You Call this Christmas?

December 1968: Schiller College, Germany

It was cold and I was excited to be going back to my family and my sailor boyfriend on the Navy base in Rota, Spain. Warm weather, Christmas cheer, parties. I'd just been back for Thanksgiving, so I knew the drill -- travel orders, passport, space-available military flight from Rhein Main in Frankfurt. Easy peasy.

The dorms closed and I took the train to Frankfurt. The terminal was packed with GIs trying to get home for Christmas. It was wall-to-wall uniforms. Just the way I liked it! Everything was great until I discovered I didn't have my passport. 

It had to be in my dorm room at school. I got on the phone and found that I could get in to look for it, but I didn't have money for train fare. One of the guys hitchhiked back to school with me and we turned my room upside down before getting word through a frantic trans-atlantic call that one of my housemates had accidentally taken it with her --- to Florida. No passport, no trip home to Spain. I would have to go to the American consulate in Frankfurt and try to get a temporary one.

My new friend sprang for a train ride for both of us. I put my plea in at the Consulate but found that everything was shutting down for the holidays. There would be no hope of getting the new passport until they reopened after Christmas. 

Back at the terminal, I fell in with a group of guys, me in my cute little mini smock-dress and my backpack. I had all the attention and admiration I could soak up. They bought me food and drinks, entertained me with stories and jokes, and at night they surrounded me while I slept on the floor --- to fend off the wolves, they assured me.

One by one my companions said good-bye and boarded planes for the States. By the end of Christmas Eve there was almost nobody left except a skeleton crew in the snack bar and in the office. Christmas Day I spent reading my book and had an ersatz Christmas dinner (sort of turkey or chicken?) in the snack bar with the kitchen workers. At least they let me have it for free.

Things powered up again on the 26th and flights began to leave. Space Available is always chancey, and I got bumped twice. The officer who bumped me the second time felt sorry as I stood there crying, and gave me a $20 bill. That was a lot of money in 1968. It didn't get me home that day, but it did mean I could have whatever I wanted in the snack bar.

Finally, on the 27th, newly minted temporary passport in hand, I was on the way to Rota Naval Station on a C140 transport. Seats? Naw, just the netting along the sides with lots of enormous containers down the center. But I got a box lunch to eat on the way. 

My first Christmas away from home felt like a disaster at the time. I missed my family terribly. I had felt all grown up when I went off to college, but there was no place I wanted to be more than around the Christmas tree with my parents and sisters and brother on that December 25th.

By the following Christmas, I had married that sailor boyfriend and we celebrated our first holidays together at his new base. It was many years before I spent another Christmas with my entire family. 2019 marks my 70th Christmas on the planet, but none has stood out like that first lonely Christmas in the airport.

Scrooge and Marley, I Presume

Today is December 1. It happens every year.

There was a time when I looked upon the winter holidays with excitement and anticipation. That was back when presents really mattered because I didn't have an independent income so I couldn't buy the things I wanted. You know, the early years.

Even the decade or so after my unseemly early marriage, at the tender age of eighteen, there were college and baby and low wage jobs, but Christmas was still pretty magical. It was when I could justify spending a little more than we could afford and figure out a way to make it up later. It was often a time when my parents swooped in from Europe, bearing good cheer, good beer, and interesting gifts.

It wasn't until I was well into the second marriage, and sober, that I started taking responsibility for creating magic myself. I was a late bloomer; for decades I thought Santa Claus was real, and I was still awaiting his arrival. There comes a time, though, when you have to start making your own Christmas or it'll sneak up on about the 24th of December and bite you on the ass. Having little kids around helps.

During my forties, I was so busy creating Christmas Memories for the world at large, that I sometimes had trouble finding the time to be with my own family. When you are in the living history biz, in whatever capacity, the holidays are a busy time of year. People who wouldn't dream of cooking over a fireplace themselves, or hanging out in an unheated log house, will pay good money to watch someone else do it. Nostalgia reigns.

The teaching decade, in my fifties, was interesting when it came to Christmas. I finally had a little something extra leftover at the end of every month --- kids grown, steady work, actual paychecks, an employed spouse, ---- and that took a lot of the fun out of getting presents, but increased the fun of giving them. I also met my match when it came to creating magic. You can hardly imagine what it's like in December, to live with someone who used to own a Christmas store. Really. Have you ever wondered where that merchandise goes when it's not in season?

By the time I retired, at sixty, I was ready to dial it back to cookies baked by someone else, decorations put in place by someone else (thank you, Jill), and dispense with the presents, already. This house is full up, and don't tip off the folks at Hoarders. No, it's not that bad, but it is hard to think of things besides food and underwear that we actually need to shop for.

So here I am in the kitchen, December 1, the first Sunday in Advent, ready for company. As per 55-year family tradition, those of us who are still in an upright position will gather around the Advent Wreath with the well worn volume of "A Christmas Carol" and whoever draws the short straw will read the first stave aloud. We used to do it in the evenings, but now night driving is much more difficult for some of us. We used to gorge on the traditional foods ---- pearl tapioca pudding made from scratch, party mix made from scratch, popcorn, sodas or cider, and whatever cookies anybody had been baking for the holidays. Now, everyone needs to lose the pounds, some don't eat gluten, some avoid dairy, nobody drinks sodas and the coffee is decaf. Temperance applies (except to the pudding!).

Change happens. We four were little kids when our parents devised this amalgam of traditions from each of their families, and applied it to the family they had created. We, in turn, have spread it to our own spouses, children and some to grandchildren as well. Older generations have passed on, crucial people are passionately missed, but this afternoon the candles will be lit, the popcorn popped, the pudding dished up and along about 3:30, as the sun begins to sink lower into the afternoon sky, a shiver will run down my spine as the familiar words are read:

"Marley was dead: to begin with."