GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST, PART 4

When we were very young, there was no churchgoing on Christmas eve. We went home, argued about cookies for Santa Claus, and went to bed. Later, Mom started singing in the choir. We would be brought home and placed under the care of Grandma Kofink while Mom and Dad went off to church. Something very mysterious went on at church, because I saw the evidence the next day. Two small candles, sort-of pinched in the middle like an hour glass with a circle of cardboard around it, appeared on the kitchen table. I would finger the candles trying to imagine what it was all about. Then one year I was old enough to go to church, too. I sat with Dad while Mom was in the choir-loft. I don't know whether they left my sister at home or if she just fell asleep in the pew. The church was absolutely packed. They had to put up folding chairs in the aisles. The most impressive sight was the huge, huge Christmas tree in the front of the church. Of course I had seen the tree when I was in Sunday School, but I had never seen it at night, especially when they turned down the lights for the sermon. For once in my life I had something to do while the pastor preached. There were hundreds of lights and ornaments to look at. Most of them were different from what we had at home. The tree was decorated by the LOYALs each of whom brought two ornaments to add to the tree each year. This went on until one year the Scrooges at City Hall succeeded in getting real trees banned from churches.

As spectacular as the tree was, it couldn't compare to the final ritual to the service. All the lights were turned off in the church. The pastor carried a lighted candle down to the front of the church and lit the candles of the ushers. They in turn let the candles of the first person in the pew, who then passed the light down the pew. Gradually the whole church was bathed in the glow of lighted candles. (I remember once one guy getting impatient waiting for the light to be passed down the pew, so he whipped out his Zippo lighter and lighted his candle and his wife's candle. He leaned over to pass this spurious flame over to Dad. Much to his surprise, Dad pinched-out the candle flame between his fingers. Don't ever mess with church traditions around Dad.) When the candles were lighted, the congregation sang "Silent Night." At the end of the hymn, people would quietly walk out of the church carrying this light into the dark night. It was a wonderful experience–a hundred lighted candles, a hundred voices softly singing. Unfortunately, Andy and Clyde, the ushers, decided that this would be a good time to start folding up the extra chairs to get them out of the way. These chairs were ancient, like most of the stuff in the church, and it took a lot of muscle to get the seats up, the legs in, and then to jam them in the rack. The effect was devastating: "Silent night," CRREEEK! RATTLE, RATTLE! "holy night" WHAM! CRASH! "All is calm" BANG! CLUNK! "all is bright." KABOOM! While all this was going on, a mystery was revealed to me as the small candle began to soften from the warmth of my hand. The middle began to pinch-in forming the peculiar hourglass shape of the candles I had discovered at home.

At some point we all started singing in the choir. This was probably not the best idea in Dad's case since he was somewhat tone deaf, but it was all well meant. Our Aunt Martha and cousins Adele and Darlene also sang in the choir. Dad's brother, Uncle Herb, didn't join because he was even more tone deaf than Dad. Dad just had trouble coming close to the right pitch. Uncle couldn't get the notes to go in the right direction. Anyway, this helped to make Christmas eve services a family occasion. In my mind we must have sung about a dozen anthems and carols at these services. I didn't complain, because it was a great time. A new choir director, Ruth, added her own shaping to the traditions. The tradition was that the choir continued to sing "Silent Night" as people shuffled out of the church dripping hot wax on the floor and on one another. Ruth thought we needed some variety, so at some point during the singing she would lean over a whisper to the choir, "hum." And we all hummed a stanza. Then maybe she play a verse on the chimes without any singing. Then, near the end she would whisper, "auf Deutsch," and we would sing in German, at least those who knew German did. One year I wrote the German text out on a slip of paper so I could be sure to get the words right, but I didn't realize how hard it was to read a foreign language by candlelight. It could have been written in Swahili for all the good it did me. The year Aunt Margaret came to visit we brought her to church. She was taken by the organ music since in her little town all they had was a violin and an accordion at church. Unfortunately, by this time we had a new pastor who hated whatever had been the traditions of the past, and he banished the singing of "Silent Night" at the end of the service. I found this most disappointing because I knew the only thing Aunt Margaret would be able to understand would be the German "Stille Nacht." When the service was over, I got Ruth to sing it for her. Aunt Margaret appreciated it, but it wasn't quite the same. Some things are good enough as they are and don't need changing to make them better. Singing "Silent Night" and holding lighted candles is one of them.

