A Christmas Poem Punctuated by Prose

To My Husband on Christmas Eve From My Inner Scrooge

December, 2004

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Christmas lights, a laden tree,
Wrapped presents, bows,
Cookies, milk,
Cards.

A fairy tale at night,
Christmas wishes,
Sleepy eyes,
Believing.

Sweetheart, you are the reason
Christmas is a shiny dream
For the kiddies, and
Me.

I love your Christmas spirit,
Hushed in its step,
Truthful, pure,
Insistent.


*************


From my Journal: Christmas

Truthfully, within, I'm a Scrooge. I don't shop for gifts with any kind of glee, I dread the Christmas crowds. Cards are last-minute. I don't buy ornaments nor clamor to get a tree. I pass the Christmas cookies in the store. If I were alone, I'd rather the holiday skip along without me.

My aversion to Christmas began in the family home - every year at Thanksgiving, depression would swoop down on my mother like a hawk picking tender bird eggs making for an unpredictable holiday season. Christmas would sometimes be happy or sparked with misery or was a mix of the two extremes. We, my two siblings and I, were along for whatever ride came our way.

When I reached adulthood I'd abandoned Christmas - it didn't fit my beliefs spiritually speaking nor did it fill my emotional well. I have few memories of Christmas holidays as a single adult.

Everything changed, however, when my first child was born, when my husband shared with me his inner Santa. The shift began in 1993 with a first Christmas tree, presents, and a few strings of lights around the windows of our small house. My participation was reluctant. My father had just been diagnosed with cancer and things weren't looking good. My mother was in depression over the divorce from my father (and about the illness). My job at the law firm had deteriorated into a special kind of hell. I spent all my time and energy showering my first baby with adoration - he gave my life balance. I didn't care about a holiday.

Conversely at that time, my husband, D, experienced a surge of new purpose with Christmas. His own family was Baptist and took the holiday seriously. His father was from the Depression era so spending money wasn't an option. There'd been few decorations in his house, few gifts. The holiday was very religious. So when our first came along, D made a conscious choice to give his children a different experience than he had.

I stood by and watched. And as I did, I began to feel something different about the holiday. I felt loved at the coming of December, I felt happy, I began to trust in the constancy of D when it came to Christmas. I liked sitting in the quiet with the tree's sparkling lights in front of me, with D next to me, with J in my arms. I began to know, as much as one can know, that Christmas would never be awful, that it would always be something sweet...like cookies and milk in front of an expectant fireplace.

The holiday evolved in our house to a full-blown Christmas extravaganza - lights all around the outside of our house, ornaments weighing the tree down to the carpet, wreaths and candles on all our tables, Christmas plates and mugs in the cupboards, and the children's artistic holiday renderings on the walls.

D even encouraged me to give the kids a Hanukkah to remember, making sure we lit the candles and gave some gifts on those eight nights.

And we always let our kids think Santa is "real."

Well, tonight, as I wrote some e-mail at my computer, I noticed my eleven-year-old son, my eldest, standing quietly in the garage doorway, holding open the door and looking into the darkened garage. He knew the shadows held some wrapped gifts - he'd stumbled on a bag of video games D bought for him and his little brother earlier. I then heard his voice behind me, a voice tinted with the faintest color of disappointment. He asked softly, "Mommy, Santa does exist, right?"

"Sure," I said, "Santa is the spirit of Christmas - he's very real."

We gazed at each other only a moment. "Hm," he shrugged. "Okay."

At that he walked away, thinking about it, logic obviously challenged. He's known for some time that the tooth fairy doesn't really leave money under his pillow. He's mentioned before the fact that "Santa's" gifts sometimes have the same wrapping paper as the stuff he gets from us. He never really bought the "letter" from Santa I wrote one year.

But tonight, he didn't want to stop believing in Santa even though his logic told him otherwise.

So, D and I addressed his needs. We put him to bed along with his brother and sister (who have no "Santa" issues at this point) and we re-did the tags on "Santa's" gifts so that they'd be strikingly different than all the others. We spread some flour on the fireplace to make it look like magic dust...we "ate" the cookies left there and "drank" the milk.

Just one more year of believing for J.

I'm hoping that one day the disappointment will fade and he'll understand that "Santa" is indeed alive and well and lovely - I'm hoping he'll know that it's his daddy, truly.



I love you, D. Thank you for being Santa.