Christmas
written by: Rex Fausett
Let me say straight off that I believe in Santa Claus and I believe he believes in me.
When I was a kid I’d start planning for the next Christmas on the 26th of December. My birthday was not quite as important. Yes, I always got birthday presents but Christmas presents were perfect, often pre-requested, and therefore just what I wanted. But there were always surprises – those little things like a chocolate bar or a toy, a plastic game, a model car, or a new cowboy gun to replace the cowboy gun I’d lost somewhere.
Our family of two parents, three sisters and two brothers made for a busy Christmas. Strangely enough, I cannot remember a single thing any of my siblings ever received but my memory says that everything we received was given by our parents, not by my siblings to one another.
We were not quite impoverished but money was definitely an issue. We were never short of a Christmas tree because my father drove a milk collection truck and he picked out a likely tree somewhere on his route well before Christmas and he and his brothers made a trip into the country around the tenth of December and came back with trees for all the families.
Decorating the tree was something else. We had a few well-worn tinsel strings that shed more little bits of tinsel on the living room floor every year. Otherwise it was crepe paper bows and streamers created new. I admired other people’s Christmas trees. My friends had decorations on their trees that they hadn’t made themselves. Reindeer and Santas and magical glass globes with Christmas motifs – trees, Santas, more reindeer, stars, gold bands, snow and so many other icons of the season and, wonder of wonders, those glass globes weighed nothing. There were stars and angels on top of their trees as well. A psychiatrist would suggest Christmas Tree Envy, possibly correctly, but over the years we bought our own decorations and strings of sparkly stuff, light-up figures and red felt Christmas stockings and today I’m content. After a visit to the Heineken factory in Amsterdam not that long ago I came away from the merchandise store with only a half-dozen Heineken Christmas balls.
But my Christmas obsession aside, this story is really about my father. My father was a gentle soul who lived a quiet life reading a good book in the evening or with the television set playing in the room while he snored gently. Fishing was his great love and every Sunday morning he disappeared down the coast, returning late Sunday afternoon, often with nothing because he spent the day sitting on his rock reading a cowboy book while fish stole his bait. Sometimes I went with him and I got to know that stretch of coast quite well. His other love was gardening. He managed a huge vegetable garden and grew prize-winning hyacinths.
One day he returned with not only several fish but also a small package he handed to me, something he bought in the town nearest his fishing spot, he said. It was a Christmas decoration and it was the most marvelous thing. A ball like other Christmas balls but it contained a tiny and exquisitely detailed village. I stared at that village for hours that day and every day thereafter until Twelfth Night when it got put away with the rest of the decorations and the tree made its final and fatal journey.
I used to get excited just thinking about the tiny snow-covered houses and the miniscule church, the trees, the streets and even a little railroad, which I was sure I saw moving, and I watched the streetlights wink on and off as I sat in the living room in the dark with only the lights on the tree illuminating me until Mom made me go to bed. The lights I saw in the globe may well have been the result of too long spent on intense staring. I’m describing the ball from memory because when my dad died I put it in his coffin to keep him company.
Mom asked me if there was something I wanted to include with the gifts my siblings had each selected to inter with Dad. Nothing united me with him more than that Christmas ball. I’d asked him several times about the store where he found it but he was unable to remember the exact location. He’d stopped to buy his afternoon tea on the way back from his fishing trip and come across this interesting shop, but buying something to eat was what he was concentrating on. I looked for that shop when we passed through that town about, oh, ten times, but never found it.
This year, getting old myself, feeling my age and occasionally wondering about life, I bought the tree in town rather than seeking one out in the country, getting ready for the invasion of children and grandchildren who descend on our house every twenty-fifth of December. Last year there were eighteen family and four neighbors. I have to give a shout-out to my wife Sarah and our eldest daughter, Lucy, who put the catering together every year. We always hope for some sun on the 25th so the kids could be outside and we weren’t all in the same room at the same time the whole day, adults waving chicken and turkey drumsticks to stress important points as they justified opinions.
By an amazing confluence of something or other I was left on my own on Christmas Eve. I’d twisted my ankle a few days back and normally I’d have gone to church carol service with the family, but I opted out of church and was left by myself while everyone else went off to sing carols or to visit childhood friends.
A gentle snow was falling as I said goodbye to everyone and I wandered back to the living room to breathe in the scent of pine, the very essence of Christmas for me. It’s why we don’t do artificial trees. The tree was a mass of sparkling colour, winking lights and decoration, not much greenery still visible. It was incredibly satisfying to just stand and take it in. As ever, a tape of Christmas carols was playing softly in the background.
An anomaly caught my eye. Up near the angel who was guarding the top of the tree a small twig with a ball swinging from it brought attention to itself. It disturbed my aesthetic senses so I reached up to tuck the twig into the space I thought it should logically occupy. I looked at the decoration and stopped dead. Not just a Christmas ball but a Christmas ball that was familiar. I lifted it off the twig and took a closer look. I felt slightly dizzy as I saw the tiny village laid out inside the ball. Yes, my mouth was open and I might have been over-breathing. I’d looked for another one of these brilliant balls since I put the original in Dad’s coffin and I’d never found anything remotely like it. I’m talking more than sixty years of keeping an eye open for one. And here it was.
Behind me, a voice said, ‘Isn’t it wonderful? I figured it was more yours than mine so I brought it back.’
I was spooked. Badly. I turned around to find my father standing there, a younger version of the man we’d buried many years ago. A full head of dark hair, a body that hadn’t been taken over by middle-age spread, one that hadn’t been ravaged by cancer, one where the stomach he had hated so much wasn’t an issue. He was wearing his tennis whites like he was on his way to a match back in the thirties.
‘Dad? Is this real?’ My voice was shaky.
‘I’m not, the tiny village is. Enjoy Christmas, Pete – that’s an order.’
He faded. I looked at the ball some more and immediately wandered into my bedroom where I put it in my sock drawer. Maybe I’ll hang it next year.
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