THE MIRROR OF CHRISTMAS-1954

[Another Christmas eve sermon. As usual, too long for this column, at 2000 words, so put it aside until you have extra time. When writing, I was meaning to pull them together into a book entitled The Years of Christmas, so I added the year in which the story was set to each title.

 

THE MIRROR OF CHRISTMAS-1954

John Robert McFarland

 

            Miller Raymond knotted his Christmas tie.  He was very careful as he slipped the knot.  The paint was dry and trying to flake.  At last, he had the knot balled and the tie spread.  He gazed at it for a long time as he stood before the mirror, recalling the many Christmases that had passed since the one when he was eleven years old, just a couple of months short of twelve.  His mother had been so young then....

            Being almost twelve meant that he was almost a man, at least in the Raymond clan.  Miller knew what that would mean when he opened his presents on Christmas morning--long underwear, a flannel shirt, four-buckle galoshes.  He wanted to be a man, but he wanted Christmas, too.  Everyone knew that "Christmas is for kids."  He had heard that all his life.  It's a great idea when you are a kid.  "Maybe when I get far enough into being a man, I won't miss Christmas," thought Miller, "but I don't want to give it up yet."

            So, he set his hopes on the Christmas Eve Sunday School gift exchange.  That was the one place where he might get by with being a kid for one more Christmas.  In the Sunday School gift exchange, he surely would receive a toy or a book or a puzzle or a game...  Even one of those little boxes where you rolled BBs around and tried to get them all into the little holes in Santa's nose and ears and hands--even one of those would give him something to do on the long Christmas afternoon while the grown-ups snored and snorted in their chairs.

            The whole family went to church on Christmas Eve, even Uncle William.  Uncle William was not used to going to church, however, so he could not take the entire evening.  About halfway through the recitations, he would slip out.  It was not until he was almost ten that Miller realized Uncle William always came back in, at the time of the gift exchange, but did not return as Uncle William.  Miller wondered a little, as he approached twelve, if perhaps he had become a man when he first recognized Uncle William's dual identity.

            In the Sunday School classes they had drawn names.  Each person had brought a gift for the one whose name she or he had pulled from the offering basket.  They were all anonymous, those gifts.  It was a great point of honor to be sure no one ever knew who was the giver in the Sunday School gift exchange. 

            Miller loved Christmas Eve because it was such a perfect mixture of the expected and the unexpected.  The service was always the same, so it was warm and comfortable and fit everyone there.  Through the entire evening, though, there was an undercurrent of excitement building. 

            The high point of the evening started when the minister acted like it was all over.  In the very middle of his thanking people for coming and wishing them a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and saying he was looking forward to seeing them again at Easter, there was the sound of sleigh bells.  Then the door behind the pulpit burst open, and Santa Claus himself would fill it full with his red suit and white beard and shouts of "HO, HO, HO!" 

            The minister acted really surprised, as though this didn't happen every year, and he said, "Why, it looks like we have another visitor.  What could he be doing here?" 

            The little children would chorus in reply, "The gifts!  He's come to hand out the gifts!" 

            Then    Santa took over.  The minister always sat down in front of the crèche set, like he was making sure the holy family didn't see the people make fools of themselves.

            The first gift would come out of Santa's bag.  It was for the minister d his family.  It was usually something like a picture of the Last Supper that they could plug in and haloes would come on above Jesus and the disciples and the wine in their glasses would look like it was sloshing around.

            Then Santa "ho-ho-hoed" over to the Christmas tree.  He would cajole the teen-aged girls, in their new red and green dresses, to come up and help him hand out the presents.  Finally, Santa began to call out the names. 

            There were gag gifts for the men, but never for the women.  Women got handkerchiefs or perfume, regardless of who had their names.  A man got gloves or shaving lotion if a woman had drawn his name.  If a man bought for another man, however, he got a hula girl doll for the dash-board of his car, or a gross of vitamin pills, or a hair brush if he were bald.  One year Mrs. Taylor got a bottle of hair dye, of a blond color just like her hair, and it took the minister half a year to get her to come back to church.  That's when the handkerchief and perfume tradition for the women got started.

            Santa kept calling out the names, and Miller's excitement mounted.  What would he get?   It depended entirely on who was doing the giving.  But it was someone in his own class, so the chances were good that it would be a toy or game or book.  It might not be expensive, but it would be a Christmas gift for a kid.  The Christmas Eve service reminded him of how wonderful it was to be a kid at Christmas, and that was now what Miller wanted more than anything else in all the world.

            Miller smirked when he saw Ozzie MacNamer open his gift.  Ozzie's eyes opened up about three sizes, and he wheezed out three "Gee, whizes" in a row.  It had taken Miller two months of allowance to buy the exact Lionel switch engine that fit Ozzie's set, but it was worth it.  He didn't like Ozzie that much, but to be able to present the perfect gift on Christmas Eve, with no one knowing you'd done it, that was truly something special.

            Santa began to get hoarse, the girls slowed down, the pile of gifts was almost gone, and Miller was still waiting.  A slow dread, like a personal fog, began to close in around him.  Before the last package was handed out, he knew for certain that there was none for him. 