In this festive season of Christmas, May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST, PART 3

At long last the day of Christmas Eve arrived. The Christmas marathon began with dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Szlavik. This was my mother's family gathering. By some happy twist of fate Mom's family had their major festivities on Christmas Eve while Dad's family observed Christmas Day. There was never the debate that plagued some families over where one should go for Christmas.

Christmas Eve was always full of surprises. Grandma and Grandpa always had a tree decorated with an assortment of old ornaments and several figures from a nativity set. I never did know why there wasn’t a whole set. One year when we arrived, I was shocked to see the tree decorated with all blue lights instead of the usual multicolored variety. Instead of shining with a festive light, the tree glimmered with an ominously mysterious sheen. It was a very strange effect which put a damper on the evening’s activities. Mom explained that Grandpa had always liked the tree decorated with blue lights. It says something about our grandparents, however, that in all the Christmas Eves we spent there, only once did the blue-lighted tree appear. Grandpa didn't have too much to say about how the household was run. As a matter of fact, Grandpa didn’t have too much to say about anything. I don’t ever recall Grandpa ever saying more than three sentences in a row. I don't think Grandma would have allowed it. Maybe that's what led to the thermostat war. Grandma was always too hot. She would come out of the kitchen mopping her face with a towel, sometimes fanning herself with her apron. Grandpa was always too cold. Even on the fourth of July, sitting in the direct sun, he would wear a sweater. At some time during the Christmas party, Grandpa would start turning up the heat. When the temperature matched Grandma's blood pressure, she’d come tearing out of the kitchen hollering, "Pa, leave that thing alone! You always make it too hot! What’s the matter with you? Don’t you have any blood?" That would pretty much set the tone for the evening.

The first activity of the evening was drinking. This was grandpa's domain. He always had bottles of peculiar brandies made out of fruits you didn't think could be made into alcohol. I don't know where he got this stuff, but I bet it was about 190 proof and could have eaten a hole through the linoleum flooring. Maybe that's why the drinks were always poured and consumed in the kitchen; you couldn't risk getting any on the furniture or carpets. After several drinks and the opening salvos of the thermostat war, dinner was ready. This, too, was always a surprise. Grandma changed the menu from year to year. It could be turkey. It could be lamb and pork roasted together. It could be homemade sausages and potato salad. Whatever it was, there would be plenty with an enormous assortment of vegetables and side dishes. On the table would be candles, special Christmas candles, that were never lighted. One year Dad lit the candles and Grandma almost had a fit. And there would be wine. Grandpa would concoct his own blend usually by mixing a red and a white. Round and round the decanter would go. Fueled by the wine and the brandy, conversation got lively, an almost unbearable experience for Grandpa who didn't think there should be any talking during meals. Usually a food fight would begin. I don't mean people throwing food; I mean a lot of fussing about eating between our cousins and their parents. Uncle Herb believed children should eat a little of everything that was served. It got dumped on their plates whether they liked it or not. They would whine about it and would get hollered at for not eating. It was a contest of wills that gave everyone else acid stomach. We just weren't used to this sort of thing. At our house food was put on the table and you either ate it or went hungry. No one fussed about it. By now things were moving along pretty much on schedule. Someone would pick on Aunt Marge for eating so slowly, Dad would call Grandma a Gypsy, Grandpa would turn up the heat, and the kids would look for some way to escape the rising tempers.

"O.K. lets open the presents," someone would suggest "Pa, you pass out the presents." Grandpa would go hunting for his glasses, not that they would help much. He consistently misread names. He mixed up the "to" with the "from." He passed out wrong presents until Grandma hollered at him and someone else took over. Gifts were opened one at a time so everyone could see what you got. You pretty much knew what was going to happen. Grandparents gave you clothes. Toys or games or records or books came from your aunt and uncle. Uncle Herb sometimes had an eye for giving bigger presents than any of us were accustomed to receiving. One year he gave me a telescope. Aunt Marge always taped the boxes shut so you had to borrow a knife to get into them. We accused her of having stock in 3M. "Don't loose the cards," someone would warn. It was beyond us kids why adults set such importance on the cards. No kid cared much about the cards unless there was money in them. As you got older, you learned to look as if you were reading the card carefully before you opened the package. That was a sure sign of maturity. With the present phase over, everyone made the rounds of saying thank you to everyone else.

