Christmas Eve

 

My earliest memories begin in my great-grandmother's middle bedroom, where the biggest window faced a dirt road punctuated in potholes, with a cedar Christmas tree-always cedar-and decades-old ornaments, some broken and taped back together, some recycled from what others (who hadn’t lived through the Depression) might throw out. Things like spent flash bulbs, the ones you put on top of cameras for indoor shots, and a bread tie for a hook. A red dog pin cushion, the stuffing peeking through. A plastic Rudolph, one leg broken and taped back together. That loud mantle clock chiming at all hours, in a hurry, like it had some place to go. The scent of cloves and citrus. Fat outdoor Christmas lights the colors of candy wound around the front porch banister, on the enormous evergreen beside the garage. 

And people walking in, one after the other, family and neighbors, coming by to dip a coffee cup (one of many that came in boxes of detergent) into a huge pot of golden, simmering Russian tea and sit a spell, to laugh and talk, ruffle the hair of a youngster or two and ask if Santy’s coming. We kids would have been told how good our performance was in the church Christmas play a few nights before, as we stood there wrapped in sheets with glittery halos made from pipe cleaners jiggling above our heads.

No one was staring at a digital device, though we might have been watching Rudolph or the Grinch as we sat on the floor (because boxy tvs can’t be hung on walls), unable to hear it from all the current of conversation and laughter that flowed from the kitchen into the living room and back again. And before everyone quit smoking, before they realized how bad it was for them, there were ash trays, cigarettes poised between calloused fingers that had only ever known hard work, a haze hovering over a table filled to the edges with a meal so good it was liable to make you cry. 

There was so much to love about Christmas Eve, 24 hours of it didn’t seem like enough. When I was a kid, it had a lot to do with anticipation of presents, because we got them on birthdays and Christmas. And because no matter how lean times were, my folks always came through with what we wanted.

Last night, I drove by Mamaw’s house because I wanted to be near the porch and the tree, because I’m drawn to it by the power of memory. The tree is there but dark, and so is the house, the glow of a lamp barely visible behind drawn shades. I’m taken back to cars lined up, parked on both sides of the road, that tree and those fat outside lights a beacon. I hear voices inside and see condensation on the kitchen windows because it’s so warm in there from the cooking, the simmering tea, the laughter. The door banging over and over again as presents are carried in trash bags to put under the cedar tree in the bedroom with the cedar furniture.  And then everything darkens again, and the house is just a house.

There have been not-so-romantic Christmases, the first after losing loved ones or divorce, those when some of us were laid up with a stomach bug, the flu or the effects of chemo. And I know that things like this-or awful family rituals that just ruined it for some as kids- can make people wish it away, or feel angry, because it’s everywhere you look: Christmas is an in-your-face holiday. So it’s an individual experience and I accept that, though I’ve always felt a selfish-bit resentful when people go to bed early.

But that quiet magic that lives in the light, in the ornaments made of everyday things in a past that leads us forward, in the traditions like Russian tea that we still make from the yellowed pages of an old ledger book….that magic is what I crave every other day of the year.