Chicken Soup for the Soul: Christmas Magic

by Jack Canfield

  “They can go right in,” my uncle reassured me. “When we were kids we used to play in that creek all the time.”

  Keeping one eye on the children, we searched for pine and spruce branches, cutting only the most wreath-worthy. I walked along and picked up a few sprigs, but mostly I looked around in wonder at the scene before me. I was walking on the grounds of my ancestors. My great aunts picnicked under the shade of these very trees. I imagined my mom and her sisters, splashing in the stream where my own girls now played. This place, with its babbling creek and towering trees, seemed almost sacred. I tried to take it all in—the giggles of the girls, the crisp, strangely invigorating air—but all too soon the setting sun signaled that it was time to hop aboard the wagon and head back home.

  An old barn shed, our wreath-making headquarters, soon became a hubbub of activity. An assembly line formed as we carefully wove evergreens through metal wreath forms. Like busy elves, we hummed along in our workshop, swapping family gossip as our Christmas masterpieces took shape. The bow committee, headed by those with artistic flair, added ribbons, bells, and crimson berries to our festive creations. One by one, completed wreaths hung on the wall for inspection. Which one would we choose to take home this year? What wreath would we take to the cemetery in memory of my dad, a man who never missed a farm holiday?

  Nightfall signaled a bittersweet end to a day steeped in tradition. Wreaths packed into minivans and SUVs, we said our goodbyes, then headed our separate ways. Though we lived far apart—from Ohio to New York to the mountains of West Virginia—we would carry a piece of family with us as we went home and prepared for Christmas.

  “There. Now it looks perfectly centered.” Back at home in Ohio, I hung my wreath on the front door. So much more than a mere Christmas decoration, it is a constant reminder of family. Like the intertwining pine branches, we are connected—forever woven together by history and tradition.

  ~Stefanie Wass

  The Post Office

  A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver.

  ~Thomas á Kempis

  It had been a roller coaster year and I wasn’t feeling very merry that Christmas.

  There had been highs, but the dips, wild curves and downward plummets left me battered. My husband’s chronic illness, which had been stable for several years, began to spiral. Hospital stays led to bad news and more time in the hospital. It seemed like every week brought a new crisis. I lived with hope and hopes dashed, culminating with my husband of thirty years dying of heart disease.

  He died in mid-October, and in December I had no energy to be merry. Perversely, I craved company, and filled my time and my house with activity. I didn’t take vacation from work when others did, and I entertained family and friends during the season. I found baking to be good therapy. My life was turned upside down, and so many parts of it I didn’t understand, but I knew how to make shortbreads and sugar cookies. The familiarity of the task brought me comfort.

  It felt good to have the house full and noisy, and my family close. My sister-in-law and I took turns with Christmas, and that year was her turn, but I asked if I could have the celebration at my house. I couldn’t face being idle on Christmas Day.

  All of this activity helped me get through that difficult first Christmas. Inevitably, however, when the meal is over and the gifts are unwrapped, people begin to pack up. At the end of the day, when things got quieter and slower, I missed Bill.

  He was never much of a shopper, but he always put enormous thought and effort into finding the perfect present for me. The year I’d asked for a hand-knit sweater with pictures on it, he had gone from store to store for weeks, looking for just the right one. Another time, he carefully researched which would be the best digital camera for me. The time he spent was his love language.

  We were cleaning up when I spied the box. Unwrapped, it sat alone by a wall in the living room. No one claimed it or knew who it came from. No one had seen when it arrived. As I held it, a strange Twilight Zone feeling overtook me. It contained a ceramic post office for the Dickens village that covered the top of my piano. Bill had given me most of the other buildings for Christmas several years ago in unpainted form, and painting them throughout the next year was great fun. A train ran through the center of the village, and I created hills and farms, a schoolyard and an ice rink. It never looked the same twice. Every Christmas, I anticipated putting it together and looking into what seemed like another world.

  The year before, I didn’t put it up. I was overwhelmed with the stress of Bill’s illness, and I did only the minimum to make Christmas for the family. The village was for me, and I decided I could live without the work it took to put it together. I missed it, though. There was something in that village that met a need inside of me during the busy season. What hurt even more than not having it up, was the fact that no one seemed to notice its absence. To me, it was a glaring message that things were not as they should be—perhaps even a cry for help. Even my husband didn’t say a word about it. I wondered if he even noticed. Christmas passed, and the village stayed in its bin in the garage.

  This year, when it was obvious that nothing was as it should be, I had put up the village. As I had unwrapped each building, I remembered. I loved the barn, the church, the toy shop and the train station. I added lamp posts, benches and characters scurrying around in Victorian splendor. The skating rink in the center had skaters who would dance at the push of a button.

  I stared at the ceramic building in my hands. My village had been missing a post office and here it was. It was painted and ready to sit among the other buildings on the street. I moved the candy store and created a spot for it, and then stood back to reflect in wonder at what had just happened.

  Maybe Bill had noticed after all.

  ~Ann Peachman

  A New Tradition

  Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind.

