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“And I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we should. We all come home or ought to come home, for a short holiday–the longer, the better.” An excerpt from A Christmas Tree by Charles Dickens.

This is a poem called Christmas At Sea by Robert Louis Stevenson. “The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand; / The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand; / The wind was a nor’wester, blowing squally off the sea; / And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

“They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day; / But ’twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay. / We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout, / And we gave her the maintops’l, and stood to go about. / All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North; / All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth; / All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread, / For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

“We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared; / But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard; / So’s we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high, / And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.

“The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam; / The good red fires were burning bright in every ‘longshore home; / The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out; / And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.

“The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer; / For it’s just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year) / This day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn, / And the house above the coastguard’s was the house where I was born.

“O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there, / My mother’s silver spectacles, my father’s silver hair; / And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves, / Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves.

“And well I know the talk they had, the talk that was of me, / Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea; / And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way, / To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas Day.

“They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall. / ‘All hands to loose topgallant sails,’ I heard the captain call. / ‘By the Lord, she’ll never stand it,’ our first mate Jackson, cried. / … ‘It’s the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson,’ he replied.

“She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good, ‘ / And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood. / As the winter’s day was ending, in the entry of the night, / We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.

“And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me, / As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea; / But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold, / Was just that I was leaving home, and my folks were growing old.”

This poem was included in the collection Christmas Poems selected and edited by John Hollander and J. D. McClatchy, a Borzoi Book published by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House. Its ISBN is 0-375-40789-8

Winter officially begins a little past 1 a.m. overnight. Usually it begins on the 21st. The first day of winter means many things to me. It means the shortest day of the year. By the 23rd of the month, “Daylight now lengthens to the extent of a gnat’s yawn,” according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

December 21st has been a busy day at airports and train stations as Christmas travelers begin the long journey home. Patience was no doubt tested in this changed world of ours, as these travelers contended with the new security requirements and restrictions when preparing to board their flights. It will be worth all the headaches when they arrive at their destinations to find family and friends ready to greet them, and welcome them “home.”

Some journeys can only be made in the memory. I remember being on the train heading home to Toronto from my radio job in Montreal on Christmas Eve. This was a very long time ago now. On this one trip, late in the frigid evening that was Christmas Eve that year, the train broke down out in the middle of nowhere. The pipes froze up beneath the old passenger cars. We sat in the cold staring out the windows at a bleak windswept landscape for what seemed an eternity as the crew tried to repair the problem. I wondered if I would even be able to make it home that night, or would end up being billeted in a hotel in some place not readily found on the map. In  those days I only had a few days off from my job and would need to be home right after Boxing Day. When the train finally moved and some hours later arrived in my hometown, it was so good to see my mother and father waiting for me on the cold station platform. A few days later on the return journey, the train broke down again. This time it was during a day trip so the inconvenience didn’t take as much of an emotional toll on those returning from holiday celebrations. I remember waving to my parents through the frosted window as the train lurched out of the station. Even though I couldn’t see my mother clearly, I knew there was a tear in her eye and a catch in her throat as she waved back.

Both my parents have long since passed on. They wait for me no longer on that familiar train platform when I now travel with my family. On the occasion when my wife and children travel alone, it is me who stands there out in the cold, ready to greet them warmly upon their return. I know what my parents felt, waiting patiently for their son to return home.

This day is special to me for another reason. My mother, Violet Rose, was born on this date, December 21st. She was born in the dark and cold of the shortest day of the year. Another Christmas is here without her and my father. At our Christmas table I will sit in the place usually reserved for my father, and raise a glass in their memory. I’m sure you will do the same for those who who can no longer be at your table. A collective prayer will once again go out to all absent friends.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote: “But O for the touch of a vanished hand, / And the sound of a voice that is still.”

***

This blog will be “live” Christmas Eve between 6 and midnight. I will be attending our special Christmas Eve program hosted by the morning show, and posting thoughts and readings in my blog that you might like to share with your family, as you await the arrival of “the jolly old elf.” I hope you will check this site regularly throughout the evening of the 24th for my many postings, and for my very best wishes to you and your family.

Kim Gannon wrote, “I’ll be home for Christmas / If only in my dreams…”

***

Don Jackson

“She lit another match. This time she was sitting under a lovely Christmas tree. It was much bigger and more beautifully decorated than the one she had seen when she had peeped through the glass doors at the rich merchant’s house this Christmas Day. Thousands of lighted candles gleamed upon its branches, and colored pictures such as she had seen in the shop windows looked down upon her.” An excerpt from The Little Match Girl written by Hans Christian Anderson, in 1846. One can only imagine the condition of the shoes she wore on her little feet.

