Christmas Eve, 1966: My then-wife Carol and I took our 7-week-old son David III to church in Canton, Massachusetts. Swaddled in a fuzzy white sleeper sack, he was the hit of the service. Old ladies cooed. Old men smiled. Small children peered in wonder at the baby’s face, thinking that baby David might have been Baby Jesus. We were proud of what we’d brought into the world, even though at age 24 we were hardly prepared for the challenges that lay ahead.
That night remains, perhaps, my most poignant Christmas memory. Here are some others:
Around 1950, my two siblings and I were determined to prove that Santa Clause wasn’t real. So, we put several turnips by the chimney. Our dad would never eat turnips so if they were gone in the morning, maybe Santa Claus was real after all. We woke up and the turnips were nowhere to be found. We accused him of throwing the turnips away. He just smiled.
On Christmas morning our family would gather to open presents. My younger brother and I always got the same thing from grandparents and other relatives, usually socks. Bummer. My mother always got the most presents. As we got a little older, my sister would give my father a box of Kellogg Corn Flakes so he wouldn’t run out, which was a common occurrence.
One year I asked for a “ball getter,” which was a long pole with a small cup at the end which would be great for retrieving golf balls from the creek that wound around the ratty golf course behind our house. My dad made me one using a bamboo pole with a strainer at the end. Excitedly, I ran out to the course to test my new gift. Sadly, some older kid stole the ball getter. I was crushed. Not my favorite memory and a wake-up call re man’s inhumanity to man.
Our parents would send over 500 Christmas cards every year, mainly to fellow DuPont employees. And the mail would be delivered twice a day.
My dad visited me every Christmas for many years. In 1969, Brunswick got hit by a huge snowstorm, along with much of the northeast, and my dad’s flight from Logan Airport to Portland got cancelled. I’d go out and shovel the driveway every half hour so he could get in, expecting him any time. (This was before cell phones.) He had rented a car with another stranded passenger in Boston and driven to Brunswick, after dropping the other guy off in Portland. He finally arrived near midnight.
For 10 years, our Black Lab Chowder wrote the annual Christmas letter with a little help from me. Tina sometimes censored Chowder’s literary efforts, saying, “You can’t put ‘that’ in a Christmas letter.” Chowder (and I) would grumpily agree to cleaning up the prose.
In 2005, we convinced our four sons and their children (seven at that point) to join us at Maho Bay in St. John’s in the Caribbean for Christmas. Everyone had a blast.
Another year, after Tina and I were married, my dad joined us in Green Valley, Arizona where Tina’s mother Betsey and her husband Herb lived during the winter. While there we toured a neighborhood, which prided itself on having garish displays of Christmas lights. My dad, not filled with the spirit, asked, “Why do people do this?”
Last Christmas, our four sons and their kids were all involved with other family members, so Tina and I went to a B & B in Bethel. The B & B was great, but the Christmas Eve dinner fell a tad short. We couldn’t find a restaurant on Christmas Eve, so we went to the local pizza place, which had take-out pizza, even a gluten-free one for Tina. She wanted to get some wine, so we trudged through the icy snow to the grocery store, just before it closed. Her suave escort (me), apparently tipped the pizza box during the walk. So, by the time we got back to the B & B, the pizza was a sloshy lukewarm mess. We recovered, sort of, by watching “White Christmas” on the TV in our room. On Christmas Day yours truly redeemed himself by taking Tina to a fancy buffet at the Bethel Inn.
In looking back, I have to say that this Christmas ranks among the very best. Our church (St. Paul’s Episcopal in Brunswick) raised over $44,000 from the annual Christmas Fair and donations, every dollar of which goes to support area nonprofits. Tina and I contributed four paintings by friends and family; I sold 21 copies of my book: and we bought a bunch of stuff. On a separate front, we bought gifts for two foster children.
I guess it’s just taken a while to get into the true meaning of Christmas, beyond planting unwanted turnips or getting unwanted socks or seeing over-the-top Christmas displays.
Sending seasoned greetings and warm joy to one and all.
David Treadwell, a Brunswick writer, welcomes commentary and suggestions for future “Just a Little Old” columns. dtreadw575@aol.com.
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