Page 26 2015 HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS MAGAZINE LINCOLN DAILY NEWS.COM NOVEMBER 25, 2015
very eyes. The country we remember from our
youth is growing in diversity and feeling the awful
weight of years of warfare with no end in sight.
And don’t even get me started on the perpetual
partisan posturing of our nation’s leaders! We’ve
all, in the words of Auntie Mame,
“Grown a
little leaner. Grown a little colder. Grown a little
sadder. Grown a little older…” and something
deep inside us needs “a little Christmas”
– at
least Christmas like it used to be. You know, in
the days before you had to worry about offending
someone with a specifically Christmas-centered
greeting instead of offering a more politically
correct, culturally sensitive, and completely
generic salutation. No wonder I find myself
wanting to go back to the days of Christmas past.
Care to walk down memory lane with me?
Well, it’s really more like a hike through a forest
of memories. The
trail eventually
leads me to a brick
farmhouse in a
little hollow in the
cornfields where I
grew up. (On second
thought, let’s say
where I lived when
I was young, since
I’m not too sure I’ve
grown up yet.) In
my mind I climb
the stairs and stand
on the porch and
peek through the living room window and watch
as family scenes unfold. A Christmas tree that
starts out as a wooden dowel painted green with
holes drilled in it is standing sort of straight in
its little red and green stand. Mom unfolds and
shapes stiff, wiry branches. Dad exercises an
impressive vocabulary of words he picked up in
the army as he attempts to untangle the strings
of large, colorful lights that mysteriously snarled
themselves in the closet since they were neatly
put away months before. The stick eventually
morphs into a lovely tree. Soon vibrant paper-
wrapped boxes with shiny bows appear and I can
see a younger version of myself and my little
brother poking around trying to figure out what
in the world they might contain. A simple, but
beautiful table is prepared. The smell of freshly
baked sugar cookies. A bowl of mixed nuts and a
dish of hard ribbon candy. Stockings ready to be
filled. Now I see myself excitedly waiting by the
window watching for headlights to shine down
the hill heralding the arrival of my siblings so that
we could all celebrate Christmas Eve together.
We weren’t exactly the Walton’s, but it was still
good. Sweet. Simple. So long ago. Perhaps my
recollections have even stirred up a few of your
own.
Reminiscing brings my soul a measure of comfort,
but tragically my recollections don’t have
anything to do with Christ or the true meaning of
Christmas. It wasn’t
until I was well into
my teenage years
until I really
heard
the Christmas story.
Prior to that the
only connection I
understood between
Jesus and Christmas
was confined to
a single scene in
the perennial TV
special
A Charlie
Brown Christmas.
You know the one.
Charlie is struggling with the lack of meaning in
the holiday and asks, “Doesn’t anybody know
what Christmas is all about?” Thankfully his pal,
Linus, is there to set him straight. “For unto you
is born this day a Savior…”
It stings to say this, but precious little of what
many of us associate with Christmas is actually
Christian. Santa Claus is much more the creation
of Clement Moore and Coca-Cola than the Saint
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