Eking Out Christmas

At a moment’s notice, something can jar the best of Christmas celebrations.

They are usually not as idyllic as our anticipation would make them. The decorations are not as lavish as “Martha Stewart Home.” We’re too tired after all the preparations to enjoy the actual event. There’s no snow. A family squabble happens. Fill in the blanks.

I experienced that jar our first Christmas overseas. We—my husband and I and our eleven-month-old daughter—were away from all family. The only friends we had were colleagues we were still getting to know. But we were living in a delightful, rented flat on the south coast of England, in walking distance of the Channel—what could be more idyllic? Our darling baby was the joy of our lives. I decorated our tree with gingham bows tied on the branches—we were too new as a family to have amassed any sort of tree ornaments, But they were enough. We were content and anticipating Christmas Day.

That is—until I made the mistake of reading aloud to my husband the short story, “A Christmas Memory” by Truman Capote. i It is a rich and tender account of a little boy and his elderly distant cousin, more like a grandmother, who share joys and secrets in the midst of unfeeling adults who don’t understand either of them. The two eke out their own meager Christmases together. But then, the boy is sent away to school and his best-friend-old-cousin is left to eke them out by herself.

That’s when I came to the line: “Life separates us.”

I burst out sobbing.

Suddenly, I was very lonely for my family in the U.S., for my parents, for home, for life to go on as it had been going. Life separated us, and I didn’t even know when I would see my family again.

Some forty Christmases later, we—my husband and I, now bereft of our five children—returned from our overseas career that had been filled with those children and with life-changing experiences. We were attempting to settle in to an America which was no longer familiar. We came back to our extended Ohio family, but my parents were gone and his were in far-off California. Relatives had also grown up and changed in those forty years and were not as familiar as when we left. They had families of their own, and our children were scattered around the world and in a far-away state.

And Christmas was coming.

We had found a house and were immersed in renovating, tearing down walls, fixing plumbing and electrical wiring, painting rooms and even floors. We moved in only when the house was barely—but bearably—livable. Our daughter in Berlin, Germany, and our two daughters who lived some five hundred miles away in North Carolina were coming for Christmas. We decided on a quick trip to California beforehand to be with Trent’s family—we were at least on the same continent now! —and would return on December twenty-sixth to have three of our children with us. We should have been content.

We arrived back from California the day before our daughters were to come for their first visit to our “new” Ohio home. As I walked into what was supposed to be the dining room, I burst out sobbing and wailed, “We can’t bring our daughters here! This is awful!” It was piled to the ceiling—as we’d left it—with boxes and wrapped furniture and painting supplies. No fit place to celebrate anything.

It was, indeed, awful. The living room was in no better state than the dining room. The kitchen was only just functional. One bathroom and two bedrooms were somewhat livable. That was all.

But they came.

I don’t remember a complaining word. I remember lots of laughter. They helped us determine to make the best of the situation and enjoy just being together. We drove to Lowes’ building supply store on the twenty-seventh, hoping to find a tree—but trees had long since been sold out and the stands were gone. One of the girls suggested looking in their dumpster—and there was a nicely-formed, three-foot high, still-green Christmas tree, cute and perfect. We put it in the one available corner—the kitchen. I don’t even remember how we decorated it. We baked and cooked and ate and laughed.

Before we left California, our son, who had come from L.A. with his young wife to celebrate with us and the grandparents, slipped a brown paper bag in my hands, “For your own Christmas Market.” Having grown up in Germany and Hungary, he knew how much the Christmas Market meant to us as a regular part of our Christmas outings. It would be one of the many things we would be missing in America. “You’ll have to supply the cold fingers,” he added.

I peeked in the bag. There were the sausages and buns, a jar of spicy German mustard, the makings of hot mulled wine, white paper napkins and flimsy plastic forks. I marveled, even as I felt a lump in my throat. What a thoughtful gift!

We five “went to the Christmas Market” on a wintry Ohio afternoon, and heaven supplied another thoughtful gift: snow! We huddled outside on the back cement steps as the snow fell, sipped our mulled wine, ate our mustard-slathered sausages—with cold fingers—and sang and laughed and shivered. It was perfect.

Too soon, they went back to their lives and their work, and life separated us once again. The house was still unfinished. But we had eked out a Christmas memory. And that Christmas stands out in my mind as one of the best Christmases ever.

As for our first Christmas overseas, our families remained far away, the decorations were meager, but we enjoyed celebrating with our new colleagues, not knowing then that we would become life friends, and our children, “cousins” with their children.

Christmas memories—if filled with laughter and joy—are gifts that nothing can take away.

After all, the original Christmas qualifies as “eked out.” Separated by life, no family showed up to welcome the baby. The surroundings were no fit place to celebrate. The only decoration was a single star. The guests were a few uninvited and simple—albeit caring—sheepherders.

But it is a Christmas memory we continue to celebrate two thousand years later.

That’s all that's really necessary, isn’t it?

i "A Christmas Memory" by Truman Capote, 1956

Be prepared to sob.