Soon It Will Be Christmas Eve

Next week is Christmas Eve.

In households all over America — indeed, all over the world — there will be a certain excitement in the air. I remember that feeling. I often long for it. But it has left my life, probably forever.

You know, it's true what they say about Christmas. It has become the very definition of commercialism. And it's also true that the Christmas hype gets started earlier every year. Perhaps this has something to do with the economy, but I think a lot of it is just plain old–fashioned greed because I've seen the same thing happening during boom times.

Well, I don't want to rant about Christmas commercialism the week before Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Actually, what I'm going to write about today is my mother. She died in a flash flood in 1995.

I worked as a newspaper copy editor for many years. Among other things, it was my job to whittle down stories to make them fit the allotted space, and there were all sorts of ways to do that. Sometimes you might find a good synonym or a way to say in one word what originally called for three or four. But I don't think I could describe my mother in a single word.

I guess most people would say this about their mothers, but my mother had many talents. She was a first–grade teacher during much of her adult life, and I have long believed that it takes someone with special skills to captivate the imaginations of a room filled with 6–year–olds every day of every week for nine months. Mom did it well enough that she was recognized by others for her work.

After she died, we received many letters of condolence. One came from someone who knew Mom when she was a young girl but had been absent from her life when I was growing up so I wasn't familiar with him, but my father was. His letter included a couple of pictures of Mom as a teenager, hamming it up for the camera on a stage, and he shared his thoughts about her flair for the dramatic. He wrote that he believed Mom became a first–grade teacher because she couldn't be an actress.

Maybe that's so. I never asked Mom why she became a teacher. Maybe I should have. But maybe I didn't because the answer was always all around me. It was one of those questions that didn't need to be asked.

Mom didn't teach when my brother and I were small. She focused her attention on her home and family, and it was in the role of wife/mother/homemaker that she found ways to express her flair for the dramatic.

She always liked to decorate the house for the season. When I was about to turn 5 and my brother was not yet 2, we moved into the first home my parents owned. Christmas came along a couple of months later, and my mother's parents visited us in central Arkansas for the occasion. The picture at the left was taken during that visit.

In the years to come, we visited them in Dallas, sometimes waiting until Christmas Day before loading up the car and hitting the road. (That reminds me of a Christmas when our departure for Dallas was delayed because my brother and I had received Hot Wheels cars and a Hot Wheels track, and we wanted to play with them before we had to pack up the car and leave them behind for a week or so.)

I can't say that I remember that Christmas very well, but we sure look like we had a good time at Christmas dinner.

She always enjoyed having nativity scenes around the house. I remember the one in the picture at the right, but Mom preferred the ones with actual figurines, not the printed figures on cardboard backing or carved shapes. When my brother and I were in elementary school, Mom found a nativity scene in which the figure of the baby could be removed from the bed, and she would leave the bed empty through most of the Christmas season. Then, on Christmas morning, she would insist that the whole family go to the nativity scene to see "if Jesus had been born during the night" before proceeding to our stockings and the gifts under the tree.

Once we had confirmed that Jesus had, indeed, been born, the real festivities — as far as my brother and I were concerned — began. But Mom saw to it that the day started with an acknowledgement of what the day was supposed to be about — even if the emphasis rather rapidly turned to the toys and other goodies in our stockings and the packages.

You know how "B.F.F." is used as shorthand these days for "best friend forever?" Instantly recognizing what that stands for isn't automatic for me. I always have to stop and think about it because I have a different phrase in mind when I say "B.F.F." For me, it refers to my life "before [the] flash flood." The difference has been that profound — certainly as far as Christmas is concerned.

My family almost always spent the Christmas Eves "B.F.F." in the house in which my mother grew up. My grandmother continued to live there after my grandfather died, then my parents moved into the house and stayed there until my mother died.

On Christmas Eve, Mom tended to sleep later than anyone else in the family, then she would enter the living room where the rest of us were watching TV or reading the paper, and, with no prompting from anyone (with the exception, perhaps, of a "Good morning" greeting from someone), she would begin to recite a monologue she had committed to memory many years earlier from a Robin Hood record. In her childhood, she and her friends memorized the record and acted out the scenes that were described in it — and this particular monologue began, "It is Christmas Eve ..."

So, today, when I hear someone say, "It is Christmas Eve," I flash back to those Christmas Eve mornings in my grandparents' home. And I wish I could hear her say it one more time. Never fails.

Mom's flair for the dramatic always seemed to be on display at this time of the year. She stopped doing the nativity scene routine when my brother and I got older, but in the last Christmases of her life, she found a mechanical Rudolph the Red–Nosed Reindeer that, when properly equipped with batteries, would "walk" while nodding its head up and down.

Mom would treat Rudolph like a Magic 8–Ball, asking, "Are we going to have a good Christmas?" and then flicking his switch, prompting Rudolph's affirming nod.

Rudolph was always right. Maybe that was because the family was together.

We didn't really have Santa Claus in my home. We had Père Noël. And he wasn't played by my father. He was played by my mother.

She had a long flowing red robe that she would put on with a fake white beard, and she was transformed into "Père Noël," speaking — and even laughing — in an exaggerated Inspector Clouseauesque French accent.

I guess that wasn't too surprising. Mom loved the "Pink Panther" movies. No matter how many times she saw Peter Sellers play the bumbling French detective, it made her laugh. I often felt that she played Père Noël primarily to make the rest of us laugh, and she succeeded.

Eventually, Père Noël branched out, making holiday appearances at Mom's school. But the act had been perfected on my father, my brother and me.

It's hard to believe, but this will be my 15th Christmas without Mom — or Rudolph or Père Noël. In hindsight, I guess I should have been preparing myself for the inevitable. But even though I knew that no one lives forever, I never gave any thought to what my life would be like when my parents were gone. And then, when it happened, I was unprepared.

So my Yuletide advice to you, dear reader, is this: Be thankful for the people in your life while you have them. They can be taken from you without notice.