Christmas Is About Giving

The Hospital Carolers, Christmas 2010
(not shown: Elliott, who took the picture)

In spite of childhood memories and fantasies, we move on to adulthood. For me, that transition demanded, among other things, a long adventure in trying to understand myself – my own likes and dislikes, attitudes, fears, beliefs, loves – everything about myself. Simply coming to understand my own response to Christmas required a particular effort.

Early on, after the side trips into university, the Army and graduate school, I had expected to be able to reach a point from which I could recreate the annual Christmas season into some semblance of my Ogbomosho memories. [Patsy and I even managed one Ogbomosho Christmas during that time, when I was doing my graduate field research in Nigeria in ’76.] But more Christmases in England, then visits to family each year, all failed to make me happy, and I resigned myself to further delay in creating The Ideal Christmas.

Please understand that Christmas with the in-laws was really quite nice of itself. “Mrs. J” had spent months cooking goodies and buying lots of gifts, and we always came away from her house carrying extra weight and far too many new things. But each Christmas Day, after a wild few minutes of opening presents, the day would quickly settle into that odd depressed boredom at which the Christmas afternoons of my childhood had previously hinted.


Year after year, I marveled that I could so anticipate the delights of Christmastime, only to end up depressed and disappointed that it had not met expectations.


What was wrong with me, I wondered? I had so much for which to be thankful, and yet – I usually came away feeling … empty. Why?


Then, one Christmas afternoon at my in-laws’ house, something different happened. Someone pointed out that my in-laws had no rail on the steps to the basement, and wouldn’t it be nice if they had one to which to hold?


I came alive! I could do that! I could make a safety rail!


So I did. And I had fun doing it. My in-laws kept telling me how much they appreciated my having done such a thing, and especially on Christmas, but I want to tell them: “Thank you for putting some meaning back into my Christmas!” The next year, I built a safety rail for the steps leading to the attic. Then a safety rail for Aunt Betty. And I loved doing such projects!



That series of projects, and the pleasure I experienced from them, set me to thinking. In the following years, as Matthew grew older, we began celebrating Christmas at our house in Rocky Mount. I had begun to recognize what I had been missing, and I knew what to do about it. Our Christmases started a subtle, but definite, change.



I had realized that a celebration, no matter how nice, and no matter how many presents I received, could never provide the personal joy and meaning for which I craved, so long as everything we did was about “me” and “us.” I realized that my joy came from giving, not from getting.


Christmas in Ogbomosho had been much more about sharing and giving, even if I had not really realized it then. For example, we never celebrated Christmas with our family by itself. We always celebrated with other people – we always had other families staying with us – And even for a selfish little boy like me, Christmas became a time of sharing. Even my Christmas afternoon depressed boredom only came on when the other people had disappeared and I was just trying to make myself “happy”!


There had been some hints along the way, too, even before I had my great revelation. While we were in England, away from family, we had little to do on Christmas Day, so we helped our local pastor provide a meal and entertainment for elderly people in our neighborhood. Patsy and I were all set to feel sorry for ourselves because we were so far from family, and we were amazed at how marvelous a Christmas we had when we spent it serving and making laughter for people we didn’t even know! For a couple of Christmases in England, we joined Geoff and Judith to invite various lonely people in for a Christmas dinner.


It was against the background of such joyful experiences of giving that we experienced the depressing disappointment of merely getting.


So – back in Rocky Mount, Christmas began to change. Never again would we eat a Christmas dinner with only family present. The visitors have been different from year to year. Sometimes older friends came who had no one else with whom to celebrate. One friend’s wife was dying of cancer, so they planned nothing special. She couldn’t even eat, but both they and we enjoyed sharing that time around our table. The next year, Bill came alone; Ruby had died. One memorable Christmas, we enjoyed the company of an ex-con who was freshly released from the hospital with a broken leg but who had no way to get home for dinner. [I drove him home later that afternoon.]. Each year is a little different in detail, but similar in that it is about giving.

When Matthew grew old enough to help, our church family began serving at the local soup kitchen on Christmas Day. After a few years, another church took over that service, and we began going to the hospital on Christmas afternoon to sing carols.

We sang carols at the hospital again yesterday. As usual, that singing to patients, families and hospital staff “made our day,” not merely because we enjoy singing with our friends, but because we know – from peoples’ responses – that what we did had mattered. We had a very good Christmas.

As I have come, with age, to understand more about myself and my response to Christmas, I have also come to realize that … I also shouldn’t be surprised!

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son ….”

Giving at Christmas time was God’s idea, anyway, but it works for me, too.

The Way Christmas Is Supposed To Happen

Memories are marvelously individual things. We each see the past through our own, personal, lenses. Accuracy, in the strict historical sense, is not necessarily all that important. Christmas is, by its inherent nature, a time which aids in the creation of special memories. Several years ago, I wrote down the following memories of the way I experienced Christmas and thought it was allways supposed to happen.

