|
The Artist’s Almanac
December 2008
download and print this installment as
a PDF
(you will need Adobe Acrobat reader to open this file, you can
get
it here free)
He will not be like an ant which has foreseen everything in
advance,
But like a child in a forest, or on Christmas Eve;
One who is always rightly astonished by events,
By the encounters and experiences which overtake him.
Karl Barth
Ghosts of Christmas Past and Now
It is 4AM and I have a long night of
wakefulness ahead. Surely Santa has come by now, but if I go
downstairs to the tree I risk bumping into him in the dark, or
worse, a parent.
Christmas only came at Mama’s in
Kentucky, surrounded by cousins, aunts and uncles, until the year
I got sick with Rheumatic Fever and had to spend it propped up on
pillows so I could see the twinkling lights of the tree in the
dining room at home in Gallatin. I learned then that Christmas is
not always spent at home but home is where Christmas is spent.
The shining green bicycle at Western
Auto drew me back several times until one day it was gone. By then
I knew Santa could not get it into his pack, much less transport
it to my grandmother’s big white house in Kentucky. During the War
daddy saved his precious gas rationing coupons so we could make
the 75 mile trip there, where Mama let us set up and play
ping-pong on her dining room table.
I remember those days during another
war when on the other side of the world I and a few buddies from
the South shared slices of precious Tennessee country ham and
fruitcake sent as a token of love by the folks back home.
Christmas reached even unto Japan where in the narrow lantern-lit
streets of Sasebo shoppers bustled and sang out
Chrisimasa-Omedito!
A few days later I was stuffing
everything I owned into my own pack and headed across the China
Sea to face an enemy that did not celebrate Christmas. I, like a
homeless person, learned that home was where my duffel bag was,
and that I could stay warm sleeping over an exhaust port on the
deck of a ship bound for the darkest, coldest winter I ever knew.
It was Christmas of 1955 before I
returned from Korea for the last Christmas in Kentucky. I brought
my young bride to introduce her to my family there. As we drove
through the frozen moonlit landscape towards a joyous homecoming
the radio played my favorite Christmas music – O Holy Night –
The Stars are brightly shining …
In old Howard Elementary School I
once played the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’s Christmas
Carol. Marley’s Ghost made a lasting impression on me.
Here comes he, a wraith of no hope, dragging his clanking chains
from his netherworld, yet with charity enough to come warn his
business partner of the horrors of a world without Love. Who of us
does not remember the heartwarming scene of old Scrooge bringing
the Christmas feast to the Cratchitt family and hoisting crippled
Tiny Tim to his shoulders? God Bless Us Every One!
And so He does. How else to account
for the burst of warmth that suffuses the wintry city streets and
sends Rotarians and Exchangites into the most desolate quarters of
widows and orphans at this season. One of my sons tells of manning
a Big Brothers kettle on a busy street in downtown Nashville. Some
paused to give, while others passed by on the other side without
even a nod. A homeless man approached in a ragged overcoat,
seeking, Dan thought, a handout. Instead he paused, and reaching
deep into his pack drew out a handful of coins and dropped them
into the kettle.
Christmas always has been the hinge
of our year. Good wife has been up since 3 AM cooking turkey and
ham for slicing before twenty family members begin drifting home
at midday, arms laden with presents. Homemade yeast rolls, green
salad, sage dressing with cranberries, casseroles of sweet
potatoes, and asparagus, green peas, and fruit tea will be the
main courses, followed in the afternoon by boiled custard,
cocoanut cake, ambrosia, dark Kentucky fruitcake and strong black
coffee. Grandchildren will group by age at tables throughout the
house, and there will be beanbag toss and perhaps a riotous round
of Fictionary. Conversations will cover politics this year, with a
heavy dose of economics. Late in the afternoon there will be some
opening of presents, with more to follow tomorrow, after a
staggering Kentucky style breakfast of hog, hominy, scrambled eggs
and hot buttered biscuits with blackberry jam.
Shopping, feasting with family and
watching little ones tear the wrappings from their gifts are
expressions of only one face of our love. If the true light shines
in our hearts only during this darkest season of the year, we
still are able to see others – real Saints, they are - in whom it
never seems to dim. They are like the giant star that shines in
the darkness from the top of Pilots Knob throughout the Christmas
Season, guiding us home. Wherever we are we can lift our eyes to
their shining example and strive to be more like them.
I love music and can never get
enough of it at Christmastide. To me it is the most exalted form
of praise and worship, because it is unbounded by space and time,
reaching high to the heavens, across the ages, to our eternal
home. That the finest composers and artists of the ages have
devoted their best and most joyous works of art to it is proof
enough of its compelling message to us today. I play it in my car
and in my home 24/7. During the day it suffuses the wintry
landscape with light and warmth - at night with meaning and
mystery.
The meanest drab shack by the side
of the road, bedecked by twinkling Christmas lights, becomes a
testimony to faith and hope. Be Not Afraid
Once, returning home from Midnight
Mass, I saw the quiet subdivisions asleep along Lock Four Road.
Above them, twined in the bare limbs of the tall hackberry trees,
shone clusters of white lights, a vast glittering forest, like
choirs of heavenly hosts, singing, For Behold We Bring You
Tidings of Great Joy.
The Light came into the darkness and
the darkness has not put it out.
St. Joseph – Georges de La Tour - 1642
|
