LIGHTEN UP!

Bethany: Is your house on fire, Clark?

Clark: No, Aunt Bethany, those are the Christmas lights.

                                                ~ Quotes from Christmas Vacation

Babe was hell-bent on buying a pre-lighted artificial Christmas tree this year, much to my chagrin. 

“I can’t understand why you always insist on a live tree,” he said. “It’s silly and a waste of money. If get a permanent tree and some of that Christmas scent to spray around the house, it’ll seem just as real and won’t leave needles all over the place.” 

“That spray stuff smells like Lysol,” I said. “There is no substitute for fresh greens.”

He rolled his eyes. “Wanna bet?”

Babe’s capacity for turning down a bargain is zilch. The man can sniff out a deal from fifty miles away standing in the middle of a forest fire. For days, he and Google compared prices, sizes and shipping costs. 

When this tree compulsion of his swung into high gear, I buried my hands deep inside a large bowl of fruitcake batter. 

His voice carried into the next county. “Great Jumping Jingle Bells! I did it. I found the perfect tree!”

Costco was offering it at price far better than any he found on his quest. There was, however, a slight catch. We would need to drive down to Greenville on Black Friday. Sane people do not go anywhere near a discount store the weekend following Gobble Day. (The operative word here would be SANE.) 

Babe insisted I go with him. I agreed although traffic on the interstate during a December blizzard would not have been as much of a hassle. 

“Let’s just buy a freakin’ live tree,” I said, seriously tired of traffic, crowds and holidays in general. 

“No way. They’re not big enough.”

“Need I remind you, Babe, that we don’t live at the White House?”

His screwball thinking was because the vaulted ceiling in our great room is 18 feet tall. Ergo, we should buy an extra tall tree. “Last year,” he reminded me accompanied by a snide know-it-all look, “the piddly ass live six-footer you insisted on looked like it was stunted.”

As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. The poor little tree looked so out of place and forlorn that we left it up till after Valentine’s Day so it wouldn’t go to Fraser Fir heaven with an inferiority complex. 

We arrived at Costco and as soon as we were inside, Babe found the object of his search. “There it is,” he said breathlessly. “Our tree. Is it beautiful or what?”

I looked up. And up. And up. “It’s seriously tall, Babe. How will we ever get an angel on top?”

He stared at me as though I’d eaten too many rum balls. “We are saving eighty bucks on shipping.”

I turbo sighed. “So, buy it and let’s get out of here.” I glanced behind him as I spoke. 

“Babe, remember in the parking lot when you snuck into that space you said had your name on it?”

He nodded, more interested in gazing at Paul Bunyan’s answer to Fa-la-la than the parking lot.

“Well,” I whispered, “the woman who was waiting on the space you stole is standing right behind you, and she is not ho-ho-ho-ing.” 

He spun around to come eyeball to eyeball with a woman shaped like a Humvee and toting a pocketbook the size of a barcalounger. If she pulled out an AK-47 and started shooting, I would have been the only one in the store to see it coming.

Babe hissed, “I’ll pay for the tree. You drive the getaway car.”  

Many hours later we arrived home with our new, direct from China Christmas tree packed in two boxes, each one equal to the size and weight of a Volkswagen. Somehow, we got them inside the house, unboxed and assembled into one 16-foot tall tree complete with 2,500 pre-strung lights. Our soon-to-be new BFF is our chiropractor.

When the tree was finally up and lighted, the living room was bright enough to cause severe corneal damage. The Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center isn’t as bright. I kept looking for the Rockettes to high step through the front door.

Last week we had an unexpected snow storm that required us to stay home and keep warm by the fire. It was during that time when we got up close and personal with those 2,500 Christmas lights. Andy Williams crooned holiday tunes while I pretended we were watching skaters at Rockefeller Center and sipping on hot buttered rum. Snuggling up close to Babe, I felt warm, fuzzy and doggone it ... even Christmassy.

“You got to admit, Cappy, our pre-lit, artificial tree is more beautiful than a live tree,” Babe bragged.

Before he could say I told you so, I said, “Let’s discuss it in January after the electric bill for those 2,500 lights arrives. Meanwhile, hand me my sunshades and get out some more spiked eggnog. If and when the Rockettes show up, they are going to be seriously thirsty.”

God Bless Us Everyone

Our world has been made better by our diversity. Lord knows where we would be without the contributions made by people of different ethnicity, different faiths, varied backgrounds. 

Our Jewish culture gave us Sigmund Freud, the founding father of psychoanalysis. Ann Frank left us a diary and showed the world that courage can endure even under unspeakable conditions. Albert Einstein, famous for the theory of relativity, laid the basis for the release of atomic energy. Jonas Salk, whose parents were Jewish immigrants, invented the polio vaccine and saved untold lives. Their gifts to the world are beyond words. 

And what would we, as teenage girls, have done if we had not had Paul Newman to salivate over, or Cid Caesar, born of Jewish immigrants, to tickle our funny bones? Not satisfied to pad his bank account with movie money, Paul Newman used much of it to make the world better for kids who had no hope of a bright future. In 1988, he opened The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Connecticut so that children coping with serious illnesses would have a special hideout where they could simply be kids. 

Think of Oprah and what all she has done to make a difference and, given how her life began and what she was forced to endure while growing up, it is incredible that she emerged with such an enormous generosity of spirit. The Met would not have been nearly as wonderful without the voices of African Americans. When I hear the voice of Leontyne Price, I am brought to my knees.

The world of people is like a big bang of multi-colored confetti and each one of us has a chance to contribute. It is not about always being perfect, or always being right. It is about being. Just being. And it’s about getting up when we fall down and trying again when we fall short, even when failure dogs us to the brink.

 I would like to think I will live long enough to see the end of bigotry, but sadly I know that will not happen. My grandchildren may have a shot at living in a world that is better than what I see today but it means they will have to work at it, and it will take time. Lots of time. I hope they will not lose hope.

I recently read a story from my Christmas book, High Cotton Christmas. It was “That’s the Spirit!” It was just a story, one I made up. The Christmas season lends itself to storytelling. Did it matter that my story was make believe? Nope. When we welcome the spirit of this special time, before long, good things begin to happen. We are nicer to others; we smile at strangers; we renew our spirit by giving generously; we forgive past hurts and we look toward happier times. We are reminded of Dicken’s favorite last line in A Christmas Carol and that ain’t such a bad thing. 

My reading went well and I sold a ton of books and I have people who were in the Christmas spirit to thank for that. We all become more generous during this time of year ... but even so, I’ll stick with Dickens. “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”

So here’s to all of you ... “God bless us every one.”