Christmas, Redux

Christmas, Redux

The wife and I had agreed to limit our spending on Christmas presents to each other this year. The economy was suffering, everyone was a little scared about the future and we were reluctant to spend a wad on gifts when we might feel a bit more comfortable hanging on to some of the dough instead. So here I was wandering around the local K Mart, comparing prices and sizes and making a selection or two when the numbers and her needs coincided. She'd definitely have some gifts to open on this coming Christmas morning – maybe a few less than last year, but enough to warrant getting out of bed that morning. Some would be expected – she'd given me a list of items to consider that she'd like to have along with sizes, colors, etc. Others might be a bit of a surprise to her. I hate to be predictable all of the time. I then drove to Walmart and perused their shelves also. A few more items looked like good bets, so I tossed them into the cart. I checked my pockets for the cash I'd alloted for her gifts – not too much left. I then had an idea, so I drove to another store nearby. They had exactly what I was looking for and it ended up being the last gift I'd have to buy.

It was 4 days before Christmas. Probably the latest I'd ever gone gift shopping. But, then again, this year was a bit different.

My wife had injured one of her legs mid-November and it had taken her a long while to recover. There had been over a week of bed rest involved with a lot of heating-pad duty, then a rented walker utilized for a while, finally the purchase of a walking cane to aid her perambulations. I had to take on some of her household duties while she was laid up and they took up time that would have normally been utilized for Yuletide prep. She was coming along quite nicely now, thank goodness, but her convalescence had thrown our holiday timetable off by quite a while. She'd mostly recovered in time to do some abbreviated Christmas cookie baking for a few of our closer relatives using a stool in the kitchen as an aid where she could sit and rest her leg between batches. She had also done some of her gift shopping from the seat of an electric cart in a couple of our local big box stores.

When I was a youngster I used to smile when my folks would remark on how fast Christmas was approaching, how it seemed to sneak up on them when they weren't looking. I knew it surely wasn't that way with us kids! Oh, no! To my brothers and I, Christmas was a stubborn mule, a holiday that dug its recalcitrant hooves into the ground and took its sweet jolly old time coming around. It seemed like a lifetime from Halloween to Christmas and, totally against logic, even longer than that from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

And the last week before the holiday? Excruciating!

'Tain't that way no more, McGee. Uh-uh! Now we can understand what our folks used to tell us about Christmas coming fast. Holy smoke, does it ever come fast now! You seem to barely have time to clear your throat and holler “slow down!” between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Doesn't do any good, though. It still comes at ya like a bolt of lightning.

I can still recall the scratchy red wool blankets that were on the bed that my brother and I shared when we were kids. On Christmas Eve we'd lay there in the dark, waiting, poking each other, giggling and bouncing around on the bed. I suppose we would eventually go to sleep, but that didn't actually occur until we'd been warned a number of times from downstairs that if we didn't “knock it off up there and go to sleep” there'd be NO Christmas for us. We'd finally quiet down and drift off sometime in the wee hours.

I can still remember one Christmas Eve night when I distinctly heard sleigh bells outside the window of our bedroom. No doubt in my mind, then or now – doggone sleigh bells. Neighbors? Our folks? A jolly old elf? I was open to all possibilities then and definitely leaning toward the Santa option.

And who really knows what I'd heard?

My brother'd usually wake up first. He was always more excitable than I and a much lighter sleeper. My folks would make us wait in our bedroom before allowing us to come downstairs. During this unbearable quarantine, my father would drive over to my grandmother's house and bring her back to ours. She always shared Christmas morning with us as my grandfather had passed away when I was six and mom wouldn't think of leaving her alone.

That was just the way it was in those days.

When all was ready we were allowed to come downstairs and open our gifts.

My family didn't have a lot of money, but mom always believed in a big Christmas, so dad had little choice in the matter. I wonder, now that I'm an adult, how long it took him to pay off our Christmas bills in those years. Probably into the late spring, I'd guess.

Us kids would whoop and holler as we opened gift after gift, the wrapping paper, ribbons and bows making drifts and windrows along the furniture as the unopened gift pile dwindled. Each unopened gift that lay in our laps was a universe of possibilities. Was it another toy? A game? Something else to play with? Or the clothes that our parents thought were so important. Soon the unwrapping was completed and we sat back and contemplated our haul. It was always too much, of course. Mom wanted it that way. And we kids didn't know any better – we thought it was that way everywhere. Mom and Gram and Dad quietly exchanged gifts then and exclaimed their surprise and satisfaction as each one was opened.

