Most of my memories of Christmas have been times spent with family. There’s something about the season that brings family members from the far corners of the country back home again.
When I was young, Christmas was excitement and anticipation as we thought of Santa and his reindeer flying through the air and hopefully finding our house. Not just finding our house, but bringing me that Lionel train that I asked Santa for each year. I have to admit that I coveted our neighbor’s Lionel train set with the cattle car where the little black cattle went in and out of the car. Thompson’s also had a refrigerated car with a little man that set a milk can from the car onto a platform. If anyone is going to end up in h-e-double-ll for the sin of coveting, it will definitely be me. I know all about coveting.
Each year Christmas came and went, with no Lionel train. Santa must have misplaced my list with only one item on it… a Lionel train. I tried to be a good little boy most of the time. There were a few times when I got into trouble and Santa, or one of his spies, must have been watching. At least I always got something from Santa and not just a lump of coal in my stocking, like he supposedly left for naughty boys and girls.
When I’d mention that I’d been hoping this would be the year that Santa would bring me a Lionel train set, my father would tell me I was too young for a Lionel train. Then one year, I had become too old! I was confused. What was the right age for a Lionel train?
As I got older, getting together with all our family took on more importance. Aunts, uncles, and cousins would all gather together at Grandpa and Grandma Hanson’s on Christmas day. After the milking and chores were done, we got all cleaned up and decked out in our Sunday clothes and went to the Christmas service at the Coon Prairie Lutheran Church. Then we headed to the family get-together. Even Uncle James came home from Indianapolis. That seemed like a foreign country to those of us who had never been farther away from home than La Crosse, about twenty miles away.
Christmas was the one holiday that brought many family members home again. Christmas is a time of family togetherness. I did spend two years away from home at Christmas when I was in the army. One was spent in basic training at Fort Lewis, Washington and the other in Vietnam. Christmas spent alone, without family, is not the same. I still remember the loneliness I felt during those two Christmases spent far away from home and family.
I feel we’re losing some of that family togetherness as we become spread out all over the country. I think the days when aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents all got together have gone the way of small family farms. Except in Amish Country, family farms are few and far between. I feel we’ll lose an important part of who we are if we lose that connection to the family circle.
Christmas has also become so much more commercial. Buying lots of presents has become such a big part of Christmas. Now we have Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and as if that wasn’t enough, we begin the shopping frenzy on Thanksgiving Day. We may as well do away with Thanksgiving and start the shopping madness on Halloween.
For those of us raised in the Frozen Tundra, we need a little cold weather and snow to feel like Christmas is coming. During this cold weather and snow we’ve been experiencing, I was reminded of a remote cabin we came across while fishing in Canada one year. It was far from the cabin we were staying in. I wondered if it was the home of a backwoodsman who lived there year ‘round. Perhaps he lived off the land, hunting, fishing, and trapping. I thought, ‘what a lonely life he must lead.’ I wondered if he spent all winter alone, isolated in that little cabin. Did he spend Christmas alone too? Or, did he have family someplace where he went to spend Christmas?
I thought of that old trapper again this evening as I went out in the dark and five below zero weather to feed the birds. He must have led a very tough life to survive in these winter conditions. The stars were shining brightly in the sky. It was going to be a very cold night. Then I heard the honking of geese heading south with only the stars to guide them through the dark night. I was the trapper standing outside my cabin on that remote northern lake, listening to the geese passing overhead, and being surrounded by the majesty of all those stars. I wasn’t alone. I was one with nature, a small part of the vast world we inhabit.
As that old trapper gazed at the star-filled sky around him, and listened to the geese breaking the silence of the night, perhaps he felt and experienced the spirit of Christmas like few of us will ever experience. I have a feeling that the old trapper didn’t feel alone and was very much at peace as he felt connected with the world he was a part of.
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