The Christmas I Remember Best

Christmas – especially the anticipation of it – has a way of transforming a child’s fuzzy sense of time into crystal-clear precision. Come December, youngsters who normally don’t care a whit for calendars suddenly know the daily countdown to Christmas.

So it was in my family. With every passing day my brothers and I grew more excited. I am sure that I, as the oldest, instigated most of our waiting games. My brothers and I wrote letters to Santa, read catalogs, made lists, drew pictures. We coached toddler Benji into sharing our enthusiasm. Our household was boisterous. We children simply could not wait.

My mother had a very different countdown of her own. It is only after becoming a mother myself that I have come to appreciate her role in all this. My father was on a weeks-long business trip to Indonesia. I knew he was far, far from our Denver-area home, but I don’t remember feeling any stress or anxiety about his absence; I knew he’d come home by Christmas, and in the meantime Mom took care of all.

We went about all our normal holiday preparations. It seemed forever, though, before we got our Christmas tree, picking one from the sparse display at the grocery store entrance. It was dark and finger-tingling cold, and my mom urged us to hold each other’s hands so we wouldn’t slip in the icy parking lot. The tree was the smallest ever – it could fit in the car with the four of us children. The night we decorated it ended with another X on the calendar. We were almost there!

Finally my mother had to sit us down. How would we feel, she asked, about postponing Christmas until Dad came back?  Problems scheduling connecting flights meant our father might not make it back in time for Christmas after all.

Would we reschedule Christmas? Would we wait to open presents and dig into our stockings? We’d work it out with Santa, Mom promised the younger ones. Would we wait?

Without hesitation we, (at least those of us who could talk), said yes, we would. We wanted to wait for our dad.

That night I went to bed with a warmth I’d never known before. My excitement for the holiday, previously based on what presents I hoped to receive, shifted outward. This celebration would be special.

Then, one morning before Christmas I awoke to unexpectedly bright sunshine, the reflected light off new snow from a major storm the night before.

My mom ushered me into her room. There was my dad! Inexplicably he’d made smooth connections all along his multi-country journey home. He landed at Stapleton airport in the middle of the night and took a taxi home so my mother wouldn’t have to worry about loading us in the car to pick him up.

My dad was home! It was then, and remains now, one of the happiest surprises of my life. All of us crowded onto the bed and bounced Dad awake. We soaked up his attentions as eagerly as we did the warm indoor sun. 

Yes, the Christmas I remember best is short on certain details. I don’t know for sure how old I was, 9, maybe 10? Without consulting my mother I couldn’t say what year it was, or how many weeks my father had already been overseas, or the exact date he returned. I don’t even remember what material presents I got that year.

That didn't matter. I doubt she planned it, but by giving us the choice to postpone that Christmas, my mother gave me something far better. That year I formed part of my core, that having my family all together was what I wanted most. The spirit of Christmas – Christ’s love – transcends time and is not bound by the grid in a calendar.

I celebrate this forever.