snuggle together bundled up like mummies huddling under quilts. We would go to community members homes who were elderly or ill and sing everyone’s favorite songs from memory. We would go back to church and have cocoa and cookies.
Our Christmas tree didn’t come from a fancy tree farm, nursery, or store. My dad would scope out the woods or cow fields for the perfect tree. This was pretty much how every family got a tree in those days…artificial trees didn’t happen. For my early childhood it would be a cedar tree—perhaps the most prickly tree on the Earth. One year dad found a cedar tree with a hornet’s nest in the middle. The hornet’s next had the front missing and a bird had built a nest inside—it was quite a curiosity. We aligned the lights to shine inside and placed an elf in there. I then developed an allergy to cedar so we switched to pine. The pines posed a challenge at times. One year Dad brought home a pine and put it in the usual bucket of gravel. Once inside in the Christmas tree spot Mom, who never complained, said it didn’t have enough branches. Dad was a very resourceful man—he got out his drill and jammed some more branches in the trunk plumping it right up!
Finally…school break would start and the excitement was too much to contain! Christmas Eve was the event of the year. All of our family came to our house for dinner. Sometimes there were 30-40 people perched everywhere catching up on the news and eating the seasonal delicacies. The gifts would be heaped half the height of the tree! Us kids would circle the tree like vultures scoping out which package would be the one gift we opened that night. The selection was very difficult. My cousin Jeff was the undisputed fastest unwrapper anywhere!
Despite how much I loved having everyone at the house, I found myself getting restless if they stayed too late. It was imperative I be in the bed and asleep for Santa to come. Me sleeping on Christmas night was nearly impossible! My dear Grandma Lottie would spend Christmas night with us. She slept in my bed and I would sleep on the folding cot…actually a treat. I would ask her “what time is it” about every 10-15 minutes. She and my sister were very patient. Finally, morning would arrive! We would stage on the stairs until the adults were ready down stairs and at long last we could come see what Santa brought. Somehow he always new exactly what I wanted—just like magic!
The whole Christmas season was like magic…full of love, hope, and kindness. I realize now much of what seemed like magic was the love our our parents, our family, our friends, and most of all our Christ. The night of our mothers funeral, a couple of young men from our community stopped by to pay their respects. They lovingly told us how “we would have never had gifts at Christmas if it hand’t been for your mom.” We had no idea. I continue to be surprised as people tell me their memories of my parents bringing them vegetables from the garden, making food when they were sick, bathing them following surgery…the list goes on. Wouldn’t it be nice if these were our traditions—not just at Christmas but all year long? The magic of caring for others without expectations…just because we care.
While this sweet house was full of magic…the true magic was the people inside. People that loved and openly shared this love. People that strived to do what ‘was right’ without any expectation of compensation or ‘thank you.” As I look towards my New Year’s resolution…this is a truly worthy aspiration—keeping the tradition of caring.
I wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
May the magic of Christmas last all year….
