50-Christmas 1960
© Dave Seward, 2000
As age and years overtake us and the experiences of life pile up like drifts of snow during a Virginia
But it wasn’t always so for old grinches like me. There were Christmases that held all the magic of anticipation and wonder, the hope and delight that the glittery songs promise. Magical Christmases happen for all of us but there is a small window of opportunity, somewhere between oblivious infancy and the know-it-all teenage years. For me that window opened in the winter of 1960, when my twin and I were 7 and my older brothers were not yet old enough to tell us that Santa was a fiction and all the presents came from Mom and Dad (sorry if I just burst your bubble, sweetie). It was an innocent time, but no more innocent or jaded than today, just a different time. That’s the wonder and the curse of humanity isn’t it? We learn from experience and try to pass those lessons on. But those of us currently shining our humanity into the universe can ignore the lessons of time and imagine each experience to be new and fresh and original. We can turn the bend on a trail and discover a waterfall that has borne witness to countless travelers and experience it as though we were Davy Crockett in an Official Coon Skin Cap! We can fly to the moon and walk around and plant a flag and imagine we are the only beings alive in a universe that is older and larger than we can even get our brains around. Ah the fictions we can create.
So it was for me in December 1960. My parents had fostered a fiction in my little brain that year by saying things like “Santa may not be able to bring much this year, there are four of you boys and he has lots of little boys and girls to make gifts for! ” Of course that meant that the Christmas presents this year would be so fabulous they feared we would be overwhelmed and were trying to prepare us. And of course we speculated among ourselves, in our 7-year-old voices (He can TOO carry a pony, Santa can bring anything he wants, his sleigh is magical and you’re just a stupidhead!)
In the days before Christmas, we would rush home after school to be the first to run the little electric train in circles under the Christmas tree, the smell of electric transformer and green pine sap mingling with the mesmerizing aroma of the cookies Mom would make. Each night it was harder and harder to get to sleep, dreaming of the jingle of sleigh bells in the snow-muted night. So when Christmas Eve finally arrived there was the tangible crackling electricity of desire and anticipation in the air, the sweet peak of weeks of fictions, and for a small seven year old, it was almost more than my little heart could hold. When bedtime came, we wanted to go and we didn’t want to go at the same time. And sleep had to sneak up on us from behind, after hours of straining to hear those bells and hooves on the roof.
On Christmas morning our parents would make us wait in the hall while they got their coffee mugs and cameras and stood together in the living room, snickering and whispering and making sweet desire grow in our hearts until we danced our little impatience dance and begged to be allowed in. So while minutes took hours to fly by, the debate would rage (Is it out there? I told them 50 times what I wanted, they must have told Santa. It couldn’t all be out there but some of it must be, I can’t wait any longer. I don’t care; I’m going out there right now. Better not, they might cancel Christmas, got to be a good boy; Santa keeps a list, dern it all!)
On my list that year was a bicycle of my own. We had shared bikes because my twin and I weren’t old enough to have a real bike and we had out grown the tricycle. So we lusted after a 7-year-old sized bike. I would even have shared it with brother, if I had to, that’s how much I wanted one. There were other things I wanted, too, but it was too much to hope for and as every 7 year old knows, if you hope for too much, Santa might think you are a greedy little boy and just fly right over your house! These Christmas negotiations are delicate, you know.
So we peaked around the corner and begged to be allowed in and waited and waited. Then the moment arrived and I remember the reactions of my older brothers who went in first. Excited screams with handclapping and jumping up and down and as I turned the corner I saw the reasons for the excitement. There in our modest little living room were parked four gleaming new bicycles. O, the wonder of it! I hesitated for a minute, not wanting the moment to end, to freeze it there in my mind. Then excitement took over and we rushed the bikes and climbed aboard and ……….there, facing the bikes……..were four Flexible Flyer sleds, lined up against the wall, just waiting for us!
We were stunned. This was too much. So we sat on the bikes, looking at the sleds and not knowing which to touch next and my little heart was so full of Christmas…. Well there aren’t any words to describe the feelings we get when we look at our parents and realize how they must have worked at getting our things and hiding them and keeping the secrets from us so that we could be surprised and …….how much they loved and accepted us.
That morning, there was a heavy frost, so we tried out the new sleds on the steep snowy slopes of the back yards. And by afternoon the sun had melted the Christmas frost off of the street out front, and we rode our gleamy new bikes up and down, and up and down.
Over the years we learned that Dad had disassembled one of the old bikes and repainted it and bought all new chrome and had recycled it. And that my aunt and uncle had bought the sleds. But that Christmas morning all those years ago, there was a Santa Clause. And the world was a safe and joyous place where children could be happy and parents did the right things for the right reasons and all was goodness and light.
That was the real gift I got that year. The message that the world is a comfortable and safe place where people can be trusted and loved and where little boys won’t be hurt no matter what.
I know now that this is not true for all kids. But all the years and all the miseries visited on children that I’ve witnessed haven’t been able to blot out the truth that I was given that Christmas. My heart still believes that life is good.
Dave Seward
September 2000
We lost our sweet Dad this year, and O how I miss him ,everyday.
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