I love this time of year, friends and family getting together, celebrating the day.
Waiting for the big guy to come down the chimney, and leave us our gift that we have been wanting for since before Halloween!
We write the letters, sit on his lap, and hope it appears! Then magically, on Christmas morning, it does, then it instills our faith that Santa does really exist!
I thought I'd share a few holiday poems and a story I wrote in recent years:
The Gift
The moments seem to creep up on us like the ghosts of Christmas past!
We all have them, the memories
that make us cringe every time we recall them!
Maybe it’s as simple as not
getting that bike when we were five and thinking our world was going to end!
Or, the time you had to
lie to your Aunt saying "how beautiful is this sweater? I’ll wear it
everyday!" even though it was pink with purple kangaroos all over it!
It
may be as complicated as to not understanding why things don’t always work out
like we wish!
Then we deal with the ghosts
of Christmas present!
"Will I have time to get
all this done?" or "Will they like the gifts I chose for them?"
Then there’s the ghosts of
Christmas’s yet to come! If it were up to Charles Dickens, we would all be
frightened out of our wits and try to change the world!
In reality, we can do just
that. Maybe it’s wishing a stranger on the street Merry Christmas, or opening
the car door for someone because their hands are full, even if it is a few steps out of our way!
Or it can be as simple as
telling the ones we care about how much their gift of love and friendship means to us!
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
From another year...
The Lights...
The
lights are up, the presents are all wrapped. As I sit by my tree, I think of
the gifts I’ve gotten for people. A sweater, a CD, a box of candy. All nice,
but not the best gift of all. No, not gold, silver, or even diamonds. It’s
better than even those!
The best
gift that I have to give can not be wrapped! Nor can it be hidden under the
tree, and I know that this may sound selfish, but I hope I receive this gift as
well!
It is
simply the gift of friendship
Remember, the hugs and warm wished you receive from loved ones are so much more valuable than the Ipod you got or that sweater from J.Crew.
The Ipod will eventually break and the moths will find your sweater, but that warm embrace will be there forever, in your heart and theirs!
In closing I will share a Christmas story I wrote, I was going to wait but why not...
The Gift
by Ken Christian
He sat alone that cold December morning, just a week before
Christmas. The only signs that it was the holiday season were the unopened
Christmas cards on his entry table and the stupid black and white movie that
was on the TV.
It was about a man who wished he had never born and another
foolish man following him around trying to convince him that life really is
good!
Bob looked at Christmas, as most other holidays, a waste
of time! But Christmas was the biggest waste of time the entire year! People
being nice to people they wouldn’t normally care about, much less even talk to!
As a child, Bob didn’t like Christmas, Yes he enjoyed
the two weeks off from school, but that was it. December twenty-fifth, when his Aunt Ruth and Uncle George would
come over to visit, he could do without!
She would always pinch his cheek too hard and Uncle George would always
say “Bob, what are you going to be when
you grow up?” Sometimes he didn’t even care if he ever did grow up, especially
if he had to act like Uncle George one day, that is!
At age ten, just like now, at age thirty-seven, Bob thought
the holiday season was full of hot air, just like the fat man in the tattered
red suit, ringing that annoying bell on the street corner! He smelled
like Uncle George after a few too many eggnogs which was horrible enough!
It started when he
was five years old. Bob learned to hate Santa Clause! All he wanted was that
red bike with the tassels on the handlebars!
He sat on Santa’s lap and pleaded for his bike, and Santa promised it
would be there! He woke up that Christmas morning only to find a stuffed bear,
Mousetrap, the game, and a Tonka truck. No red bike! His only wish, the only thing he had wanted was not granted!
To this day, he hated Santa, and the day that he
represented, because Santa had lied to him when he was five years old!
As every year, since his parents had moved to Florida, his
mother would call and plead with him to fly down and visit for the
holiday! Not unlike today when she
called, Bob politely told her that work was crazy but he would try, knowing
well and good there was no way he would! It wasn’t that he hated his family. He loved them. He promised himself that he
would go down in January, as he had done every year since his parents moved
south! Just not during that blasted holiday!
