The Perfect Christmas

"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive the adoption as sons." -- Galatians 4:4-5

In the movie, A Christmas Story, Gene Shepherd says that Christmas is the holiday around which the whole kid year revolves. He said those words in 1983 – just over 40 years ago and long before the words became the movie that TBS and TNT replayed all Christmas day.

I saw A Christmas Story for the first time at The Appalachian movie theater in Boone, North Carolina, while a student at Appalachian State. My hall mates were attempting any diversion to escape studying for exams. I thought it was one of the funniest movies I had ever seen. I thought so because it was my family.

Like Ralphie’s dad, my old man was an Oldsmobile man of sorts. We had a trouble-making Oldsmobile 98 Royal Brougham diesel and our garage was held hostage to a multi-decade rehabilitation project in the form of a 1953 88 Rocket. To be honest, he was really a Pontiac man at heart. In high school he had a 1940 Silver Streak Business Coupe with a flathead four. As a young married man, he and my mother drove a 1964 Catalina convertible; and as a family man he graduated to 1968 and 1969 Safari Station Wagons. He had entertained other cars too: a Ford Model A Business Coupe, a 51 Studebaker Commander, and a 1966 Chevrolet Corvair Monza convertible. He had impeccable taste as well as a soft heart for auto underdogs. He was a champion and an artist. His cars and their parts had been liberated from junkyards, curbsides, and police impound garages over four states. Unlike Ralphie’s dad in A Christmas Story, my Old Man’s passion for cars wasn’t in tire changing, it was in entire rehabilitation.

Growing up in Columbus, Ohio was great for a Christmas lover such as myself. Though not a given, it was probable that there would be a white Christmas or at least snow sometime around Christmas. I grew up in an age and in a place where the biggest threats which floated just beyond the boundary of my understanding were evil and clandestine organizations which threatened life as I knew it. These were, in ascending order: 3. the Mafia, 2. the Soviet Union, and 1. the University of Michigan. Michigan was no doubt, the most significant because the Ohio State verses Michigan game was always the week before Thanksgiving. That day marked the beginning of the holiday season. It also set the tone of expectation through New Year’s Day where Ohio State would, in exceptional Ohio fashion, lose on national TV.

The narratives of Christmases past fill the anthology of my family’s stories. One that was often recounted was the story of when, in 1944, Santa Claus phoned my mother at home. In 1944 my mother was a preschooler, and as a part of a WTVN’s radio programming, they invited parents to submit names and phone numbers of their children who, if selected, would receive a call from Santa. My mom’s name and number (University 6800) was one of those picked. When Santa got around to asking my mother what she wanted for Christmas, she said, “I want my daddy.” There was silence on the other end of the line. As the radio Santa composed himself, he agreed and assured my mother that having her daddy, and all the other daddies and sons and brothers serving their country was what they all wanted for Christmas. If that Christmas wish could be had, it would make the perfect Christmas in spite of the rationing and austerity measures many endured.

At the time of that phone call, my grandfather was in eastern France serving in an Army field hospital southwest of the Bulge, as they came to call it. Like many veterans, my grandfather did not talk much about his experience in the War. I believe it was especially difficult for him because he was the oldest to be eligible for the draft. Being 31 years old at the time, he had lived a bit. He had seen the Great Depression through adult eyes, and he had served with the Civilian Conservation Corps. He now had a wife and child, and he could see what price was being paid by individuals and families – especially as a technician in the 195th Army General Field Hospital.

While my mother was talking to a radio Santa, the European front was in danger of collapsing, and they were putting weapons in the hands of any able-bodied GI and sending him to the front. My grandfather’s favorite Christmas song was “White Christmas”. I think that song, as well as “I’ll be Home for Christmas”, came to vocalize the hope and longing he had to be reunited with his family on the perfect Christmas.

The first Christmas I can clearly recall was about 1970. That Christmas I received my first record player and my own records. I got recordings of the Sesame Street album along with the Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood record. It was then that I began my lifelong endeavor to memorize lines and stories and songs. You never know when you are going to need to sing, “Ab-cdefghi-jklmnopqr-stuvwxyz-es” or “Sing a Song” or “Going for a Ride”. I woke my parents at 3 a.m. Christmas morning playing those records under the tree. Merry Christmas, Mom and Dad!

On Christmas Eve, my family would regularly gather at my grandparent’s house, a one-and-a-half story, post-war home off North Broadway in Columbus. My father worked a swing shift at Timken, and as luck would have it, he would get second shift on Christmas Eve. We would gather at my grandparents in the afternoon and prepare for dinner around 7 p.m. when my father would get his dinner break. He would come to the house, eat, and head back to work for the remainder of his shift. We would then have to wait until he got off work to open presents which meant we had a good four more hours of waiting. It was perfect torture. I was the oldest grandchild which meant that there were no cousins to entertain me, and of course there was no cable, no game consoles, no social media. My only social media entertainment was adults talking…talking! Ugh!

