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“Accusations” 

Christmas 1991

By Charles Moon

     I had hoped that Alex could continue to rescue me from the hopelessness of my past Christmas holidays. In my mind, I believed the celebration of Alexander’s birth should be more important to his blood relatives than adherence to old and outdated traditions. His first birthday proved my assumption to be false.

      Christmas Eve, the year following Alex’s birth, we packed up our bags and boxes along with diapers and formula to make the annual excursion to Elizabeth’s Parents in Palmyra. Her mother had prepared a special birthday cake in honor of Alex with a single candle burning in the middle of it. The family gathered around the kitchen table and sang the birthday song to a bewildered one-year-old. Within minutes of the ceremonial blowing out of the candle, his cousins had gone back to the serious business of gift snooping.

      My nephews are good kids. They are polite, considerate and as well dressed as contemporary styles will permit. They were also kids, ranging from 3 years of age to 7 and full of the anticipation of Christmas’s promise of toys and games. Alex and I were left alone with a plastic spoon at the table to play with his cake, while the adults attended to Christmas. It was painfully clear to me that Christmas took precedence.

      Alex took his fist steps that winter. Every day was another miracle in his development into a wonderful little child that meant the world to me. Christmas passed into spring and life moved forward. Everything was new to Alex, and Elizabeth and I found newness again in many of things we took for granted as adults. That is one of the blessings of children.

      Unfortunately for me, one of the things Elizabeth rediscovered was the commercialism of the holiday season. At the Thanksgiving gathering long lists of potential gifts were exchanged among the families for the children. The rules were complex and convoluted. Between the price limitations, the coupon sales and discounted mail order catalogs, it was difficult to make sure someone wasn’t shortchanged. Brands were important as well as where the item was purchased. Receipts had to be guarded closely for any reimbursement or exchange that might have to happen later. This was the business of Christmas that drove me crazy. In my mind, as soon as any list was made, the things given at Christmas no longer represented gifts, but were obligations. I was alone in my opinions.

      Alex’s list was twice as long since we had to supply suitable gift ideas for both birthday and Christmas. Elizabeth reveled in the preparations. I found the whole thing reprehensible, but if I expressed any desire not to participate in the planning or creation of the lists, I was called lazy, selfish and uncooperative.

      Elizabeth believed in the perfect Christmas as told in songs, stories and advertising campaigns for major retail stores. And, she believed it was a parent’s duty to do everything possible to provide that Christmas to their children. I didn’t agree, but it seemed that what I wanted, didn’t matter. That was what hurt me the most. Elizabeth didn’t even want to consider my feelings about the holidays. It was perfectly fine with her if I had to suffer through Christmas for the sake of maintaining the illusion for Alex.

      All the old feelings of disappointment and isolation came flooding back shortly after Thanksgiving. I became quiet and disagreeable. The harder I tried to break my dark mood, the worse it became until any small reference to Christmas was met with repugnance or sarcasm. I withdrew from everyone around me and concentrated on the drawings for the Citizens Mutual Insurance Building – the only thing that seemed unaffected by the onslaught of Christmas.

      Saturday afternoon, three weeks before Christmas I was laying in the details of the third floor ventilation system on drawing 1187b. Trying to accommodate the engineer’s specifications with the architect’s design so the contractor could actually build the thing to code was more difficult than it originally appeared. I had already thrown out four sets of preliminaries and was working on the fifth when Elizabeth popped her head into my office to ask me something.

      “What do you think of this?”

      She held out a catalog with the cover folded back and pinned against itself. She pointed to a set of plastic farm animals that came in a container shaped like a barn.

      “Do you think Alex would like this?”

      “I guess.”

      “You didn’t even look at it.”

      “I’m in the middle of something here. Can I look at it later?”

      “It will only take a second, David. If I want to get it for Christmas, I have to order it today.”

      She said it. The “C” word. I was peacefully consumed by mathematics and drafting paper when she had to drag Christmas into it. A little switch in my brain turned on the sarcasm.

      “Oh yes, let me put this $47million office building on hold while I see if old Macdonald’s farm has the right ratio of sheep to chickens. Heaven knows Christmas will be ruined if there isn’t a little plastic pig under the tree, too.”

      “Why do you have to turn everything into a crack? I asked you a simple question.”

      “And I gave you an answer. I said it would be fine. Can’t you tell I’m working?”

      “That’s all you ever do anymore.”

      I turned back to my drafting table but it was too late. I had lost my ability to concentrate on even the simplest of calculations. I reached out my hand for the catalog.

      “Let me take a look at this.”

      Elizabeth pulled her hand away and turned her back to me.

      “No. You’re too busy for us.”

      I could tell she was angry that I wasn’t enthusiastic about the upcoming holidays. She was angry that I was moody and sullen. And, she was angry that I didn’t know what to do about it.

      Ten different smart remarks bounced around in my head before I was able to suppress all of them. There was no point in arguing over Christmas.

      “I’m sorry I snapped at you, Beth. I am having a rough time with the holidays this year.”

      “I just don’t understand it, David.”

      She didn’t understand it. She didn’t want to understand it either, she just wanted me to stop feeling the way I did. I had hoped she’d offer an apology for interrupting me and we could put the petty bickering behind us, but she offered none. I resented that my feelings, no matter how unpopular, were not allowed the same consideration as everyone else’s – especially in my own house. 

      “Give me the damned catalog.”

      I took the book from Elizabeth as she stood there glaring at me. Her eyes shrunk to thin slits in the middle of her face and she crossed her arms across her chest. I looked at the page with the farm figures on it, but my eyes wouldn’t focus. I could feel her anger radiate in my direction and it wasn’t helping my mood.

      I handed the catalog back to her.

      “Order it if you want to. I don’t care one way or the other.”

      Elizabeth grabbed the book out of my hands with so much force that it tore the corner off of the top page. She walked away without saying anything. I stood in my office wondering if I should follow her to continue the argument until we could reach some sort of understanding. Before I could make up my mind, she reappeared in the doorway looking a little calmer and without the catalog.

      “You know, David, if you keep this up you are going to ruin Christmas for Alex.”

      She pushed a different button in my head. All my memories of my own childhood Christmases flashed in my eyes like one huge, grotesque holographic picture. I could see all the loneliness and pain at the same time and I relived every agonizing minute of it in that instant. Except it wasn’t my face I saw, it was my son’s and I was inflicting it on him. It was like having an explosion go off in your face and slowly realizing that you are now blind and deaf.

      Her statement was the most hurtful thing she could have possibly said although I doubt she knew it at the time. She had said what she had come to say. Elizabeth walked away a second time but this time I followed her into the hallway. I felt my senses returning and my emotions rising in my gut.

      “That’s not fair!”

      Little bubbles of saliva gathered at the corners of my mouth and my eyes burned.

      “That’s not fair.” I repeated.

      I sat down on the stairs leading up to the second floor and held my head in my hands. I felt liquid trickle down the back of my hand through the gap between my fingers.

      “How can you use Alex against me like that?”

      I don’t remember what was said after that, but I do know that we did not continue taking cheap shots at each other. Elizabeth had dropped the atomic bomb that ended the war. All that was left was damage control.

      I got up from my perch on the steps and walked to the back door. It was a crystal clear day and the sun shining though the divided glass windows in a broad checkerboard pattern across my shirt. The radiant warmth and blinding light was pushing me back into the room, but I was fighting to get out. I turned away from the beautiful day and faced my wife. The expression she found on her husband was neither anger nor outrage. There was no evidence of revelation or compliance. All she saw was defeat. I think for the first time, Elizabeth was able to see how deeply and profoundly the Christmas season affected me.

      The sound of movement coming from the upstairs bedroom suspended our interaction. We both recognized the noises of our only child waking from his nap. I took the opportunity to escape from the argument and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, to attend to Alex. 

      At the doorway to his bedroom, I paused and listened for any indication that he was awake. I could see his crib, but he wasn’t standing at the edge waiting for one of his parents to appear. He had been sleeping soundly through our whole exchange and this initial stirring was only the prelude to the long process of waking up.

