CHRISTMAS IS COMING!!
Washington, DC – It is mid-September. We haven’t even started to get excited about Halloween yet, but I am hearing talk of Christmas and some stores are already putting out Christmas decorations. Skip Halloween, skip Thanksgiving, go straight to Christmas.
When I heard this I started to reflect on what Christmas means to me. I am 63 years old now, and I have celebrated this joyful holiday in five different countries over my lifetime. I wasn’t brought up in a strictly religious home, and the meaning of Christmas centred around family getting together more than the birth of Jesus or the commercial aspects of the season.
I remember in primary school that it was an exciting time as we cut and pasted colourful paper chain decorations, snowflakes and angels. Hopeful youngsters raised their hands with enthusiasm hoping to be picked to play Mary, Joseph, or one of the three wise men, or an angel. I was very shy about doing school plays and would try to avoid being picked for a part that would make me too noticeable. The back row of the choir was stressful enough for me.
Despite the lack of religion at home I grew to have an appreciation for the real meaning of Christmas – the celebration of the life of Jesus, the coming together of people to show caring and love, and the importance of family. I lived abroad with my parents for almost my entire childhood, so those Christmases that we were able to spend at home in England, at my grandparents’ home in south Devon, were very precious. I was the only child in the family for many years so I did get a bit spoilt with gifts, but the things I remember the most were not the big toys. The first thing that always comes to mind when I think about Christmas at Grandma’s is the red velvet choker with a silver buckle that she gave me.
It was handmade, and it made me feel like a real grown-up lady, and very special. It was old fashioned, a reminder of a time when Christmas was not a commercial event with months of advertisements exhorting us to buy expensive gifts like jewellery or cars, or electronic games and devices. No, I associate the memory of that velvet choker with trips home from Germany to spend Christmas in Grandma’s kitchen, smelling the delicious aroma of mince pies baking, decorating the traditional heavy fruit cake, and the turkey roasting.
I have fond memories of sitting around the dining table with uncles and aunts, mum and dad, Grandma and Grandpa, sharing a wonderful meal of brussels sprouts, turkey, roast potatoes, stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce; of trying to save enough room for the plum pudding and cream, and afterwards being given a small glass of peach wine – even though I was just a young child – and sipping it while watching the Queen’s Christmas message on the television.
Some of my childhood Christmases were spent in Germany. I remember when we lived in Minden, the very cold winters, lots of snow, and the town, which had cobbled streets and buildings that had heavy beams and overhanging upper floors decorated with thousands of colourful lights reflecting in the snow. There would be a huge pine Christmas tree in the town – a real one, not one of those fake ones. We always had a real pine tree in our house too. And perhaps the best memory of all – listening to the choirs singing Christmas carols. German and Austrian church choirs are some of the best I have ever heard. Christmas at home would not have been complete without the record player filling our house with the angelic voices of the Vienna Boys Choir singing Stille Nacht (Silent Night).
As a young mother one of my best memories of Christmas in England was 1981. My daughter Claire was 17 months old and I was a few months pregnant. We had a real pine tree which Claire helped to decorate. She was enchanted with it. We had snow too, and there was a very large window looking out onto the front garden and street. Claire would stand on her little chair and lean on the sill, staring in wide-eyed wonder at the big fluffy white snowflakes as they fell, covering the ground in a thick, pristine blanket that totally transformed her world into a winter wonderland. At that time we didn’t know that the next Christmas would be spent in a very different climate.
In 1982 we moved to The Bahamas. It was mid summer when we arrived, and Claire was two years old, her baby brother Christopher just two months. In a few short months Christmas fever was in full swing. It felt strange. In place of pine trees there were palm trees with garlands of lights wound around their curving trunks. The weather was warm and sunny, and it was really strange to see the shop windows with Christmas decorations, some of them depicting snowflakes! But the most memorable thing was the Junkanoo parade on Boxing Day.
It started at midnight and went on all through the night. A riot of colour, music, noise, gyrating dancers, and themes depicting significant events and people in the news that year. I am told that the parade is very similar to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The groups – some as large as 500 people, some as small as just a dozen or so – come onto the street with brass horns, trumpets and tubas, whistles blowing. The rhythm of the drums is so strong that it vibrates deep into your soul.
After a few years I got used to Christmas in the tropics, at least from the point of view of the weather being warm. But a little piece of me still missed the cold, snowy Christmases of my childhood. My own children spent their childhood in The Bahamas, so that was all they knew. They now live and work in England, and have become accustomed to the rigors of winter, and my husband and I have spent two Christmases in Washington DC. Surprisingly, the cold has not bothered me, but I have been just a little disappointed at the lack of snow.
But I don’t think I will ever get used to the way the commercial Christmas is creeping earlier and earlier in the calendar of events that populate the last quarter of the year. Or the advertisements for ever more luxury items for gifts. I am going to be very traditional about Christmas from now on, and make it a time for reflection, connection, and giving to those who are in need. My husband will always ask me what I want for Christmas, and it is always difficult to think of something that I really need. I think the most precious gift must be the gift that Jesus Christ gave us all, and that is the gift of love.
