It's
Christmas time. . .again. Like each
December snowflake, every Christmas is unique to itself. One year there's Christmas snow, another
Christmas rain. One year the Christmas
tree is so full the decorations seem to float on a liquid pine needle surface.
Another has a tree so much thinner, that nearly all lights and the silver, red
and green ornaments are viewable from whatever side one chooses, looking like
planets and stars in a pine scented, green nebula. One year the central trunk is straight like a rocket launch while
in another year the rocket has clearly taken some side routs on its way towards
Heaven. One-year the Rearicks' home is
nosily filled with family and friends attending parties or on visits, and in
another there are just family members, and sometimes not even the entire
family, with whom to share Christmas morning.
Every Christmas, even the painful ones, is special. One year I sat with my wife and our infant
son in Boston Children's' Hospital while a vicious infection raged through his
blood. Yet I was able to bring him home at the end of the day and see him heal
through the night. And so every unique Christmas is an heirloom ornament
preserved safely in the cubbyholes of my heart to be taken out each Yuletide to
be gently cleaned and allowed to shine in the candle-flame of my memory. Because while like a snowflake every
Christmas is unique, like a snowflake every Christmas is formed by central and
constant patterns.
Yearly my family unpacks with gentle care the
paraphernalia of Christmas that turns our home from warm livability into
festive magnificence. These little
things stored away eleven out of the twelve months of the year are the
constants in my life of change, and I greet them like old friends as we unwrap
the newspaper in which they were stored.
Some of these items date back to when I was just a child: music boxes
(which drive Mom nuts because Dad will turn them on and then exit the room,
leaving musical pandemonium as two different tunes fight for dominance. There are glass snowmen, glass trees, bells,
crocheted stockings, crochet snowmen, wooden Santas, plaster Santas, dancing
Santas, plastic holly, lights, wreaths, crèche figures, and an indescribable
array of ornaments that turn even the poorest of "Charlie Brown
trees" into the most royal of evergreens.
Yet of all these bits of memorabilia, my most prized
Christmas items are two Firestone Christmas records. Back in the sixties, before CDs, cassettes or tapes, Firestone
Tires yearly produced a Christmas record album. One can still find some of them today in garage sales and used
items stores. They are recognized by a
repeated Christmas package motif in album decoration. Usually an elaborate wrapping pattern was used, differentiated
each year by slightly different colors: I've seen gold, light red, and green.
On top of this was a large red ribbon and bow crisscrossing the front. They usually featured celebrities. I, however, still have my family's
originals. Old they are, produced back
when high fidelity (Hi Fi) was the most advanced means of sound
reproduction. I remember the night Dad,
dressed in his usual plain-cloths, basic-lawman black, but sprinkled that year
with light flurry of snow, announced that he had picked it up while getting
gas. Sliding it out of its cover, he
balanced the plastic disk gently between his two hands and laid it down on the
turntable that spun behind one speaker.
This made up our entire sound entertainment system back then of whose
needle he gingerly lifted. There came
the usual unintentional vip as the needle found its grove and then glorious,
glorious sound.
The days of records are pretty much gone. My wife and I had a terrible time earlier
this year just trying to find a new turntable so I could continue to listen to
some of my Hi Fi collection. We have
long ago accumulated various Christmas cassettes and now have a growing
collection of Holiday CDs. The sound is
excellent, and our combined tastes make a vast range of represented
styles. Yet, these two now scratchy old
disks are keys to a flood of Christmas memories: these are my records of
Christmas.
Here we come a-Caroloing
among the leave so green;
He we
come a wandering so fair to be see!
Love and joy come to you
And to you your wassail too
And God bless you and send you a
Happy New,
And God send you a Happy New Year!.
. .
Sing we now of Christmas
Noel! Noel!
Sing we now of Christmas
Hear the chorus swell!
Christmas
is, I suppose, special to nearly everyone, but I was born on that wonderful
day. Christmas has always been for me
the most splendid, wonderful, fanta-bulus time of the entire year. I used to play a mental game with myself
that the whole world with its lights and new music was getting ready for my
birthday, a pleasant if egotistical thought.
My delight in the day started as it starts for nearly everyone, as a
time of good food, no school, and gifts.
I loved getting gifts (Heck, I still love getting gifts--especially the
impractical kind like robots who guard my desk or motion sensitive starship
models which makes photon torpedo sounds and light up when my boss comes into
my office!)