My wife’s grandfather was a shoemaker in Italy. He would travel the countryside to little towns and villages mending, repairing and making shoes for poor families. He would be paid for his efforts with produce, eggs, and the occasional chicken. Hans Christian Anderson was the son of a poor Danish shoemaker. His story of The Snow Queen was published on December 21st, 1844. In the tale, she turns a young boy’s warm heart into ice. As in most fairy-tales, good eventually triumphs over evil when he is rescued by a friend.

“Go to sleep my little darling, / Close your eyes so sweet and bright, / For you know my precious angel / Santa Claus comes tonight.” A lyric from an 1877 carol, featured in the December 1999 issue of Victoria magazine.

In Holland, little shoes are left in chimney corners so they can be filled with presents. On this side of the Atlantic, we hang our stockings “by the chimney with care”. The reason for this dates back to Asia Minor around the time of the fourth century A. D. There lived, at the time, a bishop by the name of Nicholas. He had heard of a poor man who couldn’t afford the dowry for his daughters. He decided to give the family a gift of gold but he didn’t want them to know where it came from. So he threw the gold down the chimney where it landed inside a stocking that was hung by the fire to dry. When I was growing up, our Christmas stockings were filled with treats and small gifts, but occasionally you would find a tangerine down in the toe of the stocking. This was to represent the lump of gold given to the poor girls by the bishop who later became a saint–Saint Nicholas…

“How delicious it was to plunge one’s hand deeper and deeper into the stocking, pull out the presents…the necklace, the little fan, the tiny prayer book with print no human eye could read and Sir Joshua Reynolds’ angels stamped in silver on the cover…and always at the end, the tangerine, so cool to the touch, so sweet to the mouth.” An excerpt from Three Houses by Angela Thirkell, published in 1931.

You may be unfamiliar with some of this lore. I ran across the mention of this superstition in a Reader’s Digest collection called The Best Literature of Christmas. This was one of the Superstitions of The Old South. “To improve your luck, wear something new on Christmas Day. But not new shoes. They will hurt, and may even walk you into a catastrophe.” Here’s another custom from that same collection. “A Spanish legend tells that the three kings cross Spain each year on their way to Bethlehem and leave gifts for children who have been good. On Epiphany Eve the children put out shoes filled with hay and carrots for the camels of the kings.”

You might remember from tonight’s radio show there was another lump of something found in a mother’s shoe. She had asked her small son to shine her best shoes before going to church. She gave him a quarter when he finished. When she later went to slip into her shoes, her foot hit a lump. It wasn’t a tangerine. Inside the note was the quarter and these words, written in the scrawl of a seven-year-old: “I done it for love…”

Charles Dickens wrote: “They were not a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being waterproof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known–and very likely did–the inside of a pawnbroker’s. But they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time.”

***

I am beginning to plan to make this blog “live” on Christmas Eve. From time to time throughout the course of this very special night, I will be posting readings that you might like to share with your family as you await the arrival of Santa Claus. I will be a guest during the CHFI Christmas Eve program and will be posting some very special notes and writings here in my blog. I hope you will check frequently over the course of the evening of December 24th.

Don Jackson

“A whisper of snow touched the cold window.

“The vast house creaked in a wind from nowhere.

“‘What?’ I said.

“‘I didn’t say anything.’ Charlie Simmons, behind me at the fireplace, shook popcorn quietly in a vast metal sieve. ‘Not a word.’

“Stunned, I watched the snow fall on far streets and empty fields. It was a proper night for ghosts of whiteness to visit windows and wander off.”

It is just before midnight on the eve of Christmas Day. This writer continues: “Is this a special time? I thought. Do holy ghosts wander on nights of falling snow to do us favors in this strange-held hour? If I make a wish in secret, will that perambulating night, strange sleeps, old blizzards give back my wish tenfold?”

He may not come to mind immediately as a writer of Christmas stories but this one, The Wish was included in his collection, Ray Bradbury Stories: 100 of Bradbury’s Most Celebrated Tales published in 2003 by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. In that short story, a man gets a chance to make things right. Words that were never said in life were finally said on a snowy Christmas night. It wasn’t just the words the son finally gave voice to that made this story so touching. It was the words spoken by the ghost of the father that also needed to be said. Three simple words that were never spoken during life: “I love you…”

“‘It’s humbug still!’ said Scrooge. ‘I won’t believe it!’”