Those were good years.

Nowadays things are a bit smaller and a bit quieter. Its just my wife, my adult son and myself. My only sadness about Christmas is that my mom never got a chance to be a Gram to my boy. She never had the chance to come over to our house on bright Christmas mornings to share the day with us. She never saw the joy in my son's eyes as he opened his gifts or the joy in my wife and my eyes as he did so.

She passed away almost a decade before he was born and that's a real shame. She'd have been a good Grandma to him. I do like to think that she's here with us in spirit occasionally.

Especially at Christmastime.

So I sit here tonight and contemplate the Christmas's past and look forward to the one we'll celebrate in a couple of days. And I think about Charles Dicken's “A Christmas Carol”.

I've never been visited by a ghost on Christmas Eve, let alone by three of them, as was the esteemed Ebenezer Scrooge. But if I had been visited, I wonder what they would have shown me? Would the ghosts have shown me disappointment in my past, greed and stinginess in my present and, ultimately a miserable, desolate end? Or would my ghosts have been more compassionate and proffered up a more loving past, a dignified present and a long, admirable future filled with friends and family?

Who knows?

I only hope its more of the latter than of the former.

So perhaps its high time to buy the fat goose, to call the Cratchits over to the house for a Christmas feast. Time to put Tiny Tim on my knee and to be thankful for all the past Christmas's that have led me to this place rather than the place that was being prepared for Mr. Scrooge.

High time indeed!

So Merry Christmas to you all – my friends, my family and to all the friends I've yet to meet. A very merry Christmas to all!

And God bless us every one!

Things Change

Things Change

I looked at the calendar today and saw that it's been almost a month since the election.

Four weeks.

28 days since I and millions of my fellow Americans walked into our voting booths and made our selections for whom we wanted to lead us in the upcoming years. We voted for mayors, councilmen, governors, representatives and senators. We voted on money issues, societal issues, school bond issues and who would preside over the courts in our districts. We opted for sheriffs, state congressional members and other officials of low, middle and high rank. But most memorable during this election, as it is every four years in our country, we voted for the person who would be our president. We voted for the individual who would be our national leader and who would become the veritable face of the United States throughout the world.

And at eleven o'clock that evening, the 4th of November in 2008, the projected and ultimately final winner was announced.

It was Barack Obama.

I recall seeing the faces of the people on television when the news of his election was announced. The tears and cheers. The frowns and glum looks. The hands raised in triumph and the red-rimmed eyes of frustration, anger and disappointment.

For better or worse we had a new president.

The voice of the people had been heard and their choice was as very, very clear. We want different. We want new. We do not want the status quo.

We want change. We want change. We want change.

I remember his opponent and his magnanimous concession speech, the heartfelt congratulations to his opponent, the tears standing in the eyes of his vice-presidential running mate. I was humbled and awed by his calm composure and steadiness. My heart bled a little for him as he was my choice, my guy.

I remember the sight of the new president-elect striding across the stage with his pretty wife and two beautiful daughters to the exuberant cheers and joyful shouts of the Democratic faithful in Chicago, his acceptance speech and his calm acceptance of his upcoming duty.

I even kind of liked him at that time.

It wasn't all hearts and flowers during the campaign, of course. A LOT of nasty things were said about each candidate, enough so that you wondered if either of the men could possibly be presidential material. Every flaw that the politicos could come up with was brought forth and shoved in the electorate's face. Every word or phrase that could be misconstrued was misconstrued. Their histories were examined from birth until five minutes ago. Their wins and losses in life were tallied and their lives were so minutely examined as to be ludicrous.

If you believed even half of the stories you heard or read or saw concerning these men generated by the opposing side you were convinced of the monumental inappropriateness of their becoming president. And these stories were brought forth by both sides during the campaign.

