The Colour of Christmas

I remember only two childhood Christmases. This is because sometime between December of 1970 and December of 1971 our family became ensnared in the tentacles of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Christmas was removed from my growing years like a sound baby-tooth inexplicably knocked from a healthy jaw. Eventually it gets replaced, but the growth of the whole row of teeth becomes affected, and in the meantime there is a frustrating gap.

The penultimate Christmas I recall must have been in 1969. That year the tree was set up in a corner of the dining room. We always had a real tree in those days, that filled much of the house with a fragrant scent and scattered needles everywhere. It was closely monitored and kept alive by regular doses of sugar water in its metal base, which was swaddled in white flocking scattered with glitter, to mimic snow. That was the year I remember us getting blocks, and the hooting Marx trains, and I think that was when I got that old Baloo ‘jiggler’, a wind-up toy that rocked and wobbled, in my stocking.  

Our stockings were a wonder. Mom got them from a lady who crafted them (from a kit, of course). They were a marvel of felt and sequin applique figures (Mike and I had Santas on ours, while John had a harlequin clown), and each one of the first three were marked with our names. By the time Kenny came along that wasn’t a thing, I guess, though he had his own hand-made stocking. They were our personalized ‘toe’ claiming land in the realm of Christmas, and they were filled with candy and small toys come Christmas day. They were hung on the cardboard chimney, which was set up that year (it must have been a mild winter) in front of the living room heater.

But my final childhood Christmas took place when I was in First Grade. That was the last year I could take part whole-heartedly in classroom holiday activities, the last year I could anticipate wrapped presents or festive events. Perhaps retrospect paints it with a brighter brush; perhaps if I had had the intervening years filled with ‘growing-up’ Christmases the enchantment would have faded over time.  But as it is, there is one moment, a single timeless instant that I have relived time and again as the season rolls around and that somehow strikes to the heart of true holiday wonder.

To set the scene: I was six years old. That year the Christmas tree was set up in the living room, in the corner by the TV. The cardboard chimney was almost opposite it, along the wall between living room and dining room. It was the evening of a late December day. Mom had plugged the tree in; otherwise, the space between the kitchen and the bedrooms was a shadowy cavern. Mom was in the kitchen, and we boys were in our room. For some reason (drink of water?) I had to get to the kitchen, so was passing, by myself, from one pool of light to another. Along the way I was unexpectedly arrested by wonder.

The familiar space of the living room had been changed into a dim crepuscular chamber. The soft, blinking lights on the tree winked on and off, twinkling on the tinsel, the multi-colored glass ornaments, even the glitter on the tree skirt. It glanced off the sequins on the stockings opposite, making subtle changing patterns. It was reflected in the living room mirror and in the darkened TV screen, turned off in a rare moment of stillness. The shadows in the far corners seemed merely a frame for the glowing colors, and as the tinted shade changed from red to green to blue, even the dreaded blind bogeyman of darkness seemed tamed under the gentle hand of Christmas.

I stopped, struck by the splendor of it all. I slowly sat down on the couch. There are moments in my life when I hear the silent whisper, “You shall always remember this, forever.” They are many times revelations of beauty. Sometimes they go deeper even than that, like a call from beyond the walls of the world. This seemed to be both.

Eventually I got up and went to the kitchen. But in some sense, I am still in that room, marveling at the colors and light shining in the darkness. That is what Christmas means to me, beyond all presents and Santa, beyond all feasts and music. It is a vision that has sustained me for many years, through some mighty bleak times. It is one reason why I will defend Christmas and its Lord against all detractors, against all debunkers, because for a moment, beyond all common glitter and rough, cheap trappings, I glimpsed a Mystery.

And so, Merry Christmas to us all.