  ~Mary Ellen Chase

  The stoplight turned yellow—then red. I waited. People scurried everywhere, their arms filled with packages. Snowflakes floated gently in the air, melting as they touched the windshield. Christmas lights blinked along the streets and sidewalks and from each shop window. Suddenly, tears filled my eyes: Christmas already?

  The light turned green. Alone and feeling lonely, I headed home. Glimpses of decorated trees and flickering lights inside homes along the way brought a flood of tears and heartaches—I couldn’t take Christmas this year. Single again after thirty years of marriage, everything seemed gone: family and home. There would be no holiday meals to prepare, gifts to wrap, stockings to fill, or squeals of delight from happy faces of grandchildren on Christmas Eve. Our family had disintegrated—dissolved—nothing left but shattered pieces.

  My oldest grandchild, age six, had been asking, “Grandma, when are you going to put up your Christmas tree?”

  “Not this year, honey,” had been my reply.

  Finally one day she stated, “Grandma, you can’t not have a Christmas tree. It just wouldn’t be right.” The disappointment on her face caused me more pain than my sorrow and emotions—many things were not “right” this year.

  “Okay,” I agreed, “but under one condition—you ALL will help Grandma put up the tree. You find a time when everyone can come... and I’ll get everything else together. We’ll have a big party to trim the tree. We’ll call it Grandma’s Tree-Decorating Party.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” she said jumping and clapping her hands in glee. She made the phone calls and called me back a couple days later with the day and time all arranged. She had been a busy little girl.

  The family that I thought had been fragmented came together on the appointed afternoon. My sons laughed and joked together as they hacked and sawed the tree, getting it into its stand, and untangling themselves from the strings of lights as they circled the tree in the living room.

  Seated at the table in the kitchen, the children—Stephanie, Jason, Erica, and Rachel (ages six to two)—
made strings of popcorn and cranberries as they sipped and snacked on food. Parents and Grandma already had agreed, “You may have anything you want to eat at this party.”

  The aroma of hot fruit punch made from dried and frozen fruit, spices, and cinnamon sticks filled the air. In holiday array beside the fruit punch sat the eggnog, hot chocolate with marshmallows, homemade fudge, popcorn balls, apples, dishes of nuts, and trays of Christmas cookies. This kept everybody hilariously eating as we worked and chatted together. Adult hands lifted the little ones high enough to place their popcorn strings on the tree and hang the bulbs just a bit higher.

  After the tree was decorated we gathered around the organ to sing carols. Then we read The Christmas Story by the lights on the tree. Soon the little ones were asleep in dreamland. Our new “tradition” had begun.

  As the children became older, they assumed more of the tasks, including the Christmas background music. During their teenage years, cookie baking and decorating became a pre-party morning fun time with Grandma in Grandma’s kitchen. Several times a friend or two joined us on that special day. Then the dates had to be arranged according to college schedules, and Grandma’s Christmas-tree-decorating-party became the “new tradition” everyone fondly remembers.

  Thirty-three years have passed since that first party. Our family now includes seven great-grandchildren and we are scattered over several states. In honor of “tradition,” Grandma joyfully puts up her tree, saying a big “thank you” to her very persistent granddaughter for changing that first painful Christmas into many years of happy memories.

  ~Josephine Overhulser

  The Wooden Soldier

  We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

  ~Anaïs Nin

  Each year it seems to take me longer to put away the Christmas tree decorations. My hands tend to linger on those ornaments that have come to have special meaning for me. Today, it’s a small, painted balsa wood toy soldier that my fingers close around.

  There’s not anything special about it: it’s just a piece from a Christmas craft kit which included easy-to-follow instructions, designed for those of us with limited artistic abilities. No, nothing special except... I am transported back in time to the winter of 1974, as my husband Roger and I, along with our two-year-old daughter, Anne and our miniature Dachshund, Muttley, arrived in Wichita Falls, Texas. It was Thanksgiving Day, and I felt far, far away from friends and family.

  My husband had been accepted into the Air Force Flight Engineer program at Sheppard AFB, with orders to report for duty the day after Thanksgiving. It was officially an “unaccompanied tour”—meaning no provisions are made for families. But even though we knew it would strain our modest budget, it was unthinkable that we wouldn’t all go. The year before, Roger had been in Korea for the entire holiday season, and we were determined to be together for this one.

  After a long, tiring journey starting out in Washington, D.C., with side trips to Ohio and Pennsylvania to visit our respective parents, we were happy to have reached the end.

  Almost magically, an inviting-looking motel appeared. Even better, a Denny’s was just across the street! We were cheered by the colorful sign in the window beckoning us with the promise of “turkey dinner with all the trimmings.” Spirits rising, we pried our grouchy toddler out of her car seat and into the dark, chilly night.

  “We’ll all have the turkey dinner,” we chirped moments later to the bored-looking waitress. “All out,” she responded. There was a moment of silence as this information sunk in. “Spaghetti for three,” I said in a small voice.