Then it was time to eat again. Out came the cakes and cookies and coffee and milk in huge quantities. You'd think no one had eaten in a week. This repast provided and opportunity to revive the controversies of dinner all over again. Fortunately, there was a time limit to these exercises because we had to get to church for the candlelight service at midnight.

As we come to the end of our days of preparation, may the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST, PART 2

The Sunday School Christmas program consisted of classes singing appropriate Christmas songs and endless line of children standing before a microphone reciting memorized “pieces.” By late November my Dad would be inquiring if I had gotten my piece yet so he could make sure I had it memorized. There was no way for a shy person like me to escape this agony of public performance; Dad’s brother was the Sunday School superintendent. It was going to happen no matter what. Kid after kid came up to recite. Usually the girls got through with out a fault, but the boys had serious problems, mostly because none of them bothered to look at their pieces until Saturday night before the Sunday performance.

There were a variety of recitation techniques. Some ran through the piece so fast that no one could understand what they had said. This usually brought a smile or a giggle from the other kids, but that was quickly squelched by a frosty glare from my aunt Martha, who supervised the programs. Some started, got half way through, stopped, and started over a few time before finally reaching the end. Others got part-way through and stopped dead until given the next word by my aunt. And then there were the hapless few who got through the first line and stopped, were given a clue, said a few words and stopped again, and finally reached the point where they had to be told each word before they could utter it. You could always spot that kid’s parents by the agonized look on their face. With the rehearsals by my Dad I usually managed fairly well, but I was always intrigued by the peculiar sound of my voice over the p. a. system. Sometimes I became so enamored of my own voice that I lost track of what I was supposed to be saying. I couldn’t tell my Dad that, so when I asked what happened, I just used the all purpose. “I dunno. I guess I forgot.” “You’ve got the memory of an elephant,” Dad would say, “a dead one.”

The program always ended in the passing out of little boxes of hard candy. These were small cardboard boxes that my aunt and uncle and cousins had to fill before the performance. Uncle Herb turned his house into a production line so that the boxes could be filled in an efficient manner as befits a job done by a family of German-Americans. All the efficiency in the world, however, couldn’t overcome a design flaw in the boxes. They had little handles made of cord. Inevitably, a cord pulled out of somebody’s box sending several dozen pieces of hard candy rattling to the floor and rolling under the pews while the Pastor said the closing prayer. Some religions ring bells, some shake tambourines. We rolled candy on the floor.

Now, the real Christmas festivities were done in the home. The most important preparatory rites had to do with the Christmas Tree. An evening was designated as tree buying night. By a great mystery still not fully understood by meteorological science, our family always picked the coldest day in December to do our tree shopping. We bundled up in an assortment of sweaters, coats, hats, mufflers, and gloves: the latter often presented me with a problem since I frequently managed to lose one glove by this time–a fact I could keep hidden in most circumstances by keeping my hands in my pockets, but which would become obvious in the tree picking process which required two hands. Suitably dressed, we headed out in the car to the Wiebolts parking lot where most people in the neighborhood purchased Christmas Trees

In my mind the rule of bigger is better applied to trees as well as gifts, but I soon discovered there was an unanticipated restriction on tree size. The problem wasn’t the height of the room. Our living room had ten-foot ceilings. No, the restriction had to do with the depth of the pocket-book. Trees cost by the foot. There was a splash of paint on the bottom of the trunk that indicated both the height and the price. Fortunately we didn’t have to buy one of the white-marked table top trees. We got a full sized tree, but always one in the blue-marked, moderate-sized price range and never the red-marked, giant-sized range.

