[This is another of my columns from "On the Farm," which I wrote many years ago for the Fostoria Review-Times.]
GETTING IN THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS
Merry Christmas, Ho, Ho, Holy Toledo!
Only two more weeks till the big day and I haven’t yet found my Christmas spirit. I know I left it somewhere around here. It was flying high, wide and nauseous at Halloween when I started playing the Christmas music. But I lost it somewhere between Tom Turkey and the solid chunks of ice in the horse and chicken troughs.
What happened to the old days when you walked along slippery sidewalks with the snow falling lightly and the carols ringing from a faulty PA system? Or the days when a flannel nightgown cost $4.00 and a kid could buy three hankies for Daddy and still have change enough from his dollar for a half pound of French creams to enjoy on Christmas Eve? Where is that innocence which forty years ago prompted me to say, “Mama, guess what I got you for Christmas, but it isn’t an egg poacher!”
The past is gone forever, and now you push your way through crowded store aisles, waiting forty minutes to pay an astronomical amount for a shirt for Dad, but what the heck – it’s Christmas. And the grocery total is twice the usual as you stock up on dates, nuts, coconut and nonpareils, not to mention sugar, flour, butter and eggs.
In the progressive age, you have to traverse the entire area of the store to procure a box to put Dad’s shirt and Mom’s nightgown in, and you have to prove you bought it before the stingy merchants give it to you. And how about the price tag on the pack that the jolly red-suited man carries on his back?
Why won’t my spirit show its face when I listen to my primary school kids practice their carols for the PTO program? Instead, I lament that their voice quality is unfortunately the same as their parents’.
Or couldn’t it flag when I taste that most delicious flavor of Christmas, anticipation? No, the thoughts at the back of my mind push out the anticipation in favor of despairing at the chaos my living room will be all of Christmas Day and how can I plan the dinner so that everything is ready at the same time (I only have one oven).
Even the memories of that most magical time, Christmas Eve, when you walk out to go to church and there’s a special something in the air are dismissed from my mind when I ponder how to keep the kids’ church clothes out of their hands so they are fresh for church on Christmas.
In the meantime, there’s dollars of shopping, there’s dozens of cookies to bak and hours to spend closeted with the wrapping paper and scotch tape. It sounds like these tasks will only serve to depress my spirit even further.
Watch next week for Part II of the Christmas spirit: “How to Keep the Christmas Spirit” or “Even the Cookies in the Freezer Have Been Raided!”
