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Best Christmas… Ever!

While everyone was back home, wrapping their pipes, calling their relatives to say goodbye and preparing for Wintermageddan, we took my five-year-old granddaughter up to Calloway Gardens to see the annual Fantasy in Lights show this week.

She is at that stage in life where everything is the ‘best ever!’

This year it was pretty dang frigid up in Pine Mountain but that didn’t keep my granddaughter from sticking her head out the car’s sunroof to gaze up at the lights and once again declare that this was the ‘Best Christmas Ever!’
She said that phrase several times over and over again throughout the night. And it got me thinking.

What was my best Christmas ever?

Automatically, most people would go to that year when they got the most presents. Or the year they got that one really big thing that their parents had worked all year or gone into to debt to buy.

That is usually the American definition of Best Christmas Ever.
But not for me.

It was the Christmas I spent in a homeless shelter.

When my children were young, my beautiful wife and I decided one year to forgo a bunch of presents and give them an ‘experience’ instead. We had a family meeting and asked the kids where they wanted to go.
“Disneyworld!” “Paris!” “The North Pole!”

We finally settled upon Washington, DC. I had a little influence on that choice. I had been to our nation’s capital a couple times before and remember how fascinating it was- especially the Smithsonian Museums.

And the great part was, unlike Disneyworld or the Eiffel Tower, admission to all of Smithsonian’s museums and exhibits are completely free.

I like free.

This seemed to excite our children, even when we told them that the only thing we would require of them to earn this expensive trip would be that on Christmas itself, we would have to spend at least part of our day doing something for others.

They were cool with that. So, my wife went online and started looking.
She found a bunch of places where you could volunteer but the one that we finally settled on was a homeless shelter that was just around the corner from the White House.

I found it quite ironic that the most powerful man in the world lived in a mansion with a team of professional chefs and just a few hundred feet away, people lived in cardboard boxes and ate scraps out of garbage cans.
We flew up to Washington a couple of days before Christmas and went to the museums and monuments. And then came Christmas morning.

Time to go to work.

The homeless shelter had let its staff take Christmas Day off to be with their families. Their duties would be taken over by volunteers from the community and, as the women we spoke to on the phone said, they were in desperate need of volunteers and were grateful to have us.

By the time we got to the shelter, some of the other volunteers had already been there for hours, cooking big pots of soup and making PBJ sandwiches.
They assigned me to help with the cooking and my wife and kids to get the seating area ready to serve the meals.

We joined right in and were welcomed by a big group of mainly white, upper middle class-looking folks who were laughing and seemed to know each other.

They asked me who I was and I told them I was from Georgia and that we decided to forgo giving Christmas presents this year and spend that money on a trip.

And then something happened I did not expect.

One of the women in the group hugged me and told me that I was the best Christian she had ever met.

I was the one to laugh then. I had only known these people for five minutes and I was most certainly not the best Christian she had ever met.

Not even close.

And then I saw the pendant hanging around her neck. It was a Star of David.
She was Jewish. All of these people were Jewish.

Well, now if made sense. They didn’t celebrate Christmas so coming down here to serve the homeless was just like any other Thursday to them.
But it wasn’t just another day.

This was supposed to be the day when us Christians had our ‘Super Bowl.’ When we were supposed to celebrate the birth of Christ who came to not only save us from our sins but also taught compassion, mercy and love for everyone regardless of their race, creed, religion or deeds.

The homeless and the Jews.

When the woman saw the puzzled look on my face, she explained.

“We’re all from Kesher Israel, the synagogue a few blocks west of here. We’ve been coming down here to serve the homeless on Christmas morning for more than twenty years now. And in all that time, we have never had a Christian join us.”

I knew what she was implying.

On the day when us Christians were supposed to be really living our faith, we were too busy at home opening Christmas presents and celebrating Santa than to bother coming down to the homeless shelter to take care of the less fortunate.

We let the Jews do it.

I will be honest with you, the older I get, the less and less I like Christmas.
The holiday becomes more and more commercialized every year and becomes less and less about the birth of Jesus.