When the ideal tree was found, it was tied up with string and lashed to the top of the car. It was at this point that my Dad would discover I was only using one hand to help secure the tree. “Use both hands,” he’d shout. Reluctantly I’d take my ungloved hand from my pocket. “Where’s your other glove” he’d ask? “I dunno,” I’d reply. “I guess I forgot it in school.” “You’d forget your head if it weren’t screwed on.”

Unlike some families that would have immediately installed the tree in the living room, we exiled the tree to the basement under the back porch. It was a kind of cold storage to keep the tree fresh until the appropriate Saturday arrived for decorating. My sister Karen took a more personal approach to Christmas trees than I did. She always named the tree Timothy. Not me. I knew that a tree would eventually wind up in the trash. It was best not to get emotionally involved.

At last decorating day arrived. It began with moving enough furniture out of the living room so that the tree would fit. With much sawing and slashing and trimming, Dad got the tree fixed in the large, green tree stand. Opinions were offered about which side was the best and should be placed facing the room and whether or not the tree was really straight. Now the boxes of ornaments and lights were brought up from the basement. First, the lights were put on. This was principally Dad’s job as it required some technical knowledge to check the various strings of lights. Inevitably some lights had burned out and needed to be replaced. How this occurred was another Christmas mystery. Every string had been checked before being packed away the preceding January, and all were determined to be in working order. In the old days when Christmas lights were strung in series circuits, the light checking could take a half hour since one burned-out bulb caused the entire string to go out. Each bulb had to be removed and tested until the guilty culprit found. The new parallel strings seemed miraculous.

While the electrical work was being completed, Mom unpacked the ornaments and laid them out on the sofa. First, the chains were unwrapped. These were strings of glass beads, actually more like tiny ornaments. These were draped carefully on the branches. Then the rest of the ornaments were unpacked. It was a fascinating assortment. A star with a white light in it topped the tree. Five pink plastic cherubs were placed by Mom on the ends of the highest branches. Then there were colored glass balls, little horns that really worked, wonderful ornaments made of beads wired together in geometric patterns. I have never seen anything like them since. There were plastic lanterns with little turbines in them which spun furiously if they were hung over a light bulb. And there were the birds, wonderful birds with feathery tales. Some of these birds had belonged to my grandparents. They had short springs for legs, and occasionally these springs came loose from the stand that clipped them to the tree. The old ones had the legs reconnected with some mysterious substance that my sister still claims is chewing gum (black-jack gum chewed by Grandma especially for the occasion). There were also a few Styrofoam balls with pipe-cleaner hangers that we decorated ourselves. I noticed as the years went on that the ornament I had decorated tended to get hung in the back of the tree.

Finally the tinsel was put on. Some families threw tinsel at the tree. I always wanted to do this ever since I had seen Two-Ton Baker, a local TV entertainer, decorate a tree sitting in a chair and tossing tinsel on the tree. Mom would not allow such a thing. She didn’t care what any disreputable TV personality did. Tinsel had to be hung piece by piece to achieve the right effect. In the good old days, tinsel was made out of shiny, lead-based foil. It was great stuff for rolling into hard little balls and throwing at people. Eventually, the fire department grinches struck again and outlawed metal tinsel because it caused shorts in electrical devices. Only plastic tinsel was allowed to be sold. For several years we carefully removed as much of the tinsel as we could from the tree once Christmas was over and saved it for next year. But this early form of recycling had a diminishing return, and one year we, too, had to buy the new plastic tinsel. Disgusting stuff, but what could you do?

When everything was done, Grandma and Grandpa Kofink joined us. Everybody got a glass of eggnog, the living room lights were turned off, and we admired the handiwork of the gleaming tree. We had to enjoy it then because the lights would only be turned on for brief periods of time until Christmas Day for fear that they would dry out the tree. Grandma or Grandpa would inevitably tell the story of the miraculous tree they had back in the 30s that stayed alive until February, its trunk imbedded in a bucket of sand. Grandma and Grandpa usually had their own table-top tree that they decorated with absolutely ancient ornaments. After Grandpa died, the ritual changed. Grandma no longer decorated a tree of her own. Instead, she was given a small plastic tree that was permanently decorated and kept in a plastic bag between Christmases. So she joined the rest of us in decorating our tree. I have concluded it is a sign that you are over the hill when you are no longer allowed to decorate your own Christmas Tree.

