Christmas Stories

Last week I was rum­mag­ing around in a clos­et where we keep toys for our grand­kids’ vis­its when I found a brown ted­dy bear at the bot­tom of a card­board box. I was sur­prised to find him there. He and I go back a long way, but I hadn’t seen him in years. I car­ried him to the bed, sat down, and looked him over. Mem­o­ries flood­ed over me.

Decem­ber 25, 1951. Dad woke me from a deep sleep. “San­ta Claus came last night,” he said. He helped me out of bed and led me into the liv­ing room.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. On a sheet of ply­wood propped up on wood­en crates, a sil­ver loco­mo­tive pulled a coal car, oil tanker, cat­tle car, and caboose round and round an oval track. Next to the elec­tric train, a shiny red Radio Fly­er scoot­er stood on its kick­stand. In front of our tree sat a push-ped­al Castel­li farm trac­tor. Beside it, a palomi­no hob­by horse with a cow­boy suit draped over the saddle.

I was rac­ing around the room when Mom’s voice broke through my buzz of excite­ment. “Look over here, Kenny.” 

Sit­ting in a chair by a win­dow, Mom held in her lap a black ter­ri­er pup­py with a big red bow around his neck. He wagged his tail and whined. I ran toward him, tripped over a foot­stool, and fell at Mom’s feet. The pup­py sprang from her lap and jumped all over me, lick­ing my face. He was my first dog. I named him Nicky.

There were many oth­er gifts under our tree that morn­ing, includ­ing a brown ted­dy bear.

My par­ents must have sac­ri­ficed great­ly to make that Christ­mas so spe­cial for me. Dad and Mom weren’t dirt-poor back then, but they were far from rich. Our house was a lit­tle box sit­ting on a small lot cut out of a pine for­est. It didn’t have indoor plumb­ing. We hand-pumped our water from a well and braved the cold in win­ter to do our busi­ness in an out­house behind our chick­en coop. Dad made a liv­ing sell­ing a Hud­son or two a month out of our back­yard. Those sales put food on the table and paid the bills, but there couldn’t have been much left over to fund a fan­cy Christ­mas. And yet I got every­thing a rich kid could want that morning.

I was a lit­tle boy back then, too excit­ed to care how my par­ents felt about giv­ing me those gifts, but I know now, from my own feel­ings about my son’s first Christ­mas, how much that morn­ing meant to them. I was their first child, and at that point still their only child, and that was the first Christ­mas I was old enough to under­stand the mag­ic of San­ta Claus. Their reward for their sac­ri­fice was my unbri­dled joy, and to them it was priceless.

That was the hap­pi­est Christ­mas of my child­hood. I was four years old.

When Jack­ie Paper was a lit­tle boy, he played with Puff the mag­ic drag­on in the imag­i­nary won­der­land of Honah Lee. A drag­on lives for­ev­er. Not so with lit­tle boys. Jack­ie grew up and came to Honah Lee to play with Puff no more.

My elec­tric train broke down. We packed it up in a box and shoved it to the back of the clos­et. A bicy­cle replaced the shiny red scoot­er and the trac­tor. I out­grew the hob­by horse and cow­boy suit. And unlike Puff, Nicky didn’t live for­ev­er, except in my heart.

Only the brown ted­dy bear defied the leg­end of Honah Lee. When I out­grew him, I passed him on to my broth­ers. Mom kept him when they left home and years lat­er gave him to my son. When my son set him aside, my daugh­ters picked him up, and when they left home, we stowed him in a clos­et. Cindy and I moved ten times after that, three of them cross-coun­try from coast to coast. Although we took no spe­cial care to hang on to the lit­tle old bear, he some­how sur­vived all of that.

