Not-So-Silent Night
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
Robert Frost
We never had much luck with Christmas trees. They were always falling over, or losing their needles, or being attacked by three-year olds. But my husband kept trying. One year he wired the top of the tree to the ceiling—that’s after our cat leaped from the couch and knocked it flat trying to assault an ornament which sent flashes of reflected light every time the tree lights blinked. A couple of times, he put in the tree in our playpen so the baby/s couldn’t get to it and swallow the tinsel. Often, we just didn’t bother to decorate anything under 3 feet high; then toddlers had nothing to rip off the branches.
One pre-Christmas morning we awoke to an unfamiliar sound— “crash, crash, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, giggle, giggle, giggle.” Repeat. We “dashed” out of bed like the characters from the famous poem, but the scene that unfolded in front us of us was more nightmare than Santa myth. We had inherited all my mother-in-law’s Christmas ornaments after her death. They were the old-fashioned glass kind which were hand-painted and quite lovely. When we got to the living room, we saw the backs of three little boys (maybe Sons #s 2, 3 and4?) still in their PJs plucking those exquisite creations off the tree one at a time and hurling them at the wall behind the tree. Hence, the “tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.” The carpet was blanketed with hundreds of tiny pieces of multi-colored glass. Their dad’s reaction did not involve any giggling on the part of his sons.
In my husband’s eyes the Christmas tree was critical to his favorite Christmas tradition—the retelling of the age-old story of the birth of the Baby Jesus. Live. He insisted on reading the entire Bible story—beginning with Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth clear through the arrival of the Wise Men—regardless of the interest level of the cast (our children) in the proceedings. Fortunately, we always had a baby for the manger under the tree. Unfortunately, the baby seldom enjoyed lying quietly in a make-shift cradle, which was very trying for Daughter #1 who was the only female available for Mary’s role until her sister arrived 12 years later.
Early on, Grandpa Voorhies claimed the role of Donkey. Once his presence was required at the manger, every other actor claimed the right to have a ride. Some of them were not above knocking a fellow sibling off Grandpa’s back and indulging in a nice little scuffle to secure sovereignty. Grandpa was good natured about his popularity and gave everybody who wanted one a turn once around the room. An excellent time was had by all, except for my husband who lamented the loss of a silent night, holy night. But his optimism has unflaggingly prevailed, and we’ve read the story annually for 50 years (now with grandchildren in the starring rolls when he can coerce them into participating).
Considering the wildly creative ways with which our children managed to undermine my husband’s ongoing attempts to celebrate the birth of Baby Jesus in reverent and meaningful ways, I wondered if any of his efforts had had an impact on our children’s adult traditions, so I asked Daughter #2. She told me that when she was small, maybe five or so, she worried that her dad was out working in his garage in the cold after a full day of teaching eighth grade math instead of joining us in the house to decorate the tree. Maybe he had given up on Christmas? So, she paid him a visit to see if he was OK.
He had his welding mask on, she remembered, but she was too little to figure out what he was doing. Anyway, he looked OK to her, so that was good. When she got back in the house, she asked Daughter #1 what Dad was doing every night in the garage. “Oh, he’s building a wood stove for a neighbor. He said we needed a little extra money to pay for our Christmas presents.” Even a five-year-old understood that message. And now when her family reads the Christmas story every year, her dad relishes playing the Donkey and taking her children for a turn around the Christmas tree.