As seniors, we all have precious memories of Christmas. Just think, we have experienced 70, 80, or 90 Christmases! Researches in childhood psychology estimate earliest memories can be retained from age 3, especially if those experiences were happy. Certainly in our senior years we cherish family traditions gleaned from early childhood and wish to pass them on. But first we have to tell our families these stories.
I can remember the Christmas of 1948 when I was twelve. I dearly wished for just two things...a dressing table with a mirror and...a football. My parents burst out laughing when I told them. Why? I kept asking. To me, this request was perfectly logical. I needed the dressing table with mirror so I could study my face and cover all the pimples that kept cropping up. And I wished for the football so I could play 'touch football' with the neighborhood boys. After all, I loved getting involved into good-hearted physical sports activity.
Christmas Day arrived and Donald, my older brother, and I awoke early, of course, put on our warm bathrobes and sat on the top landing of our staircase while we waited impatiently for Daddy to climb down to the basement to shovel coke into our furnace so that the house would slowly warm up.
Wait a minute, what about this 'coke'? Isn't that a soda we drink?
Back in the 1940s we had a furnace that burned coke, a hardened version of coal, which burned slowly and efficiently to heat houses. The Coppers coke delivery truck would back into our driveway on Grand Avenue in Ridgefield Park, NJ and by means of a long chute, would deliver tons of coke through an open basement window, down the chute into our storage bin in the basement. Then my dad would shovel coke into the stove in the morning and the slow burning coke would keep us warm all day.
As soon as the furnace showed red-hot coke, Daddy would leave the basement, turn on the Christmas lights and call "Ready!" Donald and I would race down the steps in our cozy slippers and then gasp in amazement when we saw our long wished-for gifts sitting under the tree. That particular morning I shrieked with delight. There was my dressing table, painted white, dressed with white ruffles of white material. Standing on the smooth top was a perfectly clear three-fold mirror. And there on the floor sat a wrapped box with a red bow. Was it my...? I tore open the Christmas wrapping, lifted the lid and....Yes! There was my football! I was so excited I ran over and hugged and kissed my wonderful parents. (Later I discovered Daddy had built that dressing table with scrap lumber and Mommy had sewed the skirt.) Just what I wanted! Yes, such memories are endearing and filled with love.
Advance several decades later and I remember the hundreds of solo Christmas concerts I sang all over the country. Our three daughters were in grade school and joined me as my musical partner, Jane Douglass White, composed, arranged and accompanied on the piano all those familiar carols and traditional holiday songs. Beth, Carin and Diana captivated audiences as they sang selections from "Sound of Music" and gathered around me as I sang the musical rendition of "Twas the Night Before Christmas". The girls loved getting time off from school and rated the concerts, not on my singing, but on the tastiness of the cookies they were treated.
I specially loved singing my favorite, "O Holy Night". As my heart reached out to audiences I could sense the incredible power of love that surrounds us at Christmas time. We perhaps complain about the stress and busyness of the season but what is above us, in us, surrounding us during this time is the unmistakable presence of God. The Creator, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Almighty God of the universe loves all of us so much that he sent a tiny babe, both human and divine, to live with us for the purpose of dying for all our sins. What Majesty! In this season when we think about God's Son born by a teenage virgin mother, in the midst of smelly farm animals, celebrated by culturally outcast shepherds who heard the heavenly angels' announcement, worshipped by affluent astrologers from a pagan country, we have no choice but to "fall on your knees, hear the angel voices" and sing "O Night Divine, O Night when Christ was born!"