            "Who didn't get a gift?" called Santa, pulling a handful of green and red pencils from his pocket.  Several of the middle-aged men, who didn't come to Sunday School, raised their hands, and Santa gave each one a pencil, with admonitions that they should come to Sunday School next year and get in on the exchange.

            Tommy Mason was sitting beside Miller.  He nudged him with his elbow.  "You didn't get nothin!  Raise your hand."

            "No, Tom," muttered Miller.  "That's okay." 

            But it was not okay.  He sat in silence in the back seat of the car as the rest of the family chatted about how beautiful the service had been.

            They were taking their coats off when his mother said, "You're awfully quiet, Miller.  Didn't you like your gift?"

            How could he tell anyone, even his mother, that he had received no gift at all?  He felt ashamed somehow, guilty, as though he had committed some crime and was being punished, but he had no idea what he had done to deserve such awful treatment, to be left out.  She waited, and he had to tell someone...

            "It's not fair," he muttered.  "I got Ozzie that engine , and it took two months allowance.  Some jerk drew my name and didn't even get me anything.  He was there, too.  I was the only one in our class who didn't get anything, so somebody came and got a present and didn't give one.  That's not the way Christmas is supposed to be."

            He stood there and fumed.  Now he knew for sure that Christmas was for kids and he wasn't one anymore.  He didn't much like being a man. 

            His mother did not hug him or tell him everything would be all right.  That was not the way they did things in the Raymond clan, especially if you were a grown-up.

            "Go on to bed, Miller," she said. "Tomorrow is Christmas morning.  Don't spoil it for the little ones."  He trudged off upstairs.  As he did so he heard his mother ask his father to take the mirror off the wall and prop it up on the kitchen table for her.  It seemed a strange request. 

            The house was warm on Christmas morning, but strangely absent were the usual smells, roasting turkey and baking bread.  Mrs. Raymond normally got up very early on Christmas morning to start the special dinner preparations.  The kitchen, however, was cold, even though her hair was wisping around her head and her eyes were red-rimmed with sleeplessness, and the kitchen table was a mess.

            The little children were pleased with their toys and games and delighted that they were allowed to dig into the fruit and candy in their stockings.  Those treats were usually not allowed until after Christmas dinner.

            Miller did his best to look satisfied with his flannel shirt and galoshes.  When all the presents under their tree had been opened, Miller's mother put a hand on his arm and pulled him aside.

            "There's something for you in the kitchen," she said.

            Miller followed her to the kitchen, so strange in its coolness and disorder.  On the table were old rags and cracked tubes of drying paint and stiff little brushes.

            Miller could barely remember them.  When he was very little, he recalled, his mother used to paint pictures.  He vaguely recollected a story from his grandmother, of how her talented young daughter had wanted to be an artist, but fell in love with Miller's father and had given up that ambition to raise children.

            On the table was an old sheet of newspaper.  Miller's mother pulled it away to reveal what lay beneath it.

            "I had some trouble with it," she said, "because my paints were so old, and the brushes were stiff, so I didn't have time to wrap it, but here it is.  It's a special Christmas present for you."

            In the middle of the table lay a tie.  Miller recognized it as one of his father's ties, an exceptionally wide, dark-blue tie.  But now it was decorated with a strange design.  Lines and swirls, in every possible color, almost covered it.  It was the strangest looking thing he had ever seen.

            "Now that you're a man, or at least almost," his mother said, "you need a tie to wear on Christmas.  Pick it up and hold it up to your neck."

            Miller did as he was told, but as if he were in a trance.  How could he ever wear such a thing?  Even the very old men did not wear such odd ties.

            He held it to his neck.  His mother came and stood beside him and pointed at the mirror, which was propped up on the other side of the table.  They looked into it.

            Miller's eyes shot open.  Before him was the most amazing scene, painted right onto his tie.  

             There was the nativity story, with the baby Jesus, and Mary and Joseph, and the star and the shepherds and wise men, and even a camel.

            There was also a boy, in a flannel shirt and galoshes, kneeling there with the others.  His mother had painted onto the tie what straight-on looked like just a hodge-podge of lines and lumps.  When you looked into the mirror, however, there was the whole picture of Christmas.  His mother had sat up all night with a mirror and old paints, in a cold kitchen, to paint him a present.

            "You see, Miller," she was saying, "Christmas is like a mirror.  When you look at the Christmas scene, you see yourself reflected back.  If your heart is full of bitterness over being left out, all you see is a strange design that makes no sense.  But if your heart is full of love, you see yourself in that story, and you know that you belong there."

            "Miller, are you ready?" his wife called gently from the door.  Miller was startled back to the present.  It is amazing how that tie seems to grow, he thought.  Now when he looked into the mirror, he not only saw its original nativity scene, but forty years of Christmases that had come since.  Here was another Christmas Eve now to add to it.

            They drove through the soft snow to the nursing home.  His mother was getting weak now, but she could still sit up in bed.  Miller unhooked the mirror from the wall of her room, sat down beside her, balanced the mirror so they could peer into it together, straightened his tie.  Then they looked into the mirror for a long time.