It is Christmas! I love Christmas. I am not a big fan of winter, but I love Christmas. I love everything about it: the smell of the fir tree, candles in the window, carolers singing, and a fire burning in the fireplace. Well, in truth we have an artificial tree, candles are dangerous, we don’t have a fireplace, and I have never seen a caroler outside our door, but if you put a cinnamon stick and a few cloves in warm apple juice it smells nice and you can settle in and watch Christmas Vacation.
The above was the beginning of the Christmas letter sent by Sandy Kendall whose husband, Dan, is the moderator of a book discussion group. Friend Jana and I always enjoy Sandy’s Christmas letters. She is a talented writer who has written two novels.
Henry David Thoreau wrote that it was no wonder that Alexander the Great carried his copy of the Iliad in a golden casket when he travelled and that books are the choicest of relics and the fitting inheritance of nations.
Thoreau was one of the best wordsmiths whom America has ever produced. His prose was polished to a gleaming luster — clear, concise and thought-driven. It is harder to write “short” than it is to write “long” — a lesson that Tom Mayhill, the former Publisher of the Knightstown Banner taught me many years ago when I worked at the Banner. To meet the space constraints of a newspaper, I spend several hours a week, editing, revising and deleting words although I do not consider myself in any way Thoreau’s equal. I understand that he was driven to write. A day without writing is an unhappy start to the day for me. No one knows what it means to me to have my writing published.
“I am you, and you are me.” Good writing resonates with readers and summons forth their memories and thoughts about their own lives. People piggyback on the experiences of others. The aroma of cinnamon that Sandy writes about comes from Christmas baking in our house.
While Vicki and Tom were here, we watched White Christmas which is our favorite Christmas movie. Can anyone equal Bing Crosby’s poignant rendition of “I’ll be Home for Christmas”? We also love Crosby’s Going My Way and Meet Me in Saint Louis in which the incomparable Judy Garland sings “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
Christmas tree memories: Friend Bill Vrabel asserts that owners of artificial trees also have tree memories. When he and Jean were dating he called her and said, “The tree that I bought is horrible!” “I’ll come over and see if I can help.” He hadn’t loosened and arranged the branches.
One of Bill’s nieces wrote that their family threw tinsel on the tree. One year, her-four-year-old sister jumped up into the air when she flung tinsel at the tree. Unfortunately her nightie was short so that her bare bottom was exposed every time she jumped. Her siblings delight, much to her chagrin, in showing the tape that their father made.
Then there’s the story of the $400 Christmas tree. One of friend Jana’s daughters and her son-in-law paid over a hundred dollars at a tree farm for a tree that had already been cut. It promptly shed its needles so badly that they went out and bought an expensive artificial tree. Their vacuum cleaner became so clogged with needles from the old tree that they had to buy a new one.
As I write this, I am in the throes of baking, baking, baking. Bill and I are traditionalists about Christmas food as are friend Jana’s family. One time she said, “I think I’ll fix something different this year.” Her children said, “We don’t want something different. We want what we always have.” This year I was smart. I dropped a couple of kinds of cookie from my cookie repertoire and made three big batches of chocolate chips. That fixed ‘em! wclarke@comcast.net