  After our untraditional Thanksgiving dinner, we checked into the motel and fell immediately into our beds.

  All night long, the cold winds howled across the Texas plains, and in the morning there was a fine dusting of snow on the carpet near the door.

  Roger dressed quickly and headed to the base, while the rest of us—dog included—snuggled deeper under the covers. But he was back in an amazingly short time.

  “They said I didn’t have to be there until Monday morning,” he said, not looking directly at me.

  “You mean...”

  “... that we could have spent Thanksgiving with our families,” he finished.

  We just looked at one another.

  As least I wouldn’t have to look for a place to live on my own. Feeling cautiously optimistic, we set out to find something to rent for a month or two. What we were looking for was a cheap, furnished place that accepted children and dogs. Finally, we came upon a marginally adequate trailer that featured all of the above, plus, we found out later, a healthy crop of fleas.

  We settled in, and soon Roger was immersed in class during the day, and intensive studying at night. The rest of us tried to keep busy, so as not to distract him. We took endless walks around the trailer park, watched TV and read countless books.

  In the meantime, Christmas was growing closer. While I watched the glittery holiday specials on our small, rented black-and-white TV, I couldn’t help noticing the stark difference between the festive scenes portrayed on the screen, and the depressing decor of our temporary quarters.

  It is difficult for people who have never experienced it to understand how much household possessions mean to us military wives. Being aware we might find ourselves living in many different places, we tend to find comfort in the familiar things that make a house a home.

  I thought about all my treasured Christmas things packed safely away in a storage unit. The only thing I had with me was the set of painted wooden ornaments I had grabbed at the last minute. There had been no room in the car to take anything else, and certainly no money to buy anything new.

  Still, all of this would have been bearable if I could have looked forward to being in my own home on December 25th, surrounded by, if not family, at least friends. But I knew this would be impossible.

  Christmas shopping was simple: only a few small gifts for my husband and me; more for Anne. I had bought some material and stuffing at the fabric store, and every day during her nap, with the dog curled up at my side, I worked on hand-stitching a pink elephant pillow for her.

  A week before the big day, we bought a live Christmas tree that almost touched the living room ceiling. We set about making popcorn and cranberry garlands, stringing them on sturdy pieces of thread. Then, we hung the ornaments and stepped back to see the fruits of our labors. Our little girl was delighted, and even I had to admit the tree looked nice.

  On Christmas morning, we watched as Anne emerged sleepily from her bedroom. We saw her eyes become suddenly full of wonder as she gazed at the splendor under the tree. She went immediately to the elephant pillow, and held it tight against her small chest. Stealing a glance at my husband, I could tell how special it was for him to see her joy.

  Later, we bundled up and ventured out into the cold, equipped with a cup of quarters for the phone booth at the entrance to the trailer park. Huddled inside, we wished our families Merry Christmas and they did the same, all of us talking at the same time.

  By mid-afternoon, a few of Roger’s classmates arrived. Since none of these men were fortunate enough to have their families along, we wanted to include them in our modest celebration. They seemed to care little that the food was served on paper plates and eaten with plastic cutlery. Warm conversation and laughter filled the dingy living room well into the evening. Finally, reluctantly it seemed, they headed back to their lonely barracks.

  Then it was over, this strange Christmas on the plains.

  Many holiday seasons have passed since then—joyous times of wonderful gifts, beautifully decorated houses and glorious trees. They meld together in my mind. But the year of the tacky trailer and humble tree remains crystal clear.

  Anne is a grown woman now, mother of four. She held on to her elephant pillow until the material simply wore out. Then she put it in a pillowcase and kept it even longer.

  The wooden ornaments still grace our tree every year, hanging proudly among their more prest
igious store-bought neighbors. They have earned their place.

  If someone were to ask me why I so value the simple wooden soldier I hold in my hand, I would simply say it’s because it is a priceless reminder of the Christmas I learned what really mattered.

  ~Susan H. Miller

  Just Enough for Christmas

  Brothers are the crab grass in the lawn of life.

  ~Charles M. Schulz

  My brother came home for Christmas again this year. It’s not him that I mind so much. It’s the fuss that occurs when he arrives. He rarely calls, he never writes, he’s a three-time college dropout and he’s never stayed with a job for more than six months. He only sees my parents at Christmas and they have to send him airfare to get home. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but when Gerald shows up for Christmas my parents act as if Christ himself has come back to celebrate his birthday.

  We can’t decorate the tree until Gerald gets home; then Uncle Jim and Aunt Liz come over and Dad videotapes the evening, completely out of focus. My mother gets weepy and calls the neighbors to talk about how good it is to have the family all together at this special time.

  I’m surprised my parents haven’t taken the baby Jesus out of the Nativity set and replaced it with a plastic replica of my brother.

  On Christmas morning, after my brother’s favorite breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes, hash browns and apple juice, we experience the torture known as “gift time.”

  My mother always thinks she knows just what I need. She usually gets ideas when she makes unannounced visits to my apartment. Then she drops unsubtle hints about what I should expect under the tree.