In the beginning, Scrooge believed that his visitation by Marley was nothing more than ‘ …a slight disorder of the stomach. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!’” An excerpt from A Christmas Carolby Charles Dickens, a Washington Square Press Enriched Classic, and published by a division of Simon and Schuster.

…But he was eventually made to believe.

Scrooge was taken into the past, walked through the present, and given a glimpse of one possible future by the help of the Spirits. “By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty heavily and as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlors, and all sorts of rooms was wonderful.

“The very lamplighter, who ran on before, dotting the dusky street with specks of light, and who was dressed to spend the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the Spirit passed, though little kenned the lamplighter that he had any company but Christmas!”

In the movie version of It’s A Wonderful Life, the angel named Clarence escorts George Bailey through the streets of his own town that was now so dramatically changed since his wish was granted. George, too, didn’t want to believe that his wish had come true. It took him quite a while to finally believe in the power of the angel by his side, and what his life meant to so many others.

…But in the end, he, too, believes, and begs for everything to be put right. The angel is only too happy to oblige, his efforts rewarded in Heaven with wings and the ringing of Christmas bells back on Earth.

The Velveteen Rabbit wished he could become Real. One of the children wished that Frosty The Snowman would be alive. In a story called The Doll and The White Rose by V. A. Bailey, a little boy is overheard by a harried Christmas shopper wishing that his mother didn’t have to leave him to go to Heaven to be with his sister.

…Some wishes can never be granted, now matter how hard we try…

It is the season for wishing. Some will be made real while others may have to wait for another time.

It’s sometimes easy to make a wish come true: a tin of canned food dropped off at a food bank, toys taken to a drop-off location to be delivered in time for Christmas, a few coins dropped into a collection box, a donation made to a worthy charity.

“Love makes it possible to believe in all things, especially miracles. That this is the season of miracles. That there’s a miracle with your name on it. That when you wish upon a star, grace steps in to bridge the gaps until your dreams come true.” An excerpt from Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joyby Sarah Ban Breathnach and published by Warner Books.

I hope all your wishes are made Real this year…

***

Don Jackson

“The door of Scrooge’s counting-house was open, that he might keep his eye up on his clerk, who, in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed.” An excerpt from A Christmas Carolby Charles Dickens, published now by Simon and Schuster.

This is an old saying, an old belief: “If you let a fire go out on Christmas morniing, spirits will come to you then and later in the season.” A superstition from the Reader’s Digest collection, The Best Literature Of Christmas. I think Ebenezer Scrooge knew this fact intimately. He griped when Bob Cratchit tried to put a few more coals on the fire at the office and kept his own home fires at the same low intensity. He was a cold man, this Mr. Scrooge…

“It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh’s daughters, Queens of Sheba, angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts; and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet’s rod, and swallowed up the whole.” ” ‘Humbug!’ said Scrooge; and walked across the room.”

It’s an interesting superstition that you might want to consider on Christmas morning, to keep a fire burning bright. Bob Cratchit was only trying to keep warm at his work. Scrooge kept the place cold, no doubt to keep Bob alert so he wouldn’t make a mistake with the numbers. Scrooge was even stingy at home with the fuel, and look what it got him…

“But the Ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.” 

You would think that coal in someone’s stocking in those days would have made a wonderful gift. One precious extra lump to fuel the Christmas fire to keep the family warm or to help cook the Christmas dinner. Why did a past generation threaten that if the children were bad they might wake to find a lump of coal in their Christmas stocking?

F. Marion Crawford in The Little City Of Hopewrote, “Indoors, the fire is glowing on the wide hearth, a great bed of coals that will last all night and be enough … and the older people sit round it not saying much, and thinking with their hearts rather than with their heads, but small boys and girls know that interesting things have been happening in the kitchen all afternoon … and the grown-ups and the children have made up any little differences of opinion they may have had, before supper time…” An excerpt from the Thomas Kinkade book, I’ll Be Home For Christmas, published in 1997 by Harvest House Publishers.

Charles Dickens writes as the roaring fire begins to dim in the Cratchit home and is stoked anew: “At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovelful of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew around the hearth in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half of one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass: two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle. These held the hot stuff from the jug, as well as golden goblets would have done, and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed: ‘A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!’ Which all the family re-echoed. ‘God bless us everyone!’ said Tiny Tim, last of all.”