In the days of waiting, may the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.
Wayne

GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST, PART 1

I wrote a longer version of this years ago for my family. I thought I would serialize parts of it for this blog.

Dickens declared that the reformed Scrooge “knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.” Dickens should have met our family. We knew how to celebrate Christmas. For Mom, Dad, my sister and me, Christmas day was a 30-hour marathon (24 hours would have been too short) with a short respite for sleeping. More than a day, Christmas was a season.

First were the school events. There was often a Christmas program of sorts in the school gym. This rarely amounted to more than singing songs. It was a fair balance of religious and Santa songs in those days. Separation of Church and State had nothing to do with school in most people’s minds. Once in a while one of the grades would do a skit–a staged version of A Christmas Carol was popular. In any case it was an escape from the class room for a half-day. They can’t make you recite multiplication tables while you’re singing “Jolly Old St. Nicholas.” The only program firmly fixed in my mind was the one in third grade when we sang “We Three Kings,” and I got to dress up as a king. I don’t know how I was chosen for the part. Mrs. S disliked me, and I wasn’t too fond of her. I usually didn’t have personality clashes with teachers. (O.K. I didn’t like Mrs. B or Miss C either. Why do they put the meanest teachers in the lower grades?) Somehow Mrs. S and I just didn’t hit it off.

The kings were supposed to plan their own costumes. I went home and told my parents about the occasion. Mom quickly figured out how to turn an old sheet, a frayed shirt collar, and a box of purple dye into a costume. Dad took on responsibility of making a crown. That was a mistake. Dad could turn any simple task into a major project. Left to myself, I would have hacked a piece of cardboard into a circle with points on it and called it quits. Dad designed a crown modeled on the imperial state crown of the British monarchy. First he made a miniature crown to serve as a test piece. The miniature was brought to school to show the other two kings. All three of us were suppose to have identical costumes. Dad laid out the full sized crown on his old drafting board. He used rulers and protractors and French curves and compasses and every other kind of technical instrument to make this crown absolutely perfect. It was carefully cut out of cardboard with an exacto knife and covered with gold paper. Of course neither of the other guys could duplicate this crown, so they made their own design, and Mrs. S had a fit because they didn’t look the same. Being a king is not what it’s cracked up to be. It is much better to melt away into the crowd of loyal subjects than to stand out as a king where the teacher can see you.

Besides the Christmas program there was the class Christmas party. First came decorations. Early in my school career there were real Christmas trees in the class rooms, but the fire department put a stop to that. It only takes one old school burning down to give adults the heebie-geebies about flammable items being kept in classrooms. We often made a project of decorating the tree–making paper chains and ornaments, for example. I noticed that my ornaments always got hung at the back of the tree. This was the first indicator of my lack of artistic ability which culminated in the eighth grade when my teacher declared it was a waste of paint to let me do anything and agreed to give me a passing grade in art if I kept the art table clean and the supplies in order. (I wonder what would have happened to Rembrandt if his eighth grade teacher decided all his colors looked like mud and had him clean the art studio instead of painting?) The party itself was generally on the last day of school before Christmas vacation–another great day without those little time wasters like spelling tests. Party to us kids meant primarily eating cookies and talking. Teachers wanted you to play silly games like “Mother May I?”and “Seven Up, Seven Down.” We did indeed play these games, but only to humor the teacher, not because anyone enjoyed it. Teachers have a lot of strange ideas about what kids should enjoy.

The high point of the party was supposed to be the grab bag. I have never liked grab bags. You start off early in your school years bringing pretty good stuff only to discover the stuff most other people bring is not nearly as good, so next time you bring something a little less desirable than last year, but so does everybody else. The quality of grab bags really hits the pits by about fifth grade and so dies a well-deserved death. The basic problem with grab bags is timing. The first kids to choose grab the biggest presents they can find. The general rule is that bigger is better. This business about good things coming in small packages is nonsense invented by grownups to get by with giving cheap presents. Anyway, the first people up get the good stuff, and the chumps at the end get the junk–usually stuff that somebody else got stuck with at the previous year’s grab bag. For some reason I usually ended up close to last in the grabbing, hence I quickly developed some practical smarts. I bought gifts that I liked, but were of unimpressive size. Nobody would pick them, and, when my turn came, I took the gift I had brought. This was a very satisfactory solution to the problem. I picked up a nice model plane kit and a little metal car using this almost foolproof technique. Then I told Mom about it. She could not understand why I would do such a thing and told me not to do it again. I learned my lesson. In the future I didn’t tell my mom what I was doing.