Exasperated by my begging to open a present and complaining of my boredom, my mother would say, “Go downstairs!” Downstairs? Ha! we all knew there was a monster down there. My uncle told me so himself. He showed me the footprint in the concrete floor, and I had even heard noises. He told me that you were safe in the basement as long as the lights were on. But the light switch was at the bottom of the basement steps. When returning upstairs, you had to be quite an athlete because you had to flip the light switch (usually having already begun to run) so that you could bound steps two at a time in order to make it to the top in time. Who puts a basement light switch at the bottom of the basement steps? Who does that? “Go downstairs? No thank you. I’ll listen to you adults talk.”

My Uncle Bob was ten years younger than my mother, which often happened in families who endured separation during WWII. Though he wasn’t a kid anymore, it didn’t mean that he didn’t know how to tease one. When I was older and there were more cousins, he would bait us kids with, “So, do you want to open one present to tide you over until Uncle Dave gets here?”

“Really? Yes, yes!” we’d cry. Finally some relief. Uncles are heroes! Finally something to do. Finally, we’re getting down to business!

But then he’d pull up, and he would pause and say, “Nahhhhh.” It didn’t matter what we said either. It was equally satisfying for him, if we said, “No,” because then he would say, “Well, I was going to let you open one, but since you don’t want to….” For him it was hours of perfect pleasure, during which the time flew by. For us kids? It was just more talk. Exhausting, unending, unbearable, drawn out, waiting…. And yes, it was pretty near perfect.

One year I realized that the kitchen held potential relief from the begging and baiting that went on in the family room. What I needed to make the time pass was to keep busy – to keep my mind off of the waiting and the torture of stacks of presents. What I needed to do was wash dishes. So for several years on Christmas Eve, I stood beside my grandfather, Poppy, and washed and dried the evening’s dishes: the oyster dressing bowl, the congealed salad bowl, the dinner roll pan which had burnt the rolls because Maude (my grandmother) insisted on buttering the pan even though the directions said she wasn’t supposed to. During those hours, Poppy would talk, sometimes of growing up, sometimes of the War, but he always managed to say something just a little off color that would have me half-shocked and laughing. I didn’t realize it then. But that was perfect.

Some Christmas memories stand out as exceptional. There was the year that I got the G.I. Joe winter rescue kit together with the helicopter and submarine. In 1976, my friends and I helped coordinate, make, and deliver hundreds of luminaria for our neighborhood street in Sharon Woods. And though it didn’t snow that Christmas, the weather turned in January and culminated with the Blizzard of ‘77. Because of record snowfall, freezing temperatures, and a natural gas shortage, we got a month off from school. Now that was a perfect Christmas present!

There was my first Christmas after moving to North Carolina when Woody Hayes, Ohio State’s football coach, punched Clemson’s Charlie Bouman in the Gator Bowl. This made life for an Ohioan now living in the South-town hard for years. “Yea, Randy’s from Ohio. Hey, Randy didn’t Woody Hayes….” Oh great, perfect.

There are other Christmas memories. There were meltdowns and separations. There was the Christmas my father spent on a garage floor trying to fix our Ford LTD wagon’s blown head gasket, or the Christmas that the family caught the flu and spent the week quarantined, or the year my grandmother died. After I got married, there was the Christmas that the family was recovering from the double-punch of violent crime and metastasized cancer. Most recently, a Christmas reeling from and trying to learn how to manage type one diabetes.

You have memories like these too. They have shaped and cultivated your expectations of Christmas. They become benchmarks and are codified in the collection of family folktales. They become stories which give meaning and hope. And now you are here this Christmas wondering if this year will be the perfect Christmas. Will you get what you asked for? Will the adults just keep talking? Will peace be maintained and will family get along? Will anyone be sick? Is anyone missing? Will anyone be missing next year? Time and time again we look forward to and hope in this year being the perfect Christmas.

As I think about my perfect Christmas and as you think about yours, let us be mindful that the perfect Christmas has already happened. This perfect Christmas is not one to be lived up to or sentimentalized in our memories. It is not one which exerts a pressure on any human to expect a flawless preparation and execution. The perfect Christmas happened at just the right time 2000 years ago.