When Bob Cratchit comes a few minutes late for work the morning following Christmas, Scrooge berates his clerk for being ‘behind my time,’ as Bob said. Poor Bob. He really believes that this is finally it. The old man is going to fire him, and this after such a wonderful Christmas due in large part to the generosity of a stranger. Dickens writes: “‘It’s only once a year, sir,’ pleaded Bob. ‘It shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir.’ When Scrooge can contain himself no longer, Dickens writes, ” ‘Now, I’ll tell you what, my friend,’ said Scrooge. ‘I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore,’ he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into one tank again–’and therefore, I am about to raise your salary!’ ” The clerk is momentarily confused. Were his ears playing tricks on him? Maybe it was the lingering after-effects of the Christmas punch. After looking downtrodden through this entire tirade by Scrooge, he raises his eyes and sees the smile on the face of the old man.  ‘A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob!’ And then he hears the one thing that convinces him that he must be dreaming. Scrooge tells him, ‘Make up the fires, and buy another coal shuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!’ “

It wasn’t wise to carry fire, coal or matches on Christmas, but if your fire went out on the 25th, evil spirits would populate your home, according to an old superstition. If spirits do come your way on Christmas day, I hope they are the ones you would welcome with open arms. It’s those spirits that bring us a warmth of spirit no fire could ever produce.

***

Don Jackson

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know, where the treetops glisten and children listen to hear sleigh bells in the snow…” An excerpt from a Christmas classic by Irving Berlin.

My mother always liked to watch her Christmas videos at this time of the year. Two of her favourites were White Christmas starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, and Holiday Inn that again starred Crosby with Fred Astaire. In one of them, there is no snow on the ground till almost the very end of the movie. The doors of this inn are then opened wide to reveal a world magically turned white.

In recent years, Christmas Day here in Toronto dawned bright and “green.” The lawn may have been adorned with a few stray wisps of snow, but the roads and sidewalks were bare. The snow shovel was still in the garage on its hook on the wall.

I remember flying to Toronto from Montreal one Christmas Eve, late in the 1980s. The pilot came on the intercom and addressed the passengers by saying that it was raining in Toronto, and Santa would have to ensure his sleigh had wheels and maybe even pontoons on the runners.

Where did we ever get the notion that Christmas must be white? There are many parts of the world that never see snow on Christmas Day and they don’t seem any poorer for it. If you’ve ever spent Christmas in Florida or on one of the islands in the Caribbean, palm trees decorated in Christmas lights can seem just as festive as our evergreen trees here. And yet the Christmas cards sold there will inevitably feature a snowy winter scene. I can think of any number of reasons why I might prefer to spend Christmas where it’s warm, but deep inside I know that it just wouldn’t be the same. You can credit one author for making us believe in the necessity of a white Christmas. His name was Charles Dickens…

This is an excerpt from the Reader’s Digest edition, Why In The World: All You Ever Wanted To Know About The World Around You But May Never Have Thought To Ask! It was published in 1994. “In 1843, Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, the first in a series of annual Christmas books that were aimed, he said, ‘to awaken loving and forbearing thoughts.’ In his stories, Dickens combined a rousing celebration of the old merry-making Christmas with the idea of Christmas as an occasion that united families in a spirit of charity and love. He depicted Christmas as being warm and cosy for some and miserably cold and hungry for others. Constantly troubled by the poverty, injustice and divisions in society, he saw his Christmas stories as a means of bringing the depressed working classes out of the cold and into the warm embrace of the nation.” Some lines later, “Dickens is said to have fashioned not only the style of our modern Christmas but the myth–in Britain, if not elsewhere–that the typical Christmas is white. Climatologists say that in Dickens’s childhood there were eight white Christmases in a row, which undoubtedly influenced the way that he, followed by millions of Christmas cards, portrayed the British Christmas. But only two or three times this [past] century has snow fallen ‘deep and crisp and even’ over most of Britain on Christmas Day.” I live in a part of the country where, more often than not, snow comes before Christmas and stays on the ground for the rest of the winter. It certainly has this year…

In order to land, I was always led to believe that Santa Claus and his sleigh, pulled by eight tiny reindeer, needed a deep base of snow on the roof. As an adult I have come to appreciate the beauty of a pristine fall of snow on the ground. It gives me the impression that the light reflected on it is illuminating millions of sparkling diamonds. The treetops do seem to glisten when the snow is gently coming down. We watch and wait for the snow on Christmas Eve as much as we anticipate the midnight visit by the man in his red-and-white, fur-trimmed suit. If it doesn’t snow on Christmas Eve, then we look outside first thing on Christmas morning to see if our world turned white after Santa’s visit. Surely he must have brought some snow on his midnight ride, we reason. It doesn’t have to be a lot of snow, either. Just a few flakes softly falling is enough to make us believe that all is right in the world.