And the more that happens, the harder and harder my heart grows. Very much like the Grinch.

I look at the holiday from afar and think, is this all there is? Is ripping through a mound of expensive presents and then just sitting around and looking at each other or taking a nap really what Christmas is supposed to be?

Or are my Jewish friends from Kesher Israel really the ones who are doing more ‘celebrating’ than me by showing up and serving soup to the homeless because none of us holy Hebrews can be bothered.

My best Christmas was not the day I got a train set when I was four years old. Or the year my wife bought me a new recliner.

It was the time I spent pouring soup into bowls at a homeless shelter with a bunch of Jews.

That is the one that melted my cold heart.
 
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Wife Swap

I’m not afraid of very many things.

Well, of course spiders and snakes. And drinking milk that has expired.
But there is one thing that terrifies me.

My wife signing us up to be on Wife Swap.

For you folks who have never watched Wife Swap, it’s this train wreck of a show on Paramount where two women from vastly different households trade places for two weeks and attempt not to kill their new family.

Oh, and at the end, the two couples sit around a table and tell the others why they suck at being parents and spouses.

Trust me, I already know my shortcomings in those two areas. I don’t need some toothless woman who makes goat cheese in her bathtub enumerating them on national TV.

I don’t know why my beautiful and sophisticated wife likes to watch this show. Maybe she suffers from Pittakionophobia.

That has nothing to do with this situation but when researching to see if there was a mental disorder for people who like watching trashy TV shows like Honey Boo-Boo and My Strange Addition, I ran across this word and thought it was funny.

By the way, Pittakionophobia is the fear of bumper stickers that are half-peeled off.

There are some freaky people out there.

And apparently, a few of them are on Wife Swap and that is why it is so hard not to watch it.

Here is the basic premise of a typical show.

Carol is the wife of a snake-handling Pentecostal preacher who lives in a singlewide trailer somewhere in the backwoods of West Virginia.

She also has a black belt in the Japanese martial art, Hojojutsu, raises Pygmy goats and feeds her family a strict diet of nothing but raw foods and cold-pressed organic vegetable juices.

Apollonia is a practicing pagan whose husband is a high priest in the Church of Satan. They live in a nudest colony in upstate New York with 500 other pagans and nudists.

Apollonia has not worn clothes in 34 years and has no intentions of starting now. Her diet consists of raw meat and Diet Pepsi and since her husband was castrated in a pagan ritual before they met, she is childless (thank God)!
Now the way this show works Carol, the Pentecostal martial arts expert moves into the nudist commune with her new Satanist husband for two weeks.

And Apollonia, the naked pagan raw meat eating, Diet Pepsi addict arrives in the home of the snake-handling preacher. No luggage, of course.
From there, things begin to fall apart.

The kids in the West Virginia singlewide learn to eat their roadkill raw and washed down endless cans of diet soda and the preacher’s wife gets to let her double-D’a get some sun.

It would fascinate me to be in the production meetings when the folks at Paramount are deciding how to arrange the swaps.

“I got a woman who thinks she’s a cat. Her husband empties her litter box.”
“And I’ve got a one-legged kindergarten teacher who works part time as a stripper on the weekends.”

“Oh, I forgot to mention. The crazy cat lady has two children with leprosy.”
“Perfect! Book ‘em!”

I do believe the ultimate goal of the show is to film one of the husbands murdering his ‘new’ wife on camera. Imagine the ratings if the man who lives on a strict diet of nothing but bacon is forced to eat only bok choy for a week flies into a murderous rage.

Pretty sure a guy like that has got plenty of guns stashed around the house and wouldn’t be shy about using one after a few days without any pork products.

I don’t have a lot of patience, so I don’t know what I would do if my wife signed us up to be on Wife Swap.

I’m sure the producers would send me somebody who wants to paint my toenails pink and make me drink my own urine.

But I’m not too worried about that. I’ve got some Xanax stashed away for just these kind of occasions.

It’s my wife I worry about.

They would probably send her to a house with a bunch of disrespectful punk-ass kids and some guy named Doyle who wears a dirty wife-beater t-shirt and insists on calling her ‘little lady.’

