Reflections

by Katie Butler Johnson

It’s that time of year!

That magical, exhausting, yummy, uplifting, surprising, colorful “Holiday Season” is here again. For me, an Irish-Catholic Lass, that season will be and has always been centered on Christmas.

As a young mom, the very thought that Christmas was on the horizon was enough to make me anxious. I would feel pressure from the to-do list I myself made. Now that I’m a senior, I’ve wised up. Instead of being white-knuckled dealing with to-do’s, I’m going to relax and enjoy a leisurely stroll through the holidays - remembering Christmases past, celebrating Christmas present and savoring it all.

My earliest memories of Christmas are as a 5 yr-old dressed like an angel. I’d watched Mom create my angel costume. She cut pieces from an old white sheet and sewed them together on her treadle powered Singer Sewing Machine. I was to be in the Nativity Pageant at St. Anastasia on Christmas Eve.

I remember being dressed in that white gown on Christmas Eve, a sparkly tinsel halo bobby-pinned to my curly blond hair. I’d been fitted with an awesome set of wings, but there was an issue with those wings. They kept collapsing. They required a ton of taping and adjusting. Actually, I don’t really remember the pageant itself at all - just all the discussion about and fussing over and adjusting of and anxiety caused by my annoyingly obstinate wings.

That picture of the preppy bow-tied cherub is of my youngest, Zach, at 4. HIS wings were obedient. He wore them in his pre-school Christmas pageant when we lived in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Hmmm - I wonder if he remembers much about his brief time as an “angel.” (Psst - He doesn’t know I’m sharing this picture of him with you. I think I’ve earned the right to share it, because, I stoically endured his teen years.)

In December of 1965, when Claiborne and I were a young couple in Berkeley, California, we took our 3yr old Norah and 4yr old Beth-to Macy’s in San Francisco to visit Santa and let them pick out their own Christmas gift from my parents. My Mom and Dad lived on the East Coast and had sent a check out to us to do just that.

After visiting Macy’s Santa, we headed to its vast toy department. Norah wandered over to the doll section. She picked up and held several different dolls. She took her time holding and evaluating each and eventually decided on a talking doll - Chatty Cathy. It was a pull-string talking doll who’d say phrases such as “Please take me with you “and “let’s play house.” At about $20 then, it was rather pricey, but, Mom and Dad’s check would cover two gifts if Beth chose something similar.

Our Beth had spied a rickety wooden handled child-sized umbrella topped with a yellow and white striped plastic canopy the minute we arrived in the toy department. You could see in her eyes it was love at first sight. She never wavered. I could also see that it wasn’t well made. She couldn’t be coached to look further. She felt it was perfect. The price of the umbrella was $2. That’s when I learned it’s not dollars spent that makes a gift great, it’s finding that right gift.

This year, I’m putting up my Christmas tree right after Thanksgiving. I’ll be listening to Christmas music on the stereo as I pick up and unwrap each ornament, remembering where it came from as I place it on the tree. Several ornaments were made out of popsicle sticks when my kids were very young. There’re numerous colorful ceramic ornaments my girls, seniors themselves now, made when they were pre-teens. There’s one quite large ornament, cut roughly out of wood and painted blue, that resembles a Cowboy football helmet. My older son Clay made it when he was a cub scout. Then there’s the yearly Hallmark ornaments chosen to mark each passing year and candy canes and velvet bows and a multitude of colorful round glass balls.

Once the tree is dressed to the nines, it’s time for me to unpack my ceramic nativity set. Beth made it for me when she was about 12. I always place it in the middle of my mantle. It represents the real reason for Christmas and the one perfect gift that’s ever been given that was gifted to us all on that first Christmas: The Christ Child!