Christmas Past
Monday, December 28, 2009 at 08:15PM 
Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion and Lake Woebegone fame had a piece the other day about Christmases remembered. He said that of all his Christmases (and by this time we're approaching 60 of them), he remembers only a few. Most of them blend together into a mash of turkey and ham and football games. In his piece on this topic, Garrison recalled two or three Christmases that really stood out.
It was a thought-provoking piece and a subject matter one I couldn't resist revisiting.
I, too, after all this time have only a few Christmases that stand out.
The first is the first Christmas with my family in Indiana, after moving north from Arkansas, when I was only three years old. I don't remember anything of living in Arkansas. But I remember that first Christmas spent in a tiny cottage on the river in Elkhart, just east of Bull Dog Crossing on East Jackson Boulevard. The cottage no longer stands. My dad was all of 21 or 22. My mom was only 22 or 23. They'd grown up on cotton farms in Arkansas. Christ, they were just kids. My dad worked as a butcher for a guy named Orby Cripe who owned a small grocery on Indiana Avenue. My mom raised two kids in a cottage that struggled to keep the cold air at bay.
The river froze, snow piled high. It must have been quite an experience for them, their first Christmas away from home. They put up a Christmast tree. They bought my sister and I cowboy and cowgirl outfits. There are pictures somewhere to prove it. I think there was a tricylcle involved, too. I was three years old, almost four, and I remember being too excited to sleep and sleeping on the sofa, so I could catch Santa Clause. I remember the cold just beyond the door. I remember the tightness of our little family, foreigners in a foreign land. Tight, nuclear. My world extended no further and didn't need to.
After that, the Christmases blur. A memory of a toy gun, a bicycle, a Schwinn, black and sleek. Throughout high school, college, and law school, all of my Christmases blended with my sister's birthday on the 24th. We celebrated with family at our house, everyone in the family, later friends, later still wives and children. It's all one greate blur, not bad, in fact, very good. But nothing distinct.
Then that Christmas, the first one with Mary in Des Moines. We were both in the process of divorce. We were both crazy about the other. It's one thing when this hits you at 16, its another when you're 30 or 40 years old. It's one thing to chase after a woman. It's another to catch her and fall for her and know that she's your soul mate and the rest of your life will be shit without her, and you don't know quite how to make it all come together. You know this because you are 40 years old and realize that women like this don't come around every day and probably never will again. Oh yeah, you know this is the ONE.
No one in the office knew we were dating. We hardly admitted it to ourselves. We slipped off after work just before Christmas in a snow storm, headed for a B&B on the St. Croix River. We made in to Minneapolis that first night, St. Croix the day after. Three days in the bitter cold and wilderness in a rustic setting. I never looked better. She'll never be more beautiful. We spent Christmas confessing our love to one another.
After that, Christmases with Mary and my girls, Christmases with Reilly and Ashley. Christmases with Reilly and Mary. A pair of Luchessee cowboy boots, tacos at the Taquerito Superica in Santa Barbara, snow falling on cedars on Christmas Eve at the Chicago Botanic Gardens with John and Bonnie and Mike and Jen and Joe and the kids. All those Christmases, so many people piled around the Highland Park house, me cooking, drinking wine, the snow falling, falling, falling. The late night movies, the late night giggles, the babies crying in the middle of the night.
But the two Christmases that really stand out, that first one in Indiana and another, a world apart in so many ways, with the love of my life, in St. Croix.
Bitter and cold.
Hard and dark.
Soft and warm and, so far, sixteen years later, still enduring.
Christmas past in Creative 
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Reader Comments (5)
Christmas tends to bring me face-to-face with stark truths, for some reason. Not a bad thing, really, just jarring. I have become very fond of the Winter Solstice, which means that the days will start to lengthen a tiny amount each day, and the angle of the sun will become cheerier. I'm still contemplating the parallels between astronomical events and Christian beliefs. I'm sure that somebody has done a thorough study of this. Eventually I'll pursue it and save myself much effort.
I married a woman who loves Christmas and everything about it. Good grief, the adjustments... Our first Christmas alone together was one of my favorites, by far. No surprise.
Keep well and happy in 2010, and celebrate the good times. Best wishes in every way.
By getting the yearly transition out of the way at 7PM local time, it leaves the whole evening free for other activities, and an early bedtime.
Last year Jan and Jeff were here, and I think we missed any notice of the time at all. The evening slipped away very quickly, and was a lot of fun. Can't do it this year, but we'll think of them, along with everyone else that we'd like to see.
Already the newspapers and media are dumping on 2009, and on the whole decade of the "00's". Can't really argue with that. I think of it as the Bush Decade, myself. Swaggering stupidity, Cheney confrontation, and lots of times that I'd like to forget. Here's to 2010. Best Wishes to everybody.
I actually have a pretty good memory for Christmases, which is not unusual for me, another of my unmarketable talents. That is not to say that anything is all that distinct, I can just remember them. I too married a woman who loves Christmas, and can remember them also, down to details of gifts given and received.
With all of the pain and despair around Elkhart this year, it has been difficult to get in much of a mood to celebrate, although it is not hard to bid 2009 good riddance.
As for the decade, it may be the best of my adult life. Certainly it had it's down times, and it ended badly, but for most of the 10 years, we were on a high. Unfortunately, it just was not sustainable. Of course that excludes politics, which was a debacle. I loved Bill's expression "swaggering stupitidy". It pretty much sums up the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfelt/Rove years.
Hope things are well.