Let’s just say there would be blood in the streets.

I’ve asked my wife if she was contemplating signing us up for Wife Swap. There is an incentive.

The show pays each couple $20,000 and that would buy that fancy new manure spreader she’s had her eye on.

She doesn’t say yes.

She doesn’t say no either. She just looks at me with a sly smile.

I’ve stopped calling her little lady.
 
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Naughty or Nice

“Have you been naughty or nice this year?”

That is the one question I always ask children while playing Father Christmas at the tree farm.

The question comes after I ask their name, how old they are and, of course, what they want Santa to bring them for Christmas.

Some of the gifts they request are pretty easy. A new doll. A toy tractor. Or maybe a hoverboard.

It always amazes me at how most kids just want something simple for Christmas. Not a $1000 Xbox or a new motorcycle. Their wants are cheap. We’re the ones who think we have to spend $10,000 on Christmas presents or we aren’t being very good parents.

Bah humbug!

The fourth question I ask before offering my little friends a candy cane is if they have been ‘naughty or nice’ during the previous twelve months.

Invariably, every child states unequivocally that they have been perfect little angels. They don’t seem to understand that you can’t lie to Father Christmas.
We have a spy network that makes the CIA look like preschoolers.

Maybe they don’t understand the question. The correct answer is ‘both.’
I looked up the definition of naughty. Just so I would know what I’m accusing people of.

Webster’s New American dictionary says naughty means disobedient or badly behaved.

There is an entirely other definition of naughty for adults. I won’t go into that but just suffice it to say that the term probably refers to dressing up like a slutty nurse at a costume party.

Nice, on the other hand means pleasant, agreeable or satisfactory.
As in, what do you think of this sculpture I made of Santa from a head or cabbage?

“It’s nice.”

The thing about naughty and nice is that we all waffle between these two behaviors multiple times per week.

Probably multiple times per day.

Unless you’re in a coma or Mother Teresa, you are most likely both naughty and nice.

Hell, I bet underneath that nun’s habit, Mother Teresa was wearing a slutty nurse costume.

Unlike crocodiles, which will kill and eat everything they encounter, us humans experience a wide range of behaviors throughout our daily lives.
And that’s what naughty and nice are. Temporary behaviors.

A person can be nice during the day and go home and yell at his wife because his lucky socks are in the dryer and won’t be ready in time for the kickoff of Monday Night Football.

We are all naughty and nice.

I don’t want to sound ‘preachy’ but a long time ago there was a group of people who wanted to stone a woman for being ‘naughty’ and even Jesus made that same point.

Let you who are without sin cast the first stone.

After hearing that, the people in the crowd dropped their rocks and went home.

We can all be on the naughty list one day and the nice list the other.
Unfortunately, it is really hard to get your name erased from that naughty list. Once you get on it, that stain is often really hard to wash out.
We don’t give people second chances.

I don’t expect the little kids who sit on my knee and feverishly eye the big jar of candy canes on the table next to me to grasp that.

But us adults. Well, we should know better. And we should act like it.
And that means the daily practicing of forgiveness.

There seems to be an epidemic of unforgiveness in our society. It’s not like that everywhere.

In the African nation of Ghana, forgiving someone is an important part of their collective culture. The phrase for I forgive you is ‘bone fa kye’ which loosely translates into there was a bone broken between us that has so completely healed, it leaves no scar.

Buy many of us revel in breaking those bones over and over again.
In my own family, there are people who have not spoken to each other in decades because someone acted naughty years ago. The two parties can’t even recall what was done or said but are determined not to forget it.

So, if you are wishing for something for Christmas this year, maybe it should be to give those people you have cut out of your life a second chance.

It doesn’t show weakness to forgive someone. Especially when none of us are perfect.

Remember those people who dropped the stones and walked away? I bet some of them were related to the woman caught in adultery.

I try to do the right thing. And I fail at it. A lot.

Thank goodness there aren’t any stones handy for those around me or I would surely be the one cowering on the ground.