More next week.

In this blessed Advent Season, May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

MY SECRET LIFE

I suspect by the time anyone from my church reads this, the word will already be out. I have been living a secret life. Since September, I have been *gasp* acting as a member of the Golden Troupers. We are, as the director says at each performance, the traveling arm of the Civic Theatre. That makes us sound as if we were akin to the touring company of Wicked, but that's not quite a fair comparison. We are a bunch of over 55 performers who sing and do readers' theater at various clubs, churches, organizations–just about anywhere in the county they invite us. We volunteer our time to give people some entertainment and, if they are feeling generous, raise funds for the educational programs of the Civic Theatre. It's a win-win-win situation. Everyone benefits, although there are occasions during a performance when we are asked, "Are you nearly finished?" I suspect no one ever asked that of Sir Laurence Olivier, but we aren't quite in his league.

I haven't told many people about this sideline of mine, but it turns out that on December 2, we Troupers are performing at my church's Christmas Party. I didn't know the Troupers were going to perform at this event before I joined, and the church certainly didn't know they'd get me when they invited the Troupers. Life journeys sometimes take strange side roads.

I have to admit there was a reason for my delving into this volunteer organization. A few years ago I took some psychological tests to see if I was properly prepared for retirement sometime down the road. The report came back with all sorts of red flags. I was so much tied up in my profession, that I had no viable interests other than work. Essentially that meant that when I retried, I would have no purpose or direction. Well, I’ve seen what happens to people in that setting. They sit around waiting to die.

Fortunately I ran across this opportunity to try out for the Troupers. I am grateful to a talented young lady in my congregation who is in the musical theater program at her high school. She ran me through some cold reading of a script so I would be prepared for the sort of thing the Troupers do. (Thank you Miss A.) It worked well enough because they let me join. They are a great bunch of people, and I’ve learned quite a few things from them. Most of the skits we do were written by the talented D, former chairman and current director. They are really very good, nicely written, and quite funny. The new chairman of our group, S, is impressive. She has to be a combination producer, director, stage manager, and chief administrator. She's really good at casting people in the right roles. Thus, I generally play off-beat, weird people. I'm doing an elf this week.

People who don't know me wouldn't realize how strange this part of my life is. For that matter, people who knew me 40 years ago would have trouble predicting any part of my life as it has worked out. You see, I'm an introvert. On the Myers-Briggs scale I am almost as far over on the introversion scale as you can get. Had I taken that test when I was still in my teens, the school guidance counselor would have recommended my most suitable career path as "hermit" or possibly "mad scientist." Instead, I followed professions that put me smack dab in front of people all the time. First, I was a musician; vocal-choral music education was my specialty. Not only did I have to sing and play in front of people, I had to lead groups of people in doing so. And then I became a clergyman. Every week I have to stand in front of people leading worship and delivering a sermon good enough to bring them back another week. And then I taught philosophy and religion at a university, another very public role.

My musical training is probably what allows me to do any of these things. Any musician who can't perform in front of people is essentially useless. You either learn to overcome your shyness, or take up some other occupation. (One of my professors did suggest I pursue forestry as a career, but he was a little strange.)

Something I learned about being a pastor and about teaching was that you have to be an actor. It doesn't matter who you are underneath, you must put on the persona of pastor or teacher or you fail. Some people might consider that dishonest, but it is the way all people function. We learn to play roles. Having discovered that, it was a short step to playing the role of an actor.

"All the world is a stage, And all the men and women merely players," Shakespeare tells us in As you like it. I wonder if that's anything like saying life is a journey and we are but pilgrims on the way?

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne