A Christmas Story

Earl was all alone. Midnight Mass was over. The people in the congregation were dispersing, heading to their various homes, smiling, laughing, full of joy. It seemed to Earl like he was the only solitary figure in the parking lot. This was going to be difficult. The first Christmas since Aileen had died.

She had been his focus for over thirty years. She had made Christmas magical. Not just for him, but for the whole family. His daughter, the apple of his eye, was home now with her husband and three small children, probably frantically wrapping and getting ready for Christmas morning. His son and daughter-in-law were at the other end of town, probably grabbing forty winks before their newborn daughter woke for a middle-of-the-night feeding. In past years, Aileen would have been leaving the church with Earl. Their children at their side, they would be heading home to experience the magic. And it WAS magical, you see. In the midst of a world grown cynical, Santa Claus had always been very real in this home. For years, ever since their son had been old enough to stay up for Midnight Mass, Earl and Aileen had laid down a tradition involving the filling of Christmas stockings. Before leaving for Mass, the family would hang up their stockings in anticipation of Santa’s visit. At the appointed hour, they would head off to church, locking the door behind them as they went. When they returned, it was always the same. Bursting through the front door, the children and their parents would discover that in their absence, St. Nicholas had made his visit! The stockings were filled; the cookies were eaten! Wondrous! Magical! That NORAD report they had heard earlier in the evening on CFRA, the one about the radar sighting of Santa’s sleigh, must have been real and true! In spite of what the kids at school might have been saying, Santa Claus COULDN’T be your parents! They had been at Mass when the stockings were filled, so of course it HAD to have been Santa who did it, right, Virginia? Let’s heat up some meat pie and celebrate this joyous day!

So year had followed year, as years tend to do, and the kids had grown older, as kids tend to do, and they had both left the nest to grow their own branches of the family tree, but still the magic had continued. Please do not be mistaken. Earl and Aileen’s children were not naive. Over the years, when stocking stuffers that had supposedly been made by Santa’s Elves were found to have “Zeller’s” price tags on them, which someone must have inadvertently overlooked, this flaw was quietly met with averted eyes or knowing winks. To have made a comment about it would have been to break the spell. And even through the bouts with cancer that both Aileen and Earl had courageously endured, Santa had continued his faithful annual mission to their home.

Santa has been pretty consistent in what he had stuffed into those stockings over the years. When you find someone’s favourites, you stick with them, right? How can you go wrong? Earl’s stocking, overflowing its wares onto the surrounding chair due to the excessive nature of Santa’s love, usually contained some or all of the following items: executive dress socks, size 10-13 (in a frugal household such as this, the Lord of the Flat could never have too many pairs of black socks!); a can of Planter’s Mixed Nuts (“Keep your hands off those! They’re for your Dad!”, their mother would tell her kids!); a bottle of sherry (to be sipped at judiciously from a juice glass on Saturday nights, Earl’s night to make supper. Saturday supper was inevitably fried hamburger and onions, with basket after basket of home-cut french fries, prepared to the background noise of the “Bugs Bunny Road Runner Hour”); a car window scraper (can you really ever have too many car window scrapers to help you through the eight months of a Canadian winter?); and last but not least, a box of chocolate-covered maraschino cherries. (If the children thought nobody would notice if they sneaked one of those babies, they were SORELY mistaken! Sore on the BUM!)

So there stood Earl, key in hand, about to enter his west-end Ottawa home, alone on Christmas Eve for the first time in his life. Aileen had fought so bravely, but had lost her battle the previous summer. His children had their own young families to worry about tonight. So this year there would be no visit from St Nicholas. There would be no meat pie. But there were still his memories. No pain, however intense, could erase those. His children and grandchildren would be with him tomorrow. It was good to be alive. He murmured a quiet prayer of thanksgiving.

As he stood poised to turn the key in the front door lock, Earl noticed a light off to his right. The door of a parked car had opened, and two figures emerged. The unmistakable aroma of a meat pie prepared according to Aileen’s recipe met his nostrils. “Hi Dad,” a voice said. We just happened to be in the neighbourhood and thought we might drop by. Is that OK?” Earl was no longer alone, if he ever really had been at all.

“Of course,” he replied. “Please come in!”

Father, son and daughter crossed the threshold together and shut the door against the cold of the winter night. Removing their coats and boots, they walked into the living room. There, waiting for them, was the magic. Earl’s chair, which he had left empty before his departure for Mass, was empty no longer! His Christmas stocking, lovingly sewn by Aileen so many years before, which in his grief he had not even brought up from the basement, lay there, bulging. It is unnecessary, of course, to tell you of the socks, scraper, nuts, sherry, and cherries contained therein, clever readers that you are. Words did not need to be spoken. The three participants in this little scene all knew what it was about. Santa had come, as he always had and always would.

At this point, you may be asking, what of it? What is the point of this late-December narration? Well, here it is: since the days of the Magi, Christmas has been about giving. It has been about doing special things with your family, whatever your family looks like. It has been about reaching outside yourself and making magic moments that will light the dark places which all of us will sooner or later come to know. It has been about holding onto your loved ones when life’s gales blow and keeping one another grounded. It has been about remembering where you came from so you will have a better idea about where you are going. Mary and Joseph surely did not expect all that they encountered on that first Christmas, but they faced it all together with faith and determination, and made it through to the other side. May we all know the blessing of having and being friends and family this Christmas. May we follow the light of that star and discover the wonder of Emmanuel, God-With-Us.

Santa Claus would want it that way.