Little kids don’t want fancy gifts. They just want to be loved and accepted. Just the way they are.

And that goes for the adults in your life, too.

That gay cousin. The stepmother who dared discipline you as a child. That ex-husband who cheated on you and just desperately wants to spend Christmas with his kids.

It doesn’t cost anything to forgive people. And doesn’t require any fancy wrapping.

Maybe this year would be a good year to try it.

And this year if you happen to sit in my lap and I ask you if you’ve been naughty or nice, you should say “both.”

Unless, of course, you’re dressed like a slutty nurse.

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White Christmas

I dreaming of a white Christmas.

It’s a fevered dream that is the result of some bad eggnog, but it is still my dream.

Just once before I die, I would like to wake up on Christmas morning, fling open my window to find my front yard covered in snow. Or at least, not wake up to 80-degree weather.

I’ve gotten used to the disappointment over the years and learned to just live with the heat. But now I have to sit in it wearing three layers of fur and velvet.
Since my beautiful wife decided to start a Christmas tree farm a few years ago, dealing with the annual holiday heatwave has become a real challenge.

Now, during the four weekends before Christmas, I throw off my regular winter uniform of shorts and a paint-splattered t-shirt in exchange for wearing a ten pound outfit made of thick red velvet. And to make it even a little more comfortable, the person who created the suit thought it would be a good idea to attach a heavy layer of Polar Bear fur around the neck and wrists.

If I were actually wearing the suit at the North Pole, it would be quite cozy. But I live in South Georgia where the only time the word ‘polar’ is used is when we stop off at the corner convenience store and fill up our 96-ounce Polar Pop styrofoam cup with Mt. Dew.

Hey, all sizes are 99 cents so who can resist?

This past weekend, our area experienced an unusual wave heat and humidity. Well, I guess it can’t be categorized as unusual when it is always like this.
Maybe the correct word is dreaded.

Our busy days at the tree farm are Saturdays so I play Father Christmas for pretty much the entire day. The suit goes on and I park my velvet-swathed butt in a rocking chair that is also covered with velvet for at least eight hours.
Velvet in velvet. Ugghh!

Add to that the fact that I am basically sitting in a greenhouse and it’s the perfect storm for self conflagration.

The first couple of hours aren’t too bad. The sun is still behind the trees and, if there is a breeze coming in through the doors, it is pretty tolerable.

Kinda’ like sitting wrapped in a big fluffy towel, awaiting the masseuse to show up and give you a good rub down at the spa.

But then the sun rises above the trees and begins shining right in your face through those windows. That’s when things start to get fun.

At first, I can fan myself with an old funeral home fan I keep hidden in the folds of my red suit. It’s a nice one with a picture of Jesus on one side and the logo of the funeral home on the other with their slogan, “You stab ‘em and we’ll slab ‘em!”

I made that slogan up but it would catch the attention of potential customers, don’t you think?

There is only so much air a funeral home fan can move and after a couple of hours, I just give up and sit and stew in my own juices.

And that is not an attempt at paradoxical language. I am literally stewing in my own juices.

I start feeling the sweat rolling down my back. My mascara starts to run. It’s a mess.

But the heat doesn’t keep me from being jolly when a child bounds through the door expecting to sit in Santa’s lap and rattle off their wish list.

Despite the heat, I am committed to my craft and never break character.
Well, I came close yesterday.

I had been in the ‘hotbox’ for about three hours. Every time I shifted my velvet-wrapped derrière in my chair, I could feel the sweat puddling in a new orifice.

It’s times like this when I gaze through the windows towards the heavens and plead with God.

“Lord, please let there be a blizzard. I promise that if you will do it just this one time, I’ll shave my head, sell all of my possessions and become a missionary to Uzbekistan.”

But no matter how long I wait, the Lord never answers so I just sit there and melt.

Maybe the Lord is teaching me a lesson about climate change.

“I told you that if you kept using hair spray in the 70s, this would happen. But you wouldn’t listen and just kept on spraying that Aqua-Net with disregard for the planet. Now look at you!”