As Bob left his building, his doorman Bill said “Merry
Christmas, Mr. Berringer” Bob said “there’s no such thing” and kept walking!
Throughout the day, he declined various invitations for
‘gatherings to celebrate holiday cheer’ feigning too much work and not enough
time to get it done! His best friend Joe told him of a gathering at a bar right
around the corner from his apartment that night but Bob made up a failed excuse
about some tenants Christmas party that was happening!
As the day wore on, he acknowledged peoples holiday
greetings and responded with Luke warm salutations!
It was a harsh winter day, snow was predicted by midnight
and the paper said it would continue until the next afternoon, if not longer!
As he left his office, he looked toward the sky. Bob thought the snow would fall sooner than
later that day, so he decided to take the subway rather than walk the twenty
blocks which he normally did on a daily basis!
“If I get mugged, maybe I’ll forget about Christmas” he half
joked to himself. As he was standing at
the station, waiting for his train, a little girl, no older than four or five,
boldly tugged on his jacket and said “Excuse me mister, is Santa a real person?
My brother says he’s not but I believe in him, I even asked him for a bike, and
he said he would bring it to me!”
As she rambled on, Bob tried not to pay any attention, but
she was persistent! She kept talking about
the blue bike she asked for and her older brother who said Santa wasn’t real!
Bob thought to himself as this little girl kept talking to
him about Saint Nick and the bicycle she had asked for! He thought of this
child’s hopes and dreams and her only wish for a bike under the tree on
Christmas Morn, like his were so many years before! He thought that maybe this
is what Christmas is all about! Keeping hope alive that maybe, just maybe,
wishes can come true, if we believe!
He then said “Yes there is a Santa Clause.” Bob surprised
himself by saying this but somehow it felt good to say it.
As the little girl ran off to play with her brother, her
mother stepped up and apologized for her daughters bold outburst! He said no
apology was necessary as he kept thinking about the bike she wished for.
Then he thought to himself, maybe Santa is alive in all of
us, we just need to find him.
Another surprise to
him was the statement he made to the child’s
mother. “Did you know she asked Santa for a bike/” Her response was, yes
she knew that but they would be lucky this year if they had food on the table
this year, the bike under the small tree was would not be happening this
Christmas.
He then pictured the look on the girls face that Christmas
morning, turning the corner, hoping beyond hope that Santa had granted her wish
only to find it not there and her older brother saying “I told you he wasn’t
real!”
As the train stopped at the next station, the mother and her
children got up to leave! Although there were too more stops before his, Bob
got out as well.
At the station, he asked the mother to wait a moment as he
pulled out his checkbook! He wrote a check
for one thousand dollars, and
handed it to her.
She looked confused and tried to give it back. Bob then said
“you don’t know me, I don’t know you but your daughter showed me the true
meaning of believing in something that I lost more than thirty years ago! My
only request to you in accepting my gift is that you get her the bike that she
asked for!”
As Bob turned to go up the stairs, she grabbed his sleeve!
As he turned around, he saw tears in her eyes as she said thank you and Merry
Christmas!
As he walked away, he thought of the look on the child’s
face that Christmas morning as she rounded the corner and did see the bike she
asked Santa for!
As he left the station with three blocks ahead of him before
he got home, be beamed with the holiday spirit that he had been lost so many
years before! As be walked toward his building, before the doorman could say a
word, Bob handed him a hundred dollar bill and said Merry Christmas Bill!
“Merry Christmas, sir” was Bills response, wondering what
happened in the last nine hours!
When Bob entered his apartment, the phone was ringing, it
was Joe again, asking him to join him for a bit of holiday cheer at the bar
around the corner from his apartment! Bob’s response was ”If only you let me
pick up the tab” He then said, "I have a phone call to make then I’ll be there
in ten minutes!"
Bob then picked up the phone and called his Mother in
Florida to let her know he would call her in a day or two to let her know when
he was flying in!
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
