24 December 2007

24 December 2007
Merry Christmas Everyone,
The last few days, as the 25th of December closes in on us, I’ve had a brand new Christmas experience. During off moments when my mind has had the opportunity to drift, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about my childhood Christmases. The Douglas fir trees that found their way into the living room of my family’s home in Hayward have made their way out of my memory bank for the first time in years. The colored lights, tinsel and silver and red balls that came out of storage each year in mid-December have twinkled in my memory along with the annual contest I had with my older sister Jan to see who could tease the other into madness, if not into trouble with our mother while decorating the tree. The care that was taken to choose just the right gift for each member of the family paid for with money saved over the previous several months. The anxious thought that went into deciding on a specific gift request from Mom and Dad hoping that what was asked for was not considered too outlandish or too expensive. The hours taken in pouring over the Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog and the special section with gifts for kids. And the year that I found a new bicycle next to the tree on Christmas morning and the wonderful approving smile on my father’s face when I asked if I could give the hand me down girl’s bike, that I had inherited from Jan, to my depression poor best friend at the time, Woodrow.
I have a keen recollection of worrying to excess about whether or not the gifts I had wrapped with a little boy’s care were going to be well received or dismissed by other family members. I can’t remember ever being disappointed although at times I was sure that I had missed the satisfaction mark by a mile. Most of all, I can almost smell the sweetness of the newly opened annual Christmas box of cookies that my grandmother Berck sent from her Nebraska kitchen. The shoe box container usually arrived with most of the cookies on the top and bottom layer crushed and cracked; providing a bowl full of pieces that were put out on the cupboard for quick consumption.
And then on Christmas morning, I was privileged to go “carol singing” with the Methodist Youth Fellowship group that my father served as adult leader, even though in the beginning I was eight to ten years younger than some of the high school kids in the group. And then several years later, the fun I had each Christmas morning singing four part harmony with the group as I learned to read music and exercise my teenage tenor voice.
The years of World War II were especially memorable because my parents seemed always able to find several service men to come to our house to celebrate Christmas with us. For an early teens boy, these guys were all heroes and adventurers to me who traveled the world and seemed not to have a care in the world. While most of these brief visitors seemed more interested in my older sister than me, they always talked to me and treated me like one of their own. I felt a foot taller when they were around.
A lot of Christmases have flown by on evergreen wings over the past sixty or so years. Each has had its own flavor and mixture of gifts and people and good times. And each has been culminated by someone saying, as my mother did each and every year in my memory, “I think that this has been the best Christmas ever”.
From the bottom of my heart I wish everyone “The best Christmas ever” with many more to come.
I miss you all on this Christmas eve and love you all very much.
Grandpa Bill, Dad and Barnacle Bill