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Christmas 1967 By Charles Moon
Dad came back and nobody ever discussed it with us. Mom went back to pretending we were a normal and happy family, and of course, we all played along. The following Sunday, Dad was back in the pulpit droning to the back wall of the church while the parishioners devoutly nodded off. Terry and I attended bible school while Dad preached so our presence wouldn’t distract him, unless, of course it was a special occasion like Christmas when our attendance was expected. I think I liked bible school better. For the majority of 1967, life continued as if he had never disappeared. Terry and I finished out the school year and spent the summer playing with the other neighborhood children. Andy continued to grow up and, as the days progressed, pretending became a comfortable pattern. Dad was once again distant and preoccupied with his own misery after a noticeable but brief improvement in his mood immediately following his return. Mom indulged him and kept us separated from him, either for his protection or ours. The summer drew to a close and the rigorous schedule of a new school year kept our attention away from the rapidly approaching Christmas season. The Thanksgiving holiday dislodged the luxury of our denial. It was the official family gathering that began the season that last year had devastated our family and destroyed any joyous anticipation I might have been able to save. Christmas was, in 1967, foreboding. If anticipation was the emotion that Christmas was supposed to evoke, the Branch household only felt its antithesis – apprehension. Every Sunday of Advent brought with it a tightening in my 8-year-old chest with the prayer that God not would allow the previous year to be repeated. Terry shared in my distrust of the season and we endured most of early December with no festive spirits whatsoever. The holiday approached with the full fury of a runaway freight train, and we were all tied to the tracks. The trick, I thought, was to break free of the tracks right before the train arrived and jump out of its way. This is what I planned to do in order to survive the season. Mom began to bake pinwheel cookies, a traditional cookie of alternating layers of chocolate and vanilla dough that was rolled and sliced. The effect was a striking spiral and an aroma that was quintessential Christmastide. Pizzelles would soon follow – those deliciously thin anise-flavored wafers from grandma’s kitchen. Decorations appeared two weeks before the 25th as was our custom and most importantly, dad was making preparations for the Christmas service at the church. The neighborhood was soon covered in the trappings of the season and this year our house participated in full vigor. Mom had made a new wreath from plastic holly leaves and imitation fruit, connected with gold and red ribbons tied into bows. Small brass jingle bells like the one around the neck of my small reindeer, dangled from each bow and made a horrendous clatter anytime anyone opened the front door. Mom sang again. First, in a soft way that was half hum, half whisper, but soon she was in full voice belting out chorus after chorus of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” or “Adeste Fideles”. Greeting cards filled the mailbox and neighbors waved to each other with the warmest of holiday wishes. It would have been the beginning of a fine Christmas if it were not for the specter of the previous year’s debacle lurking our minds like a terrifying bogeyman waiting for the right moment to strike. A week before Christmas my apprehension waned and I felt a little of the hopeful anticipation begin to well inside me. I dared not let it show, however, for fear of having it yanked out from under me like a magician with a tablecloth. My reindeer toy stayed safely tucked away in the cabinet next to my bed, but he was my ever-present reminder to remain optimistic. Two days before the 25th, snow began to fall over the eastern portion of Pennsylvania, promising a repeat of the previous year’s white Christmas. While the neighborhood was thrilled with the prospect of a second consecutive snowy Yuletide, each flake chilled my hopes of the warm family gathering that would surely help us all survive the day. Luckily, the rapidly moving low pressure system deposited a meager 2 inches of the white stuff before moving into New England and developing into a true Christmas blizzard. I felt like we had dodged a bullet. At eight years old, I should have had a good concept of what Christmas day was supposed to be, but I didn’t have the slightest idea. Dad’s fluctuating moods set the tone for the day, and no one was ever able to predict them accurately. We had a wonderful Holiday two years ago and a horrible one last year even though we did almost the same things each time as ritual preparation. This year we followed the identical pattern of tradition and there seemed to be no way to tell if it would be terrific or traumatic. The morning arrived with a lack of enthusiasm for Terry and me. We were not rushing down the steps to see what gifts awaited us, nor were we brooding in our room, denouncing Christmas and all that it stood for. No, it was just another day for us to get through. We emptied our stockings before breakfast and services, as was permitted by timing and tradition, and then dutifully dressed while dad went ahead to the church to prepare for the Christmas celebration. Two hours later we were back in our living room waiting once more for Dad return so we could continue our own family celebration. There was little celebrating this year. We were not to be joined by friends