Back in the sixties when the rolling year was marked by
the arrival of the Sears Wish-book (a moment of silence please), my sisters,
Debbie and Mary, and I studied for days the fantastic array of toys offered
within. (Jim my brother wouldn't joint
us for another five years.) My sisters
and I pondered over each page. Then we
made our lists, not too expansive mind you, just about four to five pages long
with eighty to a hundred items per list (if you knew how to print small like
me). Our parents had to remind us
yearly that they did now own the keys to the Federal Mint, and Santa had a lot
of other kids to visit besides us. And
so we went through the agonizing process of shortening our lists (something
like editing one's own biography) until we had one "big thing" and a
few little ones. Strangely enough, the
gift that I often ended up enjoying the most was one that had not been on my
list at all but was rather something Santa just guessed I might like.
I used to keep vigils on Christmas Eve because I was so
excited over what I thought I might be getting. Lying in bed with my eyes wide open, I waited until all movement
stopped down the hall (later it was upstairs), and I knew that my parents were
finally in bed. (I don't remember when
reindeer's hooves became Mom and Dad's feet.)
Then out of bed I'd slip, to sit in front of a lighted Tree made magical
by the night, put on some Christmas music softly and touch rattle sniff or do
almost anything to try to discern what marvels lay inside those amazingly
confusing packages. It was strictly
forbidden to away Mom and Dad before 6:00.
It was a good thing that Santa began to leave Mad Magazine in my
stocking by the time I was ten. Still,
those were some of the longest six hours through which I have eve lived.
The other aspect of Christmas that I remember from this
part of my life was the ubiquitous multiplication of lights. Lights everywhere! The shades of darkness were pierced over and over by points of
light: house lights, streetlights, lights from my electric train (set up only
at Christmas) and indoor decoration lights.
How I loved the lights of our tree.
To turn off the ordinary lams of the house and be bathed by the warm
yellow or reddening glow of our evergreen was one of my favorite pastimes. In those moment I often crawled under the
tree to look up into a whole universe of multi-colored electric stars and
glowing glass planets swimming in a space turned green.
There was another glow in our house that came out at
Christmas time, a softer gentler glow.
It came from our Christmas Crete where every year the man, Jesus, that I
learned about in Sunday School somehow again became a newborn baby boy laid in
a manger. Way back I knew whose
birthday we truly were celebrating, but the fact was really only a background
element of my excitement over the holiday.
Back then I was at the center of my pleasures. I exulted in the music of the Firestone records just because they
were so exciting and joyful. I Decked
the Halls" with a joyful sound, but had no real clue of why anyone should
not be joyful.
I wonder as I wander out under the
sky
how Jesus our Savior did come for to die
for poor ornery sinners like you and
like I.
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.
Teen
Years--adolescence--about the only god thing I can say about my teens is that
they finally came to an end. I did a
lot, as the carol puts it, "wondering and wandering." I didn’t wander too far; I was never an
out-and-out rebel, but I wasn't quite sure either about living the kind of
Christian life my parents were living
I wasn't sure if I had been given the "straight scoop" by my
elders as to where the fun in life could really be found. It seemed to me that I was always on the
outside of things, that somewhere somehow whole groups of people were having a
big, fantastic party, and I wasn't there. I wasn't even invited.
What a terrible change Christmas went through at this
time. Once I had fantasized about it
being my holiday; now it seemed to be everyone else's but mine. The magic was fading. Although Santa had never been an emphasized
part of our celebration (all gifts not from relatives were just signed
"from Santa"), and although I had stumbled upon the truth years
before, it suddenly became very important for me not to see nor to even glimpse
the presents hidden in my parents' room.
I did not want to see the concrete evidence that Santa was but a fair
tale and have one more bubble of Christmas' magi bust in my face. My mistake was to think that it had been
Christmas' magical side which had been its true source of joy.
I could think of no gift that would really make me
happy. Suddenly everything that I liked
had become either too expensive or just plain impossible to get. I still wanted toys but not silly ones. I wanted a computerized chess set, a full
stereo system (Hi Fi was gone by then) or maybe a remote control gas powered
airplane or racing car. All of these
were just out of Santa's reach, and really none of them were what I really
wanted most. I wanted to be thinner, I
wanted to be a sports star, I wanted to be liked in school, I wanted a girl
friend, I wanted independence but was afraid of the consequences. I wanted, I
wanted, I wanted. . .
I still kept vigils at Christmas. I can remember staring into the Christmas
tree that did not seem as bright as it once had. I sat with a hollow ache in my chest that felt so real that was
sure it had to be physical--maybe I was just ill? In the background, however, played my old Christmas records, and
for the first time I noticed and softer songs.
