Despite holiday glitz, spiritual core of Christmas is family
When I was a small boy, we always went to Grandma's place on Christmas Day, and it was a time free of holiday glamour. Of course. there wasn't much glamour to begin with -- World War II and years of suffering had pretty much destroyed any glamour in our society. Every knowing person, every caring person across the nation was making sacrifices so our fighting men could come home. But my grandmother seemed to transcend the time -- she always seemed older: gray hair, dresses made from feed sacks, an apron tied around her waist, her hair neatly tied in a bun of some kind. My father's brothers and sisters argued a good deal and therefore, to avoid trouble, the men were isolated in the kitchen, the women in the dining room and the children throughout the rest of the house. The best thing about those few hours was the lack of supervision. We were never corrected, never scolded, never directed into any kind of behavior. We just played like kids, sometimes loudly and often very quietly. Grandma was a martyr, and the first sign of that was the number of her children who would crowd into her little house on Christmas Day. Some said she had given birth to 23 children and others said it was more like 14. Many newborns died in those days, particularly in small towns where there was inadequate medical care. It was tough keeping track of the family. Anyway we figured it, there were a good many uncles and aunts and cousins to keep straight. The genealogy of the family was one of the chief issues for argument. Listening to the adult conversations was like reading the Bible -- Matthew begat Sarah and John -- then John begat Jeb and that makes him a fourth cousin once removed. I remember one year in particular when Grandma provided a gift for every child who came to her house -- more than 25 no doubt. She had crocheted net covering around bars of soap, and she gave one of those to every child. I thought it was a clever gift, and it was the only present I ever received from my grandmother. Every Saturday night when we took our baths, I carried my bar of soap with the net covering into the tub. Funny what we remember about Christmas. I also recall building a huge snowman with my younger brother -- took us all day. I remember the drums we received one year -- built by my father out of coffee cans and rubber inner tubes. And at the height of the war, I remember the machine guns my dear cousin made for us, cut from pine logs and sanded to a glassy finish. None of those memories cost money. Yet they are the best memories I can draw from my mind. But beneath any of the gifts I received as a child was the gift of family. In our little nest, there were parents and three kids. But one year, we had my father's brother and his family living with us. Another year, it was the teen-age children of another uncle who, the family said, had gone bad. Actually, he was an alcoholic and died from that disease early in his life. No matter how you looked at this bunch of people, they were an unimpressive lot. Not one of them had become educated. Most dropped out before high school and then left home to make their way in the world at 13 or 14 years of age. There were no lawyers or doctors, no school teachers or accountants and no owners of thriving businesses. They just worked hard and hoped someday to get a break in life. For me, the thing that set them apart was the attention they gave to little children. When we gathered as a family, they would comment about the offspring, and parents would get a chance to brag. And the children, upon hearing those comments, would swell up and go home smiling. Sometimes that's all a child needs, a word of encouragement as they grow to maturity. The experts say every child should have at least two supportive adults who care about him or her and are involved with the child's life. It boils down to having two people, besides Mom and Dad, with whom a wee person can sit and talk. And if a child has at least two people, the chances are pretty good that child will grow up OK. Having family around at Christmas doesn't always make everything beautiful. Some relatives make Christmas worse than having no family at all. But you might understand what I mean when I say, the religious core of Christmas, the spiritual dimension of the holiday, always begins with family. Merry Christmas. Clark D. Morphew December 23, 2000