Christmas is a costly time.
It cost God everything. When all
the hoopla, all the sales, all the parties, and all the family are gone,
Christmas becomes memory. My memories
about Christmas are different from most people.
The Hopper Christmas was not about presents, but about time together,
momma’s cooking, daddy’s being Scrooge, and no school.
I do not remember my first Christmas. I was twelve days old. The first Christmas I remember was when I was
four. It was cold, snow flurries, and
the wind was blowing as daddy too me to the Bijou,
an old movie house. Every time I
watch It’s A Wonder Life, I have a
flashback to the Bijou. If you remember
George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) running down the street in the snow yelling at
the Bijou. It was my first encounter
with The Three Stooges, pizza, and salami.
It was in Beloit , Illinois /Wisconsin .
After the Three Stooges movie, each boy and girl received a
Christmas present. I never had seen that
many presents before. It was the first
time I remember seeing a Santa Claus and he was very intimidating for a shy,
small Alabama
boy. Each boy and girl sat on Santa’s
knee to get his or her presents. My
first encounter was quick. I did not
know what to make of a man in a red suit with a long white hair and a beard.
The fact was that each of the employees of Beloit Iron Works
contributed money to the company which bought each boy and each girl
presents. I did not know any better. I was unfamiliar with the whole Santa Claus
thing.
When we moved back to the poverty of Alabama , Christmas was never the same. In rural Chilton County ,
there was no Bijou, no pizza, and no salami.
It would be years before I saw the Three Stooges. I would be out of high school before a
Pasquales’ Pizza would open thirty miles from home and stores would sell
salami.
Each Christmas dad would be on layoff, Christmas shutdown,
or unemployed. There would be no money
for food, much less for presents. We stopped
going to visit cousins. They got lots of neat things that we were not allowed
to touch. Aunts and uncles instructed
our cousins to hide their toys until the Hoppers left.
Mom and dad stayed on edge during Christmas. Mom wanted to decorate the house and dad
would get depressed and start acting worse than Scrooge. Even though not a Christian, he would say
that Christmas is about the birth of God’s son, not about all the hoopla that
people make it to be.
Every year something always made Christmas hoopla diminish. During the Christmas season, I have repaired a
slipping transmission, replaced a blowout tire, replaced a broken fuel pump,
and replaced deteriorated disc brake pads.
At other times, things would happen like the dyer element burning out, the
pickup engine blowing up, and the well pump going bad.
There would be the unexpected hospital stay for cancer that
would days later take mom’s life. There
would Christmas Day emergency room visit for stitches to my son Aaron’s mouth
where he tried to run through a barbed wire fence.
Trips to therapy for a bulging disc caused from the stress of layoff,
mother dying with cancer, no insurance, and college tuition for upcoming term
due.
The first Christmas without dad was tough and the first one
without mom was real tough. The first
Christmas with my oldest son Andy was exciting.
He was almost a year old and was happy playing in a box of Christmas
paper. The one with my daughter Angela
was challenging. She was three months
old and had colic. The one with Aaron
was special. He was seven months old and
was fun to watch.
One Christmas after graduating high school I bought dad a
unique shotgun, a collector’s item the first year he owned it, mom an electric
guitar, my sister a beauty salon style hairdryer that looked like a giant
hornet nest, one brother a cassette player, and the other brother a starter
guitar.
When imagining Joseph and Mary’s first Christmas, today’s
hoopla misses the point.
And suddenly there was
with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory
to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. And it came to pass, as the angels were gone
away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go
even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord
hath made known unto us. And they came
with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger
(Luke 2:13 -16 KJV)
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