At the time, it seemed all but perfect. Think about it. There was the unexpected pregnancy of a betrothed, young girl. Her husband had to explain that he neither illegitimately enjoyed what was to be left until after marriage nor that his wife had been unfaithful. Think about that after-dinner conversation. How much work would it take to repress that inconvenient truth around a perfect Christmas dinner table? Imagine the raised eyebrows, the whispers, the awkward silence as the topic of conversation changes from the unfortunate circumstances to the weather.

Having to bear the scrutiny of knowing looks and “helpful” counsel, Joseph and Mary were forced to travel to their ancestral home. When they arrived, there was no place for them. No extended family would take them in. No hospitality would be shown or offered except what was leftover and unwanted, a stable. In all the places you would want to see your child’s face for the first time and hear their first cries–it would not be in a stable.

The first Christmas scene of which we speak with such familiarity and sweetness is not the idyllic climax of any hostesses’ perfect Christmas plan. It was a flooded confluence of desperate necessity. Joseph is there trying to get everything settled, trying to scrounge up food, trying to assuage his young bride’s fear, trying to just keep it together. He’s having to beg for a room, some shelter…something…anything. Time was urgent. Imagine as Mary’s time came to give birth, her water breaks, and labor comes full on. She collapses to the barn floor screaming out. What might Joseph have been thinking? “Really? Now? It’s time, now? In. A. Barn? Perfect!”

Then comes the rush of guests. What was with those shepherds? Who seeks out a homeless couple recovering from the most grueling emotional, psychological, and physical challenges? Does anyone stop to ask, “Do they really need visitors at this time?” Is this some sort of spectator event? People keep coming to find them, this shell-shocked young couple just trying to come to grips with what has happened to them. Angels suddenly appear and announce things that were to be done through them, to them – without their counsel or conference regarding their own plans. Perfectly confounding.

Mary and Joseph though, had this going for them – they received what was handed to them. Joseph was a just and kind man. Mary was willing to play whatever part God would ask of her. There was no way for her to know that this helpless child she now held, whom God had given her, would one day be forsaken by government justice, held in contempt, betrayed by national allegiance, forsaken by religious devotion, abandoned by familial obligation, and personally rejected by those whom he loved. There was nothing about this first Christmas (neither the events which preceded it nor the consequences which would later play out) that would lead any of us to place any of these circumstances on our perfect Christmas list. Yet it was, nevertheless, perfect.

This first Christmas was perfectly loving. No treasure is greater than the gift of an only child. No social status is lower than a baby. No humility is more meek than an infant. The One who was hidden in cloud and in unapproachable light is now swaddled in the scraps of throwaway cloths. He who was infinitely above and beyond all grasping is irresistibly inviting as he is drawn close in the arms of his mother. In the first creation, the Creator breathed life first into the man. In this second creation, the Creator breathes as a man first as a baby. The One who commanded and spoke his creation into being now speaks in the cooing and cries of a creature in need. The Father’s Son from whom all fathers and sons derive their names becomes the adopted first son of a man named Joseph.

This Christmas we are freed from having to have the perfect Christmas. We are free from having to produce the memories which will make it into the mythology of our collective Christmas memories. We are free from the oppression of what our hearts long for it to be. Why? Because the perfect Christmas has already come. It is swaddling our stories into the swaddling clothes of His story.

Christmas is your wildest wish coming true – that you are infinitely loved in spite of your faults and imperfections. You are bought back from all treasons, rebellions, and sins. You are lavished with gifts of mercy, grace, and righteousness.

Christmas is winsomely hilarious and fun. All our cynicism, sarcasm, doubt, fear, and incompetence have been shouted down and put in its place by an infant’s cry and an angel choir.

Christmas is meditative and thoughtful. The mother who treasured all of what was said and done in her heart reminds us to be reflective and quiet. It is sad and mournful. because of all that was missed by creation and creature as their Maker had come to visit them.

Christmas is a little exasperating and angering. Jesus, the Son of God, came to that which was his, to those whom he made, but they did not welcome him nor make room for him.

Christmas is light and easy because the baby came to bear away all the heaviness, sorrow, pain and sin. He did so perfectly, in love, and just in time. He did this that we might not have to climb under the weight of our own self-interested performance and pride.

Tonight, we come together to remember, remind, rejoice, and rest in the news that the perfect Christmas has already come long before any childhood memories or Christmases past.

The first Christmas may have seemed less than perfect, yet in all its worldly imperfections, it perfectly reveals the great and loving heart of our Heavenly Father. Will you make room for the One who, at the perfect time, was sent by God as a gift to be born of a woman so that He might make the imperfect perfect?

“A Perfect Christmas” is included in a collection of Christmas stories published in 2016 under the title, The Night is O’er. You may purchase a copy at Amazon HERE.