__________________________



Christmas '59, when I received the Daisy Mod. 25
BB gun shown here slung on my back, still sets
the standard as "Best Christmas Ever" (although
'51 remains a close second).



Aahhh! Christmas in Ogbomosho. To this day, I am convinced that THAT is where REAL CHRISTMAS happened, especially during the 1950s and early '60s.

Christmas there was not just a day, but a season. The best season.

We lived on a very large mission station, and celebrations were a Big Deal. There were a series of parties. A station party, often at the Seminary, I think, or perhaps at station guest house. And it was wonderful.

And there was the Christmas Pageant. Usually involving shepherds and wise men, etc.

One year, my sister, Diana, was Joseph, because she was the biggest kid. Linda Goldie was Mary. I think Pat & Jim and Jonathon were the Wise Guys. John and Bill Carey and I were shepherds.

Then later, John and BC and I aged into being Wise Guys. We always sang "We Three Kings," and my verse was always "Born a King on Bethlehem's plain, gold I bring...."

One year we did something like "The Littlest Shepherd," and Kenny was Him.
For weeks ahead of time we would have rehearsals, and it seems that Aunt Jane was usually the one tasked with making us into real thespians. And it was wonderful.

Sometime in November we would make our pilgrimage to Lagos to buy Christmas presents. We stayed, of course, at "the Hostel" and shopped at Kingsway and UTC and Chelarams and Leventis. Kingsway had a black Father Christmas, and I had my picture made sitting on his knee. And in the afternoons we would go to Victoria Beach for a couple of hours, and I would be delighted and terrified (and sometimes almost drowned) by the tremendous breakers. And back at the Hostel there would be a quarter inch of sand in the bathtub when I was finished. And it was wonderful.

My mother always hosted a carol sing at our house -- usually on Dec. 23rd. Most of the station crowded into our living and dining rooms to sing Christmas carols, while my father and a few other non-singing men retreated to the kitchen to fry up donuts. And we always sang "The Twelve Days of Christmas." And it was wonderful.

And there was lots of good food, with cakes and cookies and pies in quantities not seen through the rest of the year. And there was Mrs. Jester's fruitcake. And it was wonderful.

And there was the excitement in the air, and marvelous anticipation, and parents hid things from children, and children were forbidden to enter certain rooms. And it was wonderful.

And the days were hot and dry and the nights were cool and you could fantasize about winter, and it seemed that Christmas would never actually arrive because time seemed to pass so slowly. And it was wonderful.

Sometime along through this process, the Christmas decorations came out. For years, we had a casuarina tree – or at least a branch – for a Christmas tree. Daddy would string the lights, and Mother and Diana would attach the decorations, and I was "shooed" away from the tree because I was not trusted to place ornaments properly (and to this day, I am satisfied to allow others to do the Christmas decorations).

The tree lights were the old fat-bulb kind, and if one bulb was bad, then the whole string would hang in darkness while Daddy would change one bulb after another to find the offender, and then the lights would come on in delightful, colorful glory. There were a few of the candle-shaped lights that were supposed to bubble, but after a few years they did well just to light up. In later years there was tinsel to hang on the tree, and plastic icicles, and even lights that did not all go out if one failed.

Then came the years of artificial trees. They were more perfect and modern and from America and they looked more like the pictures in the Saturday Evening Post, but somehow -- they never seemed quite as "right" as the casuarina branches -- and the only smell they had was of musty staleness.

Sometimes I would just sit in the living room and look at the tree, and at the wrapped presents that began to accumulate under the tree (but which we were forbidden to touch), and I would dream delightful dreams of anticipation and wonder what was in those packages.

And it seemed that Christmas would never actually arrive.

And it was wonderful.

Finally, after weeks of anticipation and delighted, seemingly unending, frustration, The Day Before Christmas arrived.

The excitement was unbearable. Nothing really happened that day, and the boring suspense was marvelously terrible. Sometimes, there was a station party that night, and that was wonderful, because it was fun, and it filled more time until The Day arrived.

I knew that some families cheated and opened their presents – or at least one present – on Christmas Eve, but I knew that such behavior wasn't really proper, and that wasn't how WE did Christmas. No, we waited – and suffered – until THE Day.

The Night Before Christmas was not just a poem to me. It was the LONGEST night of the year. I lay and tried hard to go to sleep (because I knew Santa Clause couldn't come until I was asleep). At the same time, I listened carefully for reindeer (I had been assured that Santa could handle the fact that we had neither chimney nor snow). And my mind danced in unquenchable excitement as I anticipated the delights to come with the next daylight. Eventually, sleep would sneak in behind the drumming from the town and overpower me when I wasn't looking.