As I sat on the bed star­ing at him, the many hap­py Christ­mases of my youth came back to me, includ­ing my last Christ­mas at home with Mom, Dad, and my broth­ers. I was twen­ty, home on hol­i­day break from UVA. Dad had been the preach­er at Mount Mori­ah Methodist Church in White Hall, Vir­ginia, for six years. Every year the church gave bas­kets of food and box­es of toys to poor fam­i­lies on Christ­mas Eve. I’d nev­er joined the church mem­bers on the trips to deliv­er gifts. I always had a date or a par­ty to attend, some­thing fun to do, but that year Dad insist­ed I go along. 

Sulk­ing, I rode shot­gun in his Ram­bler as we led a car­a­van of church mem­bers’ cars and pick­up trucks over a wind­ing dirt road. We stopped in front of a falling-down, one-room shack sit­ting on the edge of the woods. We got out, grouped up by the side of the road, and sang Silent Night.

The shack’s door opened. John­ny Sipe stood in the door­way. In his ear­ly twen­ties, short and heavy­set, with dark sunken eyes, he did his best to main­tain a tight, twitchy smile as we sang the car­ol. His bone-thin pale girl­ish wife stood behind him, peek­ing timid­ly over his shoul­der. A few vers­es into Silent Night, she retreat­ed inside the shack and sat on the edge of a bed. In the flick­er­ing can­dle­light, I could bare­ly see two lit­tle faces star­ing at us, the bed cov­ers pulled up to their chins. 

No elec­tric­i­ty, I thought. No heat.

When we fin­ished singing, John­ny stepped down off the stoop into the yard. The church mem­bers formed a cir­cle around him and placed the gift bas­kets and box­es of toys at his feet. “Mer­ry Christ­mas,” Dad said. 

John­ny fought back tears. “Y’all are good to help us. We been havin a rough go of it –” His voice broke. He swal­lowed hard. “I’m tryin’ awful hard, preach­er,” he said, “but noth­in’ works.” He low­ered his head and wept soft­ly, his shoul­ders shaking.

Frank Abel stood beside him. Frank was a dairy farmer in his fifties, tough and strong, but one of the kind­est, nicest men I’ve ever known. He put his arm around John­ny. John­ny grabbed Frank, buried his face in Frank’s neck, and sobbed. Frank hugged him for a long time.

I knew then why Dad made me come along that Christ­mas Eve.

Most every­thing Cindy and I tried worked out for us. Some of that was because of effort and tal­ent; some of it was because some­one helped us climb out of a hole; and some of it was because each time we pushed all the chips into the mid­dle of the table and bet against the odds, we won.

My old ted­dy bear’s not in great shape. The fur has worn off around his nose. The cloth cov­er­ing his hands and feet wore away and the stitch­ing hold­ing his back togeth­er came apart. Mom sewed him up, but most of his stuff­ing had already leaked out and his arms and legs went limp. He can’t stand or sit up straight, but he’s still with me, the last remain­ing rel­ic of a per­fect Christ­mas when the lit­tle boy inside me still played in an imag­i­nary wonderland.

Yes­ter­day, as I wrote this, I dust­ed off the lit­tle bear and put him in an hon­ored place on my book­shelf in my office beside two of my favorite things, a toy repli­ca of a Hud­son and a fin­ger­paint­ing that says, “I LOVE PAPAW,” both Christ­mas gifts, one from my daugh­ter, the oth­er from my granddaughter.

There’s noth­ing I can write about the con­trast between Johnny’s Christ­mases and mine that hasn’t been said many times, and I’m not a preach­er, like my dad. I’ll mere­ly state the obvi­ous, what we all know, but too often for­get. Many of us are blessed, and many are not. We, the for­tu­nate, should extend a help­ing hand when­ev­er we can, not just dur­ing the hol­i­days, but all the time.

Post Script: I changed Johnny’s name for this piece. The real John­ny worked as a farm­hand for sev­er­al of the men who deliv­ered gifts to him that Christ­mas Eve, but I don’t think things improved much for him and his fam­i­ly. They still lived in that shack when I moved away from White Hall. I don’t know what became of them after that.