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| The new family sits still for a portrait about three months after the fateful Chrihstmas Eve--Kathy, Heather, Carolynne, and Patrick. |
I was a bright, shiny new step
father on Christmas Eve of
1981. Kathy and I had been married
all of one week. With foolish
enthusiasm, I wanted to establish
our own family traditions for the holiday that, hopefully, would endear me to hearts of my new daughters. Carolynne,
nine years old, Heather only seven.
One night earlier that week I rushed
from my job repairing football shoulder
pads to a bookstore on Lincoln Avenue conveniently located
near a favorite saloon. Undoubtedly fueled by a couple of shots of Christian
Brothers with beer backs, I
plunged into the store. I found what I
was looking for—a nice small edition
of one of my own favorite Christmas
stories with some charming
illustrations.
After dinner on Christmas Eve,
and some negotiations between the
girls and their mother over whether they would be able to open any “under the
tree” presents that night—she let them open one—I asked them to settle next to me on the couch. Kathy played some carols softly on the on the stereo.
I was as excited as I could be. I could picture
the girls, all grown up, reading
this same story to their children fondly
remembering me, of course. I opened
the book and in my most mellifluous
voice began to read.
I think I read four lines before they began to squirm. After the second paragraph, just as the story was getting going, Heather bleated out pitifully, “Mom!
This is boring! Do we have to?” Carolynne seconded the anguish.
Since it was not my intention to actually torture any children, I reluctantly shut my book and let them clamor down to play with the plastic
pin ball game that they had opened.
I was heartbroken, but did my
best to keep up a brave front.
The evening got better. I, notorious
heathen in those days, was exposed
to my first ever Christmas midnight mass
with a half an hour of caroling
by the congregation before the service.
We walked home from church in
the sparkling cold and tucked in the girls—who woke us about 3 am to open presents. We made
them go back to sleep, but could not
delay Christmas morning for long.
I never again tried to inflict my
children with the story. From Christmas
to Christmas they would remind me of my
foolishness. It comes up every year
around the Christmas dinner table
with much laughter, so I guess I did start a tradition of sorts.
Anyway, I still love the story and privately, when no one is looking, read it for myself every year.
This year, I decided to try to share
it again. This time with you. I hope it doesn’t make you squirm.
A Child’s Christmas in Wales
By Dylan Thomas
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around
the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the
voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember
whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it
snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea,
like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and
they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my
hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that
wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the
carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.
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