      I looked at his little body curled up in the blanket that my mother had crocheted for him. He was at peace, safe in the loving company of his parents. I wanted him to hold on to those feelings forever, but I knew that would be impossible. I vowed, at least, not to be the one to take those feelings from him.

      Elizabeth’s rebuke still echoed in my head. She had taken my hurt that I had selfishly turned into a shield to guard me from further anguish at the hands of Christmas and used it against me. The worst part was that she was right. If I continued to show my feelings openly, it would have the same effect on Alex that my father’s moods had on me.

      Elizabeth and I bought our Christmas tree on the coldest weekend in December. The wind blew at gale force and the sun struggled to shine for more than two minutes at a time. My fingers ached from the frigid temperatures even though I was wearing heavily insulated gloves. We tied it to the roof of the car and brought it home. The trees looked so much smaller on the lot. When we got it into the living room we discovered that we had to trim off six inches so the tip wasn’t bent against the ceiling.

      After shortening the tree, I struggled with balancing it in the stand while Elizabeth dragged the boxes of decorations out of the attic. I took the lights for the house out into the arctic weather and hung them around the perimeter of the front porch while Elizabeth helped Alex hang decorations on the lower branches. She put on Christmas carols and burned a stick of pine balsam incense to create the proper mood for Christmas tree trimming. Every time I went inside to find a piece of string or locate the adapter for the extension cord, I felt the walls begin to close in on me. I stayed outside until it was almost dark.

      The lights were lit and the tree trimmed. All the gold and silver decorations had been transferred from the storage containers to the branches of the blue spruce standing perfectly balanced in the corner of our living room. The only thing left to do was put the boxes back in the attic until they would be needed after the new year. I stuffed the small boxes into the larger ones and carried them up the steps in one trip.

      I pushed the boxes into the farthest corner of the attic under the rafters next to the chimney. The biggest container bumped against a dusty carton under three layers of empty gift boxes. Something jingled inside.

      The box held the odds and ends of my single days. Old college term papers and folders with my grades and achievements were on top of musty philosophy books that I picked up at a rummage sale. They were valueless but I found it hard to throw them out. A mismatched pair of bookends crushed a small bundle at the bottom of the box, wrapped in half of an old pillowcase that my mother had used as a dust rag. I lifted the wad of fabric out and heard the jingling noise a second time. I unfolded the threadbare linen cloth and found the little reindeer toy that my mother had made so many years ago.

      A single strand of twenty year old cord held the rusted bell to the gold elastic ribbon around the neck of the animal. It would have snapped off if the slightest pressure was applied to it, but the bell still sounded as crisp as the day my mother gave it to me. The red velvet cloth was blackened around the back, down to the tail from years of handling. Neither the tail nor the antlers would stay in their upright positions and the legs bent too easily in the middle preventing the little reindeer from standing.

      For a moment I toyed with the idea of giving this special toy to my own son as a kind of heirloom, but it was a fragile thing and wouldn’t survive the playful hands of a two year old boy. I didn’t think Elizabeth would have approved of my gift of a ratty old reindeer to Alex. She might have perceived it as a sarcastic commentary of Christmas and accused me of attempting to project my feelings onto our son. For a few minutes, I stood in the attic holding my reminder of sweet innocence and untainted joy. I felt a little of that elusive Christmas spirit well inside of me. I replaced the figure in its makeshift blanket and safely tucked him away under the bookends.

      I gained a new empathy for my father that Christmas. I began to understand why he felt the need to withdraw into a personal exile during my childhood to protect his family from the effects of his manic behavior. I wondered whether he was forced to endure traumatic emotional events in his own youth that tormented him the rest of his life. Sadly, I would never find out. By now, my relationship with my father had deteriorated to the point where I found that it was necessary to sever all ties with him.

      For whatever reason, my own father had never been able to break the cycle that held us prisoner to his neuroses. Christmas became a solitary battle for me, only indulging in my egotistical torment when it was safe to remove the mask of excitement and anticipation.

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