Barack Obama was not a citizen, was fast friends with killers and terrorists, was a Muslim, had shady business dealings, was never a leader, was an über liberal, a black nationalist and a drug addict. John McCain was doddering old fool – likely to die at any moment, a computer illiterate, a closet tyrant with a monumental temper and an idiot in his choice of vice president. Neither of them was worth two hoots in hell and if you voted for the wrong one you were sixteen kinds of idiot.

If you believed the ads. If you believed the whispers. If you believed the hype.

I have to admit I got caught up in some of the rhetoric. My man was the ostensible conservative, at least compared to his rival, and therefore I listened to the conservative voices on television and radio. I joined the choir that was being preached to. I don't know as I believed everything I heard from them but I was greatly influenced. Their arguments were persuasive and chilling. I was prepared to shoulder my load, do my duty and vote my man in. But I do have liberal friends and I do respect their judgment. I listened to them and I pondered their words. I thought about what they had said and tried to see their side of things. The world was very different from their viewpoint. They showed me things I hadn't considered or even imagined. They gave me much food for thought.

I won't say I suffered the agonies of indecision in the weeks leading up to the election, but I will say I was swayed in my earlier determination to vote McCain. I was honestly trying to weigh each man and vote my mind and my heart. I was torn and the feeling was mighty uncomfortable.

It wasn't a pleasant time period in America. The mud-slinging ads on the television and the radio became more and more intense, more and more derisive of one candidate, then the other. The money spent on political ads was inconceivable. My mind swirled with suppositions, innuendos, claims, hazy facts, wild accusations and much more indecision.

And the vitriol intensified daily.

I was physically, mentally and emotionally so ready for the election to be over. Over and done with. It seemed the campaign had been going on for years and years and I was so tremendously sick of politics at that time.

We have touch screen voting in the town where I live. You slide an access card similar to a credit card into a slot and you touch the screen at the appropriate spots to make your selections. Your fingertip generates an “x” in a box next to the name of your choice. Very simple and very easy. I believe the first choice on the ballot was for president of the United States. I looked at the choices. I seem to be always surprised that there are more than two. A substantial number of “fringe” candidates are always there – the socialist, the libertarian, maybe a communist or a green or some other peripheral candidate. But the biggies were there. Oh yeah. They might as well have been highlighted. Obama and McCain. There's where the money was. My finger wavered and my vision blurred a bit. You'd have thought that it was I alone who was going to elect the winner. Then my finger settled and hit the box next to McCain. The rest of the ballot, although important, seemed trivial by comparison to the first selection.

When I walked out of the polling place and back to my car I queried myself as to exactly why I'd pulled the trigger for the Republican. How had I arrived at the choice I had made? What process of distillation had occurred to finally condense into a selection? Had one side finally pounded enough ads through my television and into my ears and eyes that I was “conditioned” to make that choice? Had the scare tactics of the right frightened me enough to pull the trigger for the conservative side? Was I influenced by my almost all-white upbringing to bypass the black candidate?

Could I, even now, logically justify my choice?

I have to honestly say that I do not know. More than likely it was a combination of all these influences tempered with as much cold logic as I could muster. At least I hope there was some logic involved. And I hope more earnestly that it was a vote for someone and not against someone.

I think my candidate would have made a good president. I honestly do. I think John McCain is an honorable man, a proven leader and would have made a fine president. And a superb commander-in-chief of the military. I'm not, however, convinced that his choice for vice president was sound. I think he chose with his heart and not his mind. I also think that Ms. Palin, who was the darling of the conservative right, lost McCain a lot of his center-residing constituencies. I liked her. I liked her a lot. I liked her freshness, her confidence and her ability to confront the wrong in her own party as well as her opponents. I liked her down-home accent, her fearlessness and her beauty. I like a whole lot about her. But I didn't agree with all her beliefs. Some of them butted heads with my opinions. Fiercely. But, then again, I disagreed with some of the beliefs of all the people running.

So - there it is.

On January 20, Barack Obama is going to be president of the United States. He's going to have to be the president for all the people in the country, not just the ones who voted for him. All the neocons, the bigots and the rednecks as well as his loyal followers. And all the rest of us just plain ol' Americans.

He's got a lot of work to do and I do not envy him.

I wish him health to perform the duties of his office, I wish him vision to select the right path for the nation and I wish him courage to face whatever challenges that will beset him. And they will.

He was a hell of a candidate.

Let's hope he's a hell of a president.