CHRISTMAS STORY #4

IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME AGAIN.......

This sweet Christmas ornament is on my Santa tree, and it's a hand painted vintage spoon that Krystal found in a market in Quebec City a few years ago. All these little things may seem inconsequential, but all added up, they mean Christmas to me. As someone remarked to me last week, "Christmas is all about the food for me." It just is what it is.

It's Christmas time again, and how easy it is to get caught up in the hype and running around. The shopping, baking, wrapping, trying to find time to visit; it's the same every year. Did we get enough? Is it time to put up the tree? We all know that it rolls around at the exact same time every year, yet we seem to let everything slide to the last minute. If there is a real message to Christmas, it gets lost somehow in all the commercialism. Attending Mass and doing some extra helping out don't always enter the equation. When asked, we say "Oh, I've got everything I need, I don't need any gifts." That's usually true, and really, it just gets harder each year to find that something special for that someone special. What's it all about?

My thoughts go back to a much simpler time, when the little things meant a lot, and it didn't take much to please a child. (Well, not this kid anyway.....)

The year that I turned ten or so, our community had worked through the "School Consolidation" process, and amid much nervousness and confusion, we had moved into our new school at Rollo Bay. How exciting! For all the grown-ups it was, as looking back I can see that it was a political move, but a good and necessary one. The townies never had to adapt the way we country kids did, but we survived. The districts that all seemed so far away were now part of our school, being bussed in, another enormous source of fear and nervousness. I was in Grade four, and absolutely everything was so new. The summer before the September opening, my friend Mary, who lived directly behind the school, and I prowled all around the construction site, picking up good bricks and bad habits, looking down at the huge hole that was to become a gymnasium, peeking in the huge windows, just generally being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but no one ever noticed us. Everything was so new!

The teacher was new, shiny new desks and boards, and of course, many new students from other districts that would become friends and enemies. The school was staffed mostly with the one room school teachers whose students were now housed in the new school at Rollo Bay and their one-room schoolhouses were now being re-purposed. Our dear little school quickly became the home of Joe Mahar and his family, as their home had burned to the ground. What stories it could tell! And it turns out that the schoolhouse at Monticello housed my husband and his family when it was no longer needed as a school, his whole district was moved to the new brick building at Rollo Bay.

My first teacher that wasn't my aunt Ann Chaisson, was Mrs. Kay MacIsaac, Grade 4. There was even a music teacher, and I will never forget how thrilling it was to prepare for a Christmas concert, in a great big gymnasium, with so many people seated there. The tree, with all the classes having made the decorations, seemed a mile high! After all, we were just little kids getting used to all these opportunities, we didn't know how lucky we really were.

Christmas came and Christmas went, and I'm sure my brothers and my friends all experienced a great Holiday, with lots of nice things and treats. My family was not affluent by anyone's measure, but we always seemed to have nice memories. When we returned to school after the break, it was great fun to compare notes with friends we hadn't seen for a few weeks. As was the custom, the teacher thanked us all warmly for the little gifts some of us had given her, and she asked all about our Christmas. One at a time, she asked each of us to stand and share with the class what our favorite gift was.

Well! You can imagine the answers. Some had received skates, or a radio, and if you can believe it, I can even remember what mine was. It was a hair dryer; quite simple gifts from another era. No computers or X-boxes yet; that was something from the future.

But one young boy stood up, and amid all the shouting and bragging from some kids, quietly told the teacher, "My favorite gift was a pencil and scribbler."

All of a sudden, the room went silent. No one said anything. The teacher gently remarked, "That's a wonderful gift, Jamie" After that the class settled down, and I guess our teacher handled the situation as diplomatically as she could. She realized that not all the children would have the same kind of Christmas, and didn't want that little boy to be singled out. Being from the community, she would have known that he came from a very large family, with little to no money. His parents would have struggled, but each child received something.

For some reason, that memory has remained with me forever. It just stuck. The simple beauty of truth has never left me. That little boy's family may have seemed poor by most people's standards, but he was taught to tell the truth. And in front of a classroom full of students, in a strange new school environment, with lots of kids he didn't know, he had the courage and integrity to stand up and say that a pencil and scribbler had value to him. He could have said he got a rocket; no one would have known the difference. I sometimes wonder if anyone else learned anything from that experience but I never forgot it.

Well, time passes quickly. As fate would have it, a few Christmases later, that young boy and I met up again. We fell in love, got married, and have spent many wonderful Holidays together. We both love Christmas, and we both came from humble beginnings, so I guess we learned to appreciate the little things. I don't know if he ever realized how much impact that Christmas confession had on me, but I learned a valuable lesson that day.

Nothing matters as much as family, celebrating the little things. The beauty of wonder in a child's eyes, as she watches for Santa, and is there anything more beautiful than the first real snowfall? Or how about the pride in a little boy's voice, sharing his long ago Christmas in the only way he knew.

All of us have our own memories, each is special, and we should be ever mindful of the effect our actions have on others. Why, right now, you could be forming someone else's forever memory!

And I'm sure every Nanny out there has an ornament just like this one hanging proudly on their tree. It's a hand painted wooden Santa made by one of my grand daughters, probably around 2 years of age, and it's priceless. It also has a place of honor every year on my Santa tree.