J. B. Priestly wrote, “The first fall of snow is not only an event but it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up to find yourself in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment, then where is it to be found?”

The reason we yearn for a white Christmas is buried deep in the magic of the season, perhaps created by an author who believed that magical things could happen on a snowy Christmas night..

It was on December 17th, 1843, that A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens was first published.

***

Don Jackson

“Silent, and soft, and slow /Descends the snow…” An excerpt from “Snow” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

It’s been piling up all day long. I’ve already shoveled our driveway and a neighbor’s twice. It looks like I will need to go out again before this night is through. For those hoping and praying for a “White” Christmas, I think it’s a safe bet to assume that Christmas this year will be white instead of green. My daughter tells me that this was the biggest storm we’ve had in the past fifteen years, and that would be just about right. I remember the last time it snowed like this.. It was actually fourteen years ago… She would be much too small to remember…

My wife and I attended the CHFI Christmas Party for staff and their spouses. We knew there was a storm predicted for that night but we were having such a wonderful time with colleagues and friends that we stayed longer than we should have.  The drive home was long and treacherous. Driving conditions were even worse than what they were today. Most of the main routes had been plowed but the snow was falling so fast and furious that the plows and salters couldn’t keep up. We arrived by about 1am to the community where we lived at the time. As soon as I turned off the main street to enter our neighborhood I realized it was a mistake. The street was simply impassable. The plows hadn’t made it into this neighborhood since the storm started. There was no salt down beneath the thick blanket of snow. Fortunately I carried a small shovel in the trunk of the car. I never had the opportunity to use it until that night. I knew that if we were to make it to the house, I would have to shovel a path for the car. The house was only two blocks away. I reasoned how difficult could it be..

My wife was pregnant with my daughter at the time. She would stay behind the wheel while I shoveled a path in front of the car. There was more snow on the road than there was on any side street today. It reached as high as the front bumper. I began to shovel. My wife was able to rock the car back and forth and cautiously proceed forward. From time to time I needed to get behind the car to push. It was a front-wheel drive vehicle with four snow tires on it, but the street was a mess and very slippery. I shoveled by the illumination of the headlights and the scattered streetlamps overhead. I shoveled, and shoveled and shoveled. I complain now when I have to shovel the driveway twice in one day. That night, fourteen years ago, it was like I shoveled out every driveway on those two side-streets.

It was almost five in the morning by the time we made it to our driveway. Thank goodness we had enough gas in the tank to keep the car and its heater going to keep my wife and unborn child warm. It would be some time before we saw a plow.

I had to be in work the day after the party and there was no way I could get the car out to the main streets. I walked all the way down to a major thoroughfare to catch a ride on the “GO” bus that would take me to the nearest train station.

That night on my return I got off the train and onto the “wrong” bus. Instead of the one that would pass by my neighborhood, this one took me straight to the bus station in the downtown core. I repeatedly tried to call a cab but the number was always busy. So, I began to walk. The sidewalks were still clogged with snow but the main street had been plowed. I walked down the side of the street all the way back to where we lived. It was a distance of almost five kilometers. I actually contemplated hitchhiking, but no cars passed. There were no taxis on the street, either. This was a time before cellphones were small enough to carry in your pocket. Mine was large enough to sit on the seat beside me. It also needed to be plugged into the lighter for power. It was obviously not on my person. I didn’t pass a single phone booth on my long walk where I could at least call and tell me wife where I was. I eventually made it home that Friday night. I was thankful that it was the weekend. I figured the roads would finally be cleared by Monday. It took two full days before the plows made it into our small neighborhood. I have photographs of me standing in the middle of the snowbanks that lined our driveway. They were well over my head and I’m an inch shy of 6-feet tall.

“I’ll be home for Christmas. / You can plan on me. / Please have snow and mistletoe / And presents on the tree.” A few lines from “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” lyrics by Kim Gannon and music by Walter Kent.