Suddenly, it was The Morning, and Christmas was HERE! Mother would wake me and bundle me into my robe and slippers, and we would step out onto our upstairs porch to begin CHRISTMAS!

There was a special progression of events that then unfolded and which could not be altered.

It was The Way Christmas Is Supposed To Happen.

As we made our way onto the porch in the pre-dawn damp darkness of the harmatan mist, we could hear coming closer and closer one of the most beautiful sounds in all the world. Then we saw them coming. Along the path from the next house approached a line of angelic figures, all in white and carrying candles and singing Christmas carols. They were the nurses and nursing students, plus several missionaries, and this was their present to us. Sometimes the carols were in English, sometimes in Yoruba, and Bill William's flute sang through the mist between the voices with a sound that, to this day, I have never heard equaled for the thrill it produced in me.

We really missed the Williams and the nursing students after the Nursing School moved to Eku in the mid-'50s, but the Hospital nurses continued the tradition.

Slowly, but all too quickly, the singers-in-white circled our house and moved on. They never stayed long enough, but it was OK for them to leave, because it meant that we also could move on to The Next Thing. After all, there was a precise order to the way Christmas must unfold.

By the time the singers had left, Daddy probably had the lights on. Electricity was very important to a Christmas morning (Christmas trees don't really look very exciting by lamp light). Usually, the station light plant was working, but if not, Daddy would have our small generator cranked up. We could not go downstairs until Daddy said it was OK.

Then the word was given, and we rushed down the big front outside stairway and in the dining room door – then right, into the living room. What would be under the tree? Had Santa Claus found us?

Santa was remarkable in his ability always to come through for us. Besides the wrapped presents under the tree, there would be other marvelous things that had mysteriously appeared in the night. My sister and I would descend upon them with delightedly selfish tunnel-vision, while Mother would urge us to slow down, and Daddy would busy himself with tuning the radio  the BBC with its all-day Christmas music that crackled over the short-wave radio.

The two contenders for Best Christmas Ever are '51 and '59.

In '51 I found that Santa had brought me one of those wonderful huge English Raleigh tricycles and a wooden "tommy" gun with a handle-and-ratchet I could turn to produce a rat-tat-tat sound. That tricycle was the beginning of my independence, and I could go anywhere on the compound (at least until the bush dogs around the hospital chased me home).

In '59 there was a full-size bicycle and a Daisy Model 25 BB-gun by the tree. I would love to know how many miles I put on that bike. I wore the BB-gun out completely in two-and-a-half years. I could ride that bike without holding on and shoot my BB-gun and hit every tree along one side of Teak Boulevard while going as fast as I could pedal.

There were always other people there to share Christmas with us, too. Martha Tanner came some years, and the Seats and Griffins and Browns. They always made Christmas more special, and having them with us spoiled me. I still do not think it is really Christmas unless we can share our table with non-family.

After the first rush at the Christmas tree, and the presents had been summarily dealt with, we would have a big breakfast, usually with special goodies. Then it was time to play with the new toys. Christmas mornings seemed to pass in a blur, and I have very few clear memories of them. I might go to check on what other kids had received, but that was usually anti-climactic, because for the most part, since our parents all shopped at the same stores in Lagos, we all got pretty much the same basic presents. The only opportunities for envy came with special items sent out from the States, and I don't remember too many of those.

Sometime during the morning, all the various servants in any way connected to our household would come by for their gifts – usually money. They would all be dressed in their fanciest clothes and would often have wives and children in tow.

One Christmas, the old “peanut woman,” who sold peanuts around the compound and the town from a calabash on her head, came by. The once-brightly-painted calabash was long since faded and scratched to the point that the colors were hardly recognizable. Daddy took her calabash and repainted its designs in fresh, bright, good-quality paints – and a new Christmas tradition was born.

Lunch time. A lingering excitement. Then the grownups went off for their naps, and I would be alone in the living room. This was the only day of the year I didn’t have to take a nap after lunch. But by this time, it would be too hot to go outside, so I would sit in the semi-darkness of the now-unlit living room and look at my gifts.

Sometimes, there was a sense of disappointment, because I was already getting bored with my new toys. I remember marveling that one could so anticipate Christmas, and it be SO wonderful and exciting, and then it could leave one feeling so deflated – and there was nothing special left to look forward to for a very long time. It took me years to realize that the real delight is mostly in the anticipation and preparation and the doing-for-others, not in the getting.

Sometimes, on those hot, quiet Christmas afternoons when it seemed that the rest of the world had dozed off to sleep and only I was left to be bored, I would pick up a new book (Mother always made sure I had a new book for Christmas) and read. I usually finished that book the same day.

Eventually bath time came, and supper, and a quite evening, and off to bed, knowing that it would be a whole year 'til next Christmas.