We all have Christmas memories, but I think we have an inner filter that amplifies the good memories, as we try to forget the bad ones. But sometimes sad ones keep coming back to haunt us, and we try to push them into the back corners of our mind.
Most of my earliest Christmas memories are around special Christmas gifts. When I was 13, we lived a mile south of Norphlet near Flat Creek Swamp, where I spent countless hours hunting in the woods and fishing in Flat Creek. That special Christmas morning, I walked into our living room, and there was a Sweet 16 Shotgun. I couldn’t believe it. I knew my parents couldn’t afford that pricey of a Christmas gift, and I was overwhelmed. I still have the gun.
The year before I asked Santa to bring me some animal steel traps. I’d read all of the Jack London books, and other books about mountain men who were trappers, and I was determined to have a trap line in Flat Creek Swamp.
After Santa brought me six steel traps, and I managed to scrounge up enough money from my paper route, doing odd jobs and turning in coke bottles for deposit to buy another six, I set my trap line down in and near Flat Creek. It was one of my schemes to make money, and I was going to clean up by catching mink. I figured I’d catch at least a couple of mink each week, and that would be for me — money, money, money.
Well, after a year of trapping, I had caught a few coons and a bunch of possums, but no mink. Coon hides sold for $3.50, because of Davy Crocket’s coonskin cap, but possums only 50 cents. I really wasn’t cleaning up until on Christmas Eve I walked up to one of my traps, and there was a big mink. Mr. Benton, our Norphlet fur buyer, gave me $17 for the hide, and I headed to El Dorado with my dad to Christmas shop.
That must sound familiar to some of my readers who have read my Christmas novel, “The Red Scarf.” In the novel, I used that mink money on Christmas Eve for Richard to buy the prettiest girl in Norphlet a red scarf. Well, in the novel, I found the mink on the road after just being run over. Catching it in a steel trap didn’t seem to fit the story line, and I didn’t buy anyone a red scarf.
But there were other Christmases which were sad ones. When your father has a serious drinking problem, and you have a feisty mother, who can snap and slap at the drop of a hat, you’re going to be a referee to keep things from getting violent, and celebrating Christmas can be a disaster.
Some of my Christmas times will always be dark memories. I hated Christmas to come on a weekend because my dad was afraid to drink during the week because he would lose his refinery job.
He was killed by a drunk driver when I was a sophomore at the University… He was the drunk driver. After the driver of the other car sued, and collected all the insurance money from my mother, it was a sad, quiet Christmas with very few gifts.
It seemed to me that Christmas celebrations didn’t return until Vertis and I started dating. I was still in college, money was really tight, but after I found out her favorite color was pink, I dug up enough money by working at the University dining hall to buy her a pink pullover sweater and skirt.
Vertis remembers a special Christmas where she received a Mouton Jacket, a rather expensive coat, which her family on a Baptist preacher’s salary could hardly afford.
After college I took a job with EXXON and went to South Texas to work on the King Ranch as a geologist, and we immediately fell into a Texas-Mex celebration at Christmas, which always meant a knock on the door from a young man selling homemade hot tamales saying “Féliz Navidad.”
After I took a transfer to Benghazi, Libya our first Christmas there was bleak. Since I was a wellsite geologist, and drilling rigs don’t shut down for any holidays, I happened to be in the desert that first Christmas Eve. My two weeks in the desert were up on Christmas day, and Vertis met me at the airport.
That first Libyan Christmas we were by ourselves in a foreign country. On Christmas night, Vertis wanted to show me something in downtown Benghazi, and we drove into the center of town, where in a roundabout was a tall fir tree, and as I drove into that circle, I was shocked. It had colored Christmas lights from top to bottom.
“A Christmas tree?” I questioned Vertis.
“Dream on, Richard. Libyan Independence Day is very close to Christmas Day and the lights are to celebrate it.”
Well, that was a small positive spot that helped brighten up that first Libyan Christmas, but the rest of Christmas day didn’t add much. We headed back home, and settled in to listen to carols from the BBC on our shortwave radio. The broadcast was from St. Paul Cathedral in London, and as we listened sitting there in a dim lantern lit room. (Our lights were out as part of a rolling citywide blackout.) I considered quitting EXXON, but didn’t.
When we transferred back to Texas our Christmases were always a ten hour drive to El Dorado, but after we moved back in the mid-seventies and built our house, that first Christmas was special. When Lara opened her present, a rabbit fur lined jacket, she was so excited she cried.
When our kids were older, we bought our pre-teens three-wheelers, but a couple of months later, we got rid of them, after Ashley flipped his and got a concussion and Lara wrecked hers, and dislocated her tailbone.
A very different Christmas memory always comes to mind as I remember traveling at Christmas. When our kids were 13 and 15 we took a special vacation to Egypt, and that Christmas we spent Christmas Eve night in the hotel where Agatha Christi wrote the novel “Murder on the Nile,” and on Christmas Day I rented an sail boat called a Felucca for $10, and we sailed on the Nile.
Actually, music, and especially choir music, is to me, the perfect way to celebrate Christmas. As we sit in front of our fireplace and watch Christmas at Belmont those wonderful singers make the season come alive. Our church always uses music to celebrate the season, and one Christmas our choir director, Wilson Borosvskis, put the choir in a living Christmas tree with Vertis as the top of the tree.
Vertis and I love music, especially Christmas music, and Christmas wouldn’t be special for us if we didn’t sing and listen to Christmas music. The music of Christmas expresses the Christmas spirit, and if I want to get in the mood of the season, just listing to or actually singing “Good Christmas Men Rejoice” gives me an inside smile that only comes at Christmas.
Richard Mason is an author and speaker. He can be reached at [email protected]
