It is a let down. The Christmas tree which carried a hefty price tag on Christmas Eve is worthless and at my house I have to pay to have it hauled away. The presents which were chosen and wrapped with care are scattered and a huge bag of crumpled paper helps kindle a fire. The greatly anticipated company has come and gone. The refrigerator is full of leftovers. The after-Christmas sales with the pushing and shoving crowds bent on a bargain reveal the whole tawdry celebration for what it has become. Everyone moves about as if in a hangover. It is the day after Christmas.
Fred Anderson
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Did I mention that I was born the day after Christmas? Of course, I have proof from my birth certificate and the entry in the family Bible; but it also is recorded in another source. My grandfather had a grocery store and he noted my birth in his accounts ledger on December 26, right there between the entry for canned peaches and flour sacks.
My birth occurred in what later would be realized was nearing the end of the Second World War. As every birth, it occurred where my mother happened to be at the time. It was in her hometown in South Georgia; and I was born while she was living with her parents and while my father was somewhere in North Africa or Italy as a serviceman. I was a year old before my father saw me.
The first year gave me a time for early bonding with my maternal kinfolks. Forever after, I was close to my mother, grandparents and spinster aunt. In the ninth grade and again in the 11th and 12th grades I lived at my maternal grandparents’ house; and across the other years there were a thousand summer days spent there. The side porch was a child’s paradise and it became a set for many imaginary situations. The porch swing was easily converted into a make believe rocket ship.
The upstairs “junk room” was off limits, but we children managed to have secret forays into its treasure hold. We opened trunks and drawers and rummaged. The old house had been a refuge for great-grandparents and distant older cousins and each one managed to leave behind permanently some of their stuff. It was in one of those explorations into the “junk room” that I discovered an old Baptist history book. My discovery perked an interest which eventually became a career.
The coming of Christmas was signaled when a large package came in the mail from my great-aunt in Boston. It would sit in one corner of the dining room and we all would what was inside. The outside was marked: “Do not open till December 25.”
Sometimes we bought a Christmas tree but other times my grandfather just sawed off a limb of one of the large cedars which flanked the front porch. He would stick it in a pot, place it in the dining room—the only room with a heater—and we would decorate it with the contents of an old box which was brought out once a year. The box contained fragile old glass ornaments which had been used for many years.
The schoolmarms of my childhood had a challenge to keep the mounting Christmas spirit from disrupting any semblance of study. The church was the social center and there would be parties and the annual Christmas cantata. Lottie Moon became as familiar a name at Christmastide as Santa Claus; and the church auditorium held a large electric board and the lights were turned on as the members reached closer to the offering goal.
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The young inhabitants of the old house hardly could fall asleep on Christmas Eve. The first one up the next morning raced into the dining room to see what Santa might have brought. There would be a mound of presents in Christmas wrapping. My old knit stocking would be full of fruit, candy and a coin in the toe. And finally we got to open the large box from Boston and disburse its contents.
On the day after Christmas, my birthday would be celebrated. The presents were wrapped in white tissue paper to distinguish them from the Christmas presents opened a day earlier. The “day after” never quite measures up to the grand day of Christmas.
It required the passage of years and the natural evolution of parenthood and now grandparenthood to understand and even appreciate the Christmases and birthdays of childhood. I now realize that in her extravagance and exuberance, my mother engaged in excesses. She spent far beyond her means to assure that her children had “a Merry Christmas.” I now realize that my grandparents gave sacrificially to keep us all together as family. I now better understand the dynamics of interpersonal relationships.
This Christmas season I will enjoy the sight and sounds of the grandchildren and the good conversations with their parents. I will enjoy the holidays with my life’s companion. I will sing the familiar carols and treasure the precious time at my church, especially on Christmas Eve. Yet there may be a time when in my mind I walk down a sidewalk so familiar that each crack is remembered and turn up the walkway to an old house that no longer exists. No postman can deliver a package. No Christmas cards come to that street address. There is no way to contact the family. But in my mind I might walk up on that front porch and peer into the windows. And if I look very closely, I might even see a family huddled for warmth in the dining room. I might spy a cedar tree covered in tinsel and glass balls. Maybe a cake with candles will be on the table. I will recognize the folks each and every one.
As believers, we all are “day after Christmas” Christians. We live in a “day after” world full of confusion and troubles, yet we have been so affected by the events of Christmas, so bathed in its display of God’s love, that we are forever shaped by Christmas and forever mindful of its hold on our lives now and in the life to come. Christmas makes all the “days after” worth living.
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies. He may be contacted at [email protected] or at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.