Like most Americans I have had a hard year, but unlike most I have had the Christmas Spirit in me from December 1st.My city is not decorating this year, and no one says Merry Christmas except me, and then all I get is a "You too".
I know all about Christmas trees being green things people rant over, that Christ was born months earlier, that the Christ Mass is a Catholic invention to bring in pagans and whatever else the nitpickers nitpick on, but I view Christmas as probably the one time of year when people are given the opportunity to be nice because in this Age of Obama, people apparently need and excuse to be human.
I don't reveal a great deal of my life for a purpose here, but I was pondering Christmas and in that this little story might help those who have had too many losses, bad things and things taken away from them over the years.
My dad was a weak person. He was a great deal like Barack Hussein Obama in being a psychological child thinking in his deluded adulthood he was better than other people. Obama smokes and my dad drank.
Numbers of men in my community drank heavily as they all had the "taste" for it as life was so damn hard and bad. Real personalities come out in drunks and my dad was not nice. He was a miserable man and he invested the greater portion of his life to making his family miserable in his company..........and he constantly went out of his way to do it daily.
I remember completing a major project for his business when I was a teenager doing an adult job, which he thought it would take a few weeks to do, because it had proved impossible to get done before.
My brother was coming home and I spent the entire day working at this task, and I got it done.
For the next two weeks I did not have a great deal to do, and my dad was fuming as he had it in him because he had to work as a child, that everyone had to suffer likewise as he would go off and drink coffee with his friends pretending he was Obama in the White House.
So that was my world of greys, a brown bread existence and coldness. If you can recall Olivia Walton, the mother on the Waltons played by Patricia O'Neill, in her bringing out that flowering Christmas cactus in how beautiful it was in that colorless Blue Ridge Mountains........that is what my family went through, except my John Walton drank, didn't work a great deal, and probably would have stepped on the cactus killing it.
My dad was very intelligent, but would get liberal idiot ideas in his brain which would be exposed as folly when I challenged him and he despised me for it.
There was one day in the year which though a little kid could look forward to and that was Christmas to color up all that satanic evil we all had to deal with the other 364 days of a year.
I don't want to make it sound like Christmas changed anything, because it didn't. Mom could not frost sugar cookies, so they were plain white as our horrid existence. Most years, we never had a Christmas tree until Christmas Eve, because my old man was too damn tight to buy one.
Then that tree was like that Charlie Brown one with the needles falling off, you could see through it, and I know I got abrasions touching it.........hell it was a damn fire hazard in being tinder and if not for God's Grace we would have burnt in our sleep, as we could never leave the lights on for fear of that tree igniting.
............and I will tell you something children, I'm smiling with a warm glow thinking about all of this misery.
My past time was shaking presents, even if did not have a tree sometimes until the final hour when they went on sale after dad got out of the bar.
I shook mine, shook others, and I usually had it worked out what was in every one's packages.
My Mom can cook, and she is a wonderful cook, considering we had only squaw food. (Squaw cooking is like Indians cook in no flavor, no fun and no color.), But on Thanksgiving and Christmas Mom would make pies, stuffing, turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry salad and things that were just too joyful to miss.
It is why I love good food, cooking and the adventure of it today as food brightens my day, and if I can eat something nice which looks nice, it always is a treat that makes the Obama world go away.
For three weeks, we children had to be tortured at our Church from these women who had draconian lives of no power, which they unleashed on us children as we practices our Christmas program.
I don't know any child who did not hate this abuse, but we had to do it every year..........and then we always got a crappy present from our miserable teacher and a bag of peanuts, apple, cruddy candy..........and the misery did not end there.
After all of this, then we always had to go over to my Mom's Sisters house. Auntie who is now ancient had piles of treats, which I never ate as I never liked sweets or chocolate which is odd for a child who ate them all the time, but my world was Twizzlers and not fudge.
We would sit there for 2 hours watching them open gifts, Uncle Marv finally told Auntie that we needed something too, so I would get a flashlight or some knife..........all of which I still have tucked in my dresser and remember them fondly.
I was just looking through that drawer and had to show my Mom a knife, which I had got for my dad, as he had lost his in a barn. Mom said we each got a dollar to spend and I think I was 5 at the time, and excitedly in a little store I found a cheap Imperial knife for my dad and got it for him at Christmas.
He never once carried that knife and kept it in a drawer. I remember asking him when I was a teenager why he never used the thing as that is why I got it for him, as he at that point had this thing I do not know he found it, but it was black plastic, with one plastic loose from the rivet, one blade broken and it was not worth being called a pocket knife.........but he just replied, "It was too nice".
So now I have a knife too nice to use which I will never use, as it is not too nice, but I have my Trapper that I carry from Old Timer.
Dad though would never warm the car up on Christmas Eve to go to the Church program, because he had "just got home 3 hours before..........probably had driven his pickup, but that didn't matter.
So we would pile in freezing to death with no long johns as only sissies wore long johns, and off we went to that black purple night with stars twinkling.
A half mile from our home there was a pasture and I always love this part, because it was always filled with like 30 rabbits running about in the lights. I always wondered what happened to them as they only were there that time of year on Christmas Eve.