They sang comfort to me when I would listen and whispered of a gift I
had known about for years and yet had somehow managed to re-wrap and return it
to the scarred hands of its giver.
Joy to
the World the Lord has come;
Let
Earth receive her King
Let
every heart prepare him room,
And
heav'n and nature sing,
And
heav'n and nature sing,
And
Heaven and Heav'n and nature sing!
I would be inaccurate to say that I accepted Christ when
I was in my late tens for I had come to my Savior when I was only a boy. However, it was in my late teens that I
began to realize that the world had nothing to give me, that there was no great
party going on somewhere else. Or if there was all the noise I was hearing was
not in celebration but just a cover for the inward groans. The true source of Joy came from God through
Christ. I learned that Christ's gift of
strength for this world and endless life in the next, are at the heart of
Christmas. Those scarred hands were
still holding the package and from in it I found hope, Grace and Salivation.
I do not know when it happened, but I can recall feeling
such a sense of joy one Christmas as I stood before the family stereo and heard
Julie Andrews again singing "Joy to the World." A feeling stirred within me, tingling at the
base of my spine and traveled up my back in pleasure. In my tradition of faith we don't dance, so I conducted
instead. I pretended to stand before a
great orchestra that had been allowed a special heavenly engagement of
praise. I conducted for God, allowing
the music to flow that was as real to me as if I had actually had the whole
Firestone Orchestra at my fingertips.
It might seem that I had returned myself to center stage (the conductor
is of course in front of it all) but I was honestly thinking of the whole
orchestra as a great instrument capable of giving the praise my heart wanted to
express. The joy of Christmas returned when I stopped looking at myself or the
world around me. The joy returned when
I looked and sang with my old records to Him.
That is why the evergreen points to
heaven. That joy in Christ is why a
fourth century bishop from Myra, Asia Minor, became known as their patron saint
(whose custom of giving gifts we still follow today, remembering him in the
figure of St. Nicholas or Santa Clause), that is why the songs sing, and that
is why the lights shine. Alone these
decorations and traditions are all but trinkets, but orbiting the center theme
of the gift of Christ they blend into the splendor of a galactic cluster which
is the Star of Christmas. Christmas is
the gift given to a world that Satan wants cast down, hate-filled, and stone
silent—except for whispered curses in the dark.
I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their
old familiar carols play
And
mild and sweet the words repeat,
Of
peace on earth, good will to men.
And in despair I bow'd my head:
"There
is no peace on earth," I said,
"For
hate is strong, and mocks the song
Of
peace on earth, good will to men."
I can never forget the trip I took to New York one year
during a cold Christmas season. What
splendor the city puts on! Among the
lights of Rockefeller Center stood the towering tree with sparkling angles
trumpeting their crystalline joy before it.
All about the music of Christmas sang.
One of our company, however, wanted to visit the United Nations complex
hoping there might be special shops open, so we left the hustle and bustle of
the Christmas decorated city’s heart and made our way to the harbor’s edge.
We found nothing but silence and coldness. Not all nations recognize the Son of God,
and for their sake there is no Christmas at the U.N. I stood in one of the chilled, silent plazas listening for some
music and heard only hollow footsteps.
I looked for some sort of decoration on the trees and lamps and saw only
a freezing wind blow snow across a barren, colorless landscape. Behind me was an exhibit of the horrors of
the Nazi concentration camps. I
shuddered. This was a word without
Christmas; this was Satan’s design; this was the world Christ came to
save. I could not bear it and ran back
to the city’s center. I did not stop
running until I heard the sound of a Salvation Army Band.
It is because of Satan’s plan for an Earth of sterile
silence that I think—among the many gifts of God in Christmas—that it is His
music that is the most powerful.
Christmas began with angels singing, and it has sung to a lost world all
through time. Music, as it did for the
shepherds back then, still causes us to look—not down or at others but up. That is why of all paraphernalia of Christmas
I find those Firestone records so valuable.
It has been they that have passed on the Christmas spirit to me through
my years. Even as I type they are
singing. They have been with me in my
dark times, when schoolwork overwhelmed me, and when loneliness surrounded
me. Their songs opened my heart to the
Grace of God. When I groaned—their
messages comforted, when I contemplated our Lord—they assisted, and when I
rejoiced—they just sang.
Sing Praise! Sing Praise! Sing Praise!