Of course, God would sound like a very angry Morgan Freeman.

But, back to the story.

I was sitting in the hotbox, feverishly working that funeral home fan (you stab ‘em and we’ll slab ‘em) when a little boy of about four wandered through the door.

There was dried snot under his nose and he was sucking on a big red candy cane.

The little boy ran across the floor and bounded up into my lap.

For a few minutes, he just stared at me and continued to lick that candy cane.

On closer inspection, I noticed the candy was coated with all types of debris.

Little bits of leaves, some dirt and plenty of hair.

I pushed down my gag reflex as me and kid stared me down for a few seconds.

Maybe he didn’t speak English. Or had eaten so much candy that he was in the throes of a mild diabetic coma. The kid just stared and licked.

Finally, I asked him his name and what he wanted for Christmas. And he just kept of staring and sucking on that hairy candy cane.

I was hot. I was irritated. I was wrapped up in several layers of velvet, sitting in a pool of own sweat. And now, I had a little snot-nosed toddler sitting in my lap, sucking loudly on a gooey stick of sugar and grabbing at my beard with his grubby little fingers.

I had never just given up on a child before. I had always managed to work up a smile and pry some language skills out of most obstinate child.
But as I looked at this little critter sitting on my knee, I felt my fatherly instinct start to fade.
 
I was at the end of my soggy rope and was just about ready to push the little boy off my lap and tell him to come back when he learned to talk when the toddler suddenly stopped licking his candy cane.

And he spoke.

“Are you the real Santa?”

“Of course,” I said.

He studied me for a little longer, paying close attention to my beard. All those counterfeit Santa’s have a fake beard. I have been growing mine since September. It’s real.

I noticed a small tear on the little boy’s cheek. And then he whispered.
“My grandpa died,” he said.

For a second, I didn’t know what to say. Most kids tell me what they want for Christmas. They don’t talk about death.

They don’t teach a response to that question in Santa School.

And I have never gone to Santa School.

So, I did the best I could.

“Do you miss him?” I asked.

The little boy nodded. A couple more tiny tears ran down his cheeks.
He looked at me. I wondered if he thought since Santa has magical reindeer and can fly around the entire world in a single night that St. Nick had the power to bring his grandpa back.

I don’t.

So I did the only thing I could. I pulled the little boy closer to me and hugged him. I no longer cared if that candy cane with all the dirt and hair got on me.

This was more important.

We stayed that way for a moment and then the little boy squirmed out of my arms and ran back out of the door and disappeared into the trees.

As he faded away, I was wondered if the little boy was real. I’ve seen enough Hallmark movies to know that at Christmas time, all kind of weird stuff happens.

People come back from the dead. Little children ghosts wander out of the trees.

Maybe he was an angel sent by God to show me that there are more important things than snow on Christmas.

I looked back up into the bright sky and told God that I was sorry for being so selfish.

Then I shifted a little in my chair and felt the puddle underneath me.

Only this time, it wasn’t sweat. It was melted snow.

Just in time for Christmas.
 
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One Last Bow

You remember Margaret Knight, don’t you?

You have probably used her invention in the last week and didn’t even know it because history has forgotten Margaret Knight.

In 1858, Margaret invented the flat-bottomed paper bag.

Paper bags had been around hundreds of years but no one had ever been able to master one that stood up on its own.

Until Margaret.

Humans have very short memories. We live in the here and now and have a tendency to forget all of those legendary people who came before us.
This weekend, I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dance with one of those legendary people in the Nutcracker.

Miss Alison. The founder of South Georgia Ballet.

A couple of years ago, I had mentioned to the current Artistic Director, Melissa, that I would love to see Alison on stage just one time before I was too old to be up there with her.

During hundreds and hundreds of SGB performances over the years, she has always been out there in the dark somewhere, directing this show but never in the spotlight.

Alison deserved to be in the spotlight at least one time for all her efforts.

Well, this year, my Christmas wish came true.

When I showed up for my first rehearsal back in October, I discovered that for the first time in the twenty-five years that I have been in the Nutcracker, Herr Drosselmeyer would have a dance partner.