It turns out another neighbor would go out with a spotlight and shoot the whole bunch illegally for his "sport". He is dead now and the pasture is gone, so maybe the rabbits got their revenge as I'm pleased he is dead as that was senseless.
We always had our Bible verses to recite from Isaiah or Luke, and then us huddled heathens were turned loose from Church.
Coming home was not ..............well the excitement of going home to open presents and finally being free from all of this torture was the fun part rather than any presents.
I remember the last gift my sister gave me was a CPO shirt, wool, which was too big for me, as I was disappointed as usual, but she died the following Easter, but I kept that shirt, eventually grew into it, and in my closet there it hangs just like it has wore like iron.
To this day, I buy heavy wool shirts from the impression that one gift made on me.
In looking over that, one would think Christmas would be the most depressing of times for me, but I'm overflowing with joy, because God carried me through all of that and the very few bright spots in all that darkness makes those few things even more precious and good will than if I was an Obama child getting a mountain of presents.
I love Christmas because it is the holding onto the fingernails, dangling over a cliff, having a mountain weighing you down, and you somehow get rescued with knowing life can suck 365 days a year, but there are a few moments in it worth living to again.
I never do a great deal for Christmas anymore. My tree is one I keep a bag on and lift off as I dislike decorating, and Mom just plugs it in and it flashes lights over the ornaments from years gone by.
We remember Jesus and the good message, we have some hot rum which recipe is somewhere on this blog, I make an English plum pudding which is my adventure in hissy pots, and on watching program I made English crackers, which puzzled me as they are not soda crackers, but these little paper tissues which hold a riddle, a present and a crown.
Mom got a flashlight as I surprised her last year with my nonsense as she grins at the stupidity I come up with for adventures, but I will repeat that this year, as I like it in this American German based Holy Day, as it makes one focus not on presents.
Yes I got Mom some presents she needed, but as I already bestowed them on her, as with her hip being injured, her leg swelled up from that damn flu shot they gave her, I had to find her a nice pair of boots she could slip on to keep her feet warm, and that is what I got her to her delight.
So that is why I love Christmas.........I remember the Christmas misery past and I love that too, as it all taught me what is really important in you do not need Hawaiian vacations, big Church pageants, trees 40 feet tall and presents piled to the ceiling.
It is just the Christ Mass turned Christmas for me in the things that matter I carry with me and have made smiles out of the hurts of the past in thanking God for somehow allowing me to survive.
People don't have to be depressed. You can be sad, but you can find little things like a cup of tea, a burnt cookie or a bird coming to your bird feeder which you have never seen before.
God gave me that present in August when Mom was in the hospital as being a naturalist I know what belongs here, and I kept hearing this bird calling and I knew it was a peckerwood, but it didn't sound right.
We started feeding oil seed sunflowers earlier this autumn and Mom said to me one day, "Did you see that bird with the red on the head?"
Being the busy child I was I thought she was talking about those Downy or Hairy woodpeckers, or a big Flicker as they have red spots on their heads.
I missed it a few times when she would point it out, but then I got a glimpse of a Red Bellied Woodpecker which are not supposed to be here. It just glows in a fantastic red orange on the head, with not much red on the stomach which is typical for science getting things wrong.
But the bird is here several times a day and quite tame. It delights me as too much of North America is having God teach it a lesson global warming in being buried under snow and cold.
Too many times the shallowest of people are the ones who need 100 folks over at their house on Christmas, the big party, the Cancun vacation, the diamonds to make up for the missing things inside they are running away from.
They make too many people feel bad and depressed as they can't afford or will get invited to such drunken orgies. Jesus was born in a feed trough in a barn. He never had much in His life except God, and while he had Hanukkah in the Temple Dedication, He didn't even have Christmas.
The little things are what matter. Jesus focused on the children, the needy, the loaf of bread and a fish. He didn't have a home while foxes had dens. Surely in that just having small things in our lives we should hold dear, and even the hurts we can look back on with fondness in not having to go through them again.
I find in my heart, searching for the little things, which have nothing to do with Christmas or what Christmas has become in this Kwanza Cinco de Pagan crap of Ramadan whatever the patricians have done to all of us, as they sit by pianos singing Christmas songs drinking booze, knowing they have it all, but have nothing.
An American alone in their room, with grey winter light filtering in with depression, has more than those folks running to Hawaii on vacation, running from who they are and Who God is, because you are an American, documented, and you aren't running from yourself.
That is a good thing. You can enjoy each day with what you enjoy, even if it is that day is thankfully done with so you don't have to suffer through it again.
It is all going to be alright and everything always works out, as God is working things out always.
Look forward and not back, but always know the past is with us in this life to teach us to appreciate the goodness we have now no matter how small, because that is life, and we have a Christmas guarantee that all of these concerns now will fade by comparison to what we have coming in Christ........and we have His Promise that with Him, all of these bad memories are going to fade, so eternity will be just one blessed Christmas forever.
It was not what I wanted
But it was my Christmas past
It was my Christmas present
It was my Christmas future to last
My cookies unfrosted
My trees were all bare
My presents were lean
It was as if Christmas was not there
It was still my Christmas
It was all my joy
For it was my Christmas
It was God's Gift to enjoy.
agtG