or family members. I don’t know why. There was almost none of the snow from two days prior left on the ground. There were no last minute phone calls apologizing for the sudden cancellation due to a terrible emergency. People just didn’t come. The funny thing was that neither mom nor dad seemed surprised, as if they had been expecting this isolation all along. And, they behaved as if we were not going to notice that it was the five of us sequestered in our big old house in front of a scraggly plastic tree pretending to be festive. The gifts were brought out one by one. Toys, clothes and various household items materialized from boxes wrapped in colored tissue paper or old pages of color comic strips from the Sunday edition of the newspaper. Mom rarely bought commercially printed wrapping paper. She would make light of her own creative wrappings, but there was always a bit of an apology in her humor for not presenting us with “properly wrapped” gifts. It never mattered to us. The paper was just an obstacle to the contents. If the boxes had been wrapped in gold leaf with silk ribbons, the gifts would have been as magnificent or disappointing as they were in the homemade coverings. I opened a few hand made items of clothing that were appreciatively tossed into the unwanted gift pile so that the fun presents could be reached. A board game followed and then I received several Hotwheel? cars in boxes, all taped together in the shape of a brick. The final gift was a flat box about the size if a phonebook, only thinner. I peeled off the paper and looked in to see a shiny chrome bar in the shape of the letter “C” with a black handle on one end and a slotted bushing on the other. A plastic sleeve sliding loosely around the inside of the box contained three long black serrated blades. It was a coping saw. I didn’t quite understand the gift. I had never asked for a coping saw even though I had been interested in tools and building things with my grandfather. We had spent many hours together in the summer making little projects out of wood while he taught me the proper use and care of his vast array of tools. But that was the summer and it was so long ago in my mind. Mom was smiling as I opened the box. I returned the smile, more out of courtesy than appreciation. “ That’s not the whole present, Davie,” mom said while I stood there holding the saw in my hands. “ Look in the laundry room.” I walked through the kitchen and turned the corner towards the laundry room that was really just a wide hallway leading to the basement stairs. Propped up against the blank wall was half a sheet of quarter inch plywood. I didn’t put two and two together. “ What’s this for?” I asked. “ Make anything you want.” I thought about it for a moment and then went back into the living room with mom and the rest of the family. The saw had been the last gift so Terry and I gathered the unwanted presents and carried them up to our room so we could have more space for the fun things. I was still a little bewildered by mom’s strange gift, but it soon was evident that she knew what she was doing. On my bookcase in my bedroom was a dog-eared paperback book called “The Gospel According to Peanuts” containing page after page of inspiring and poignant cartoons of that sadly innocent hero, Charlie Brown, along with commentary by Charles Schultz, the creator of the character. That book had become a wonderful companion and in the chilly afternoons of late autumn, I spent many hours reading about and identifying with the whole Peanuts gang. I grabbed my book and trotted down the stairs, picking up a pencil and my new saw along the way. The plywood was not as easy to carry to the basement as were the smaller items, but I managed by myself. Like every 8-year-old child, I had drawn pictures for school and some for my own enjoyment, but I never put more effort into it than was necessary to get a recognizable image down on the paper. I propped open the pages of the book to a page that showed the full figures of each character and began to sketch on the plywood. After a few failed attempts, I soon discovered I had the ability to reproduce the character’s likenesses with precision. First I drew Snoopy. He was the easiest, made of a few curves around his bulbous snout. Then came Charlie Brown and his friend Linus. Lucy, pigpen and woodstock, the little yellow bird that was the close companion of snoopy, materialized on the plywood. When the plywood sheet was covered with the carefully reproduced outlines, I began to cut them out with my newly appreciated Christmas gift. Other than a short break to visit the bathroom or get a drink of water, I spent the entire afternoon alone in the basement drawing and cutting and painting. By dinnertime I had finished three of the figures and brought them up to show everyone. I don’t know which was more satisfying, seeing the small characters from my beloved book become larger than life from the skill of my own hands, or seeing the pride in the eyes of my mother when she saw what I had accomplished with her unusual gift. Christmas for me was not the presents or the decorations or the tree. It was not even the family gathering or the food or the celebration of the birth of Jesus. It was losing myself in the safety and comfort of a cold, damp basement, becoming so engrossed with a project that the uncertainty of Christmas mercifully passed me by. I had finished all the characters’ portraits by early afternoon of the following day and hung them proudly on my bedroom wall, where they stayed for several years as a reminder of how to survive Christmas. # # # # #
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