Obviously, Alison is a much, much better dancer than I am so most of our rehearsals were spent with her whispering the steps of the dances to me or dragging me around the stage like an unwanted piece of luggage.

And I didn’t care. I was just glad she was there. She deserved this special appearance.

Probably nobody involved in the Nutcracker knows that better than me. Not the director. Not the ballet mistress or other instructors. Not the adult party guests and other adults in the room. And especially not the young members of the company.

In fact, there was no one in the room, young or old, who knew Alison’s story quite like I did. Because I was the only one who has been there from the beginning.

Alison first came to Cairo back in 1996 to start a little studio teaching dance, theater and music. Back then nobody knew her.

She wasn’t from here. She was just a stranger with a dream of providing a place where young people could learn to love performing arts as much as she did.

My lovely wife and I had three small children by then and we wanted them to grow up participating in something more than the two main activities offered in our small town: playing football and eating fried chicken.

We both had a love and appreciation for the arts and wanted that for our children, too,

Alison’s little studio was the perfect place for that desire to be planted.

At first, not a whole lot of families entrusted their children to this outsider so Alison’s first few classes were rather lean. But that was okay. She gave every student every ounce of energy she had.

And it didn’t take long for us to realize that this was more than just a dance school.

Alison became a second mama to these kids. She loved every one of them like her own and demanded the kind of behavior from each student that she would expect if they were her own children. Respect. Kindness. Hard work.

My children became the well-adjusted, respectful, hard-working adults they are today as much because of Alison’s influence on them as from me and my wife.

If this all sounds like a fairy tale with a happy ever after ending…
… well, it’s not.

Most of the parents and supporters of South Georgia Ballet saw all of the smiles and grand leaps on stage. But few saw what it was like when the lights were turned off at night.

Things were hard. Alison barely had enough students or sold enough tickets to cover expenses. She never got rich. In fact, the longer she ran the studio, and the more elaborate her shows became, the deeper and deeper of a hole Alison found herself in.

It became overwhelming and finally, after much anguish and soul-searching, Alison gave up control of the dance company that she had founded. It had just grown too big for her to manage alone.

She eventually left SGB altogether and took a job teaching dance in the school system.

I know at times she has probably felt like she was a failure.

She has never said so out loud but I have see it in her eyes when she would attend performances. There was great pride but also a deep sense of ‘what if.’

Had she done something wrong? Or not been good enough?
 
I’m sure Alison has asked herself that many times over the years.
 
At our performance on Saturday night, when she made her first entrance in the party scene, Alison was met with loud cheers and applause.
 
Maybe the young dancers on the stage or in the wings didn’t know who this lady in the red dress was, but the audience did.
 
The auditorium was filled with former students, alumni and parents of children who had been taught and loved by Miss Alison. They knew who this woman in the red dress was and just how truly special she was.
 
I was watching from the other wing, waiting for my entrance, and this spontaneous applause truly touched me. So, during the intermission, I sought out Alison and asked her if she would be willing to come out on stage with me at the end and take my bow.
 
The adult party guests are not featured in the curtain call so I knew she would not come back on stage.
 
I also knew she should.
 
During some of our conversations during rehearsals, Alison had told me that she was going to retire in a couple of years and move up to Albany to be closer to her family.
 
This year’s Nutcracker may be the last time many of us will ever see her on stage. Or ever see her again at all.
 
Certainly she couldn’t just fade away. Or be forgotten.
 
She wasn’t Margaret Knight, the inventor of the flat-bottomed paper bag.
 
Doomed to be forgotten to history.
 
No, she was the person who had started all of this. She had built it from nothing with her own blood, sweat and tears.
 
She would not just fade away. Forgotten.
 
So, when the curtain call came, I escorted Alison across the stage and allowed her to stand in the spotlight.
 
For the first time. One last time.
 
And just for a moment, bask in the applause and love of all of the lives she has changed forever.
 
I wanted her to know that she had not been a failure. This was all because of her.
 
She had purchased this moment with her life.
 
And she deserved one last bow.