Whenever I hear people “dreaming” of a white Christmas, I remember those few days when the city I used to live in was literally buried. Today’s storm brought back those memories again.

“Now and then, once in four or five years perhaps, the feathery snow lies a foot deep, fresh-fallen, on the still countryside and in the woods; and the waxing moon sheds her large light on all, and Nature holds her breath to wait for the happy day and tries to sleep, but cannot from sheer happiness and peace.” F. Marion Crawford from “The Little City of Hope” published by HarperCollins.

Be very careful if you have to be out on the roads tonight. They’re still very slippery. You might want to heed the warnings from the police and stay home, light a fire in the fireplace and listen to the radio for a few hours tonight. I know a radio show you could listen to, as well…

James Whitcomb Riley wrote, “Come sing a hale heigh-ho / For the Christmas long ago!– / When the old log cabin homed us / From the night of blinding snow, / Where the rarest joy held reign, / And the chimney roared amain, / With the firelight like a beacon / Through the frosty window-pane.”

***

Don Jackson 

Oliver Herford wrote, “I heard a bird sing / In the dark of December /A magical thing / And sweet to remember. // ‘We are nearer to spring / than we were in September.’ / I heard a bird sing / in the dark of December.”

There is something comforting about birdsong this late in the year. With very little food available other than what homeowners put out in their feeders, you would think these winged creatures would not survive the bleak winter. You do see them foraging about, looking for anything edible and wonder how they ever make through the day.

Just the other day, my wife saw a Hairy Woodpecker in a neighbour’s tree, tapping at the branches, looking for over-wintering insects in the bark. In the lilac tree just outside our kitchen window, we recently saw a nuthatch doing the same thing. Our property is home to sparrows and, of course, chickadees. I hear the song of the chickadee all summer long but it sounds somehow different in winter. My wife makes sure there is suet to hang on the boughs of the trees where these birds congregate to keep warm. It’s the least we can do for a creature with a ‘caretaker’ spirit…

“…Four colly birds, / Three french hens, / Two turtle-doves, / And a partridge in a pear tree.” It’s one of those birds we rarely, if ever, give a thought to…until Christmas. And its real personality is very much like that, too. In summer, it is a rather shy, withdrawn creature. In the winter, though, its presence is felt in the evergreen forest. I read a very interesting article written by Castle Freeman Jr. in the Farmer’s Column in the 1986 edition of the Old Farmer’s Almanac. We have a small gold partridge ornament in our Christmas tree. The bird itself is small, according to this writing in the Almanac. As Castle Freeman Jr. writes, “The partridge is not a large bird. It’s smaller than a crow, not a great deal bigger than a jay. It seems bigger than it is because it makes a big commotion..” When you walk through the woods, this is the bird that you hear being startled in the distance on your path. He also maintains that this is truly one of the wild birds. This is not a bird that will come around looking for whatever seed you leave out in your feeder. It truly will get by with whatever scant pickings there may be in the winter woods.

I mention in tonight’s program that I see more and more geese staying behind for the winter than ever before. I’m not sure why this is. I remember the great fall migrations of these magnificent creatures flying in a ‘V’ formation as the days turned cold. I’m sure there still is, but I still see some smaller groups flying over the house throughout the winter. Whenever I hear their distinctive call, I can’t help but look up. You might remember the story I spoke of on the air just the other night. It was called A Flight of Geese by Fred Lloyd Cochran from the 1999 collection, Chicken Soup for the Unsinkable Soul. The author is standing on a street in Chicago when he too hears their call and looks up. After they have flown by, he lowers his gaze only to find a bag-lady also looking skyward, sharing in the moment. She lowers her head and says these words: “God spoils me.” The author is taken aback by her comment. Of all the people to make such a comment he hears those words coming from a person who has so little. He writes, “I believe the sight of the geese had shattered, however briefly, the harsh reality of her own struggle. I realized later that moments such as this one sustained her; it was the way she survived the indignity of the street.” The simple sight of these magnificent birds was enough to keep her going in the face of the brutal conditions of her life. He said that “her smile was real. The sight of the geese was her Christmas present.” It is truly amazing to consider what little it takes for someone who has little to begin with.

***

Don Jackson

It’s the season for Christmas concerts and presentations at schools. Who hasn’t sat in the audience and witnessed a play on the stage that features an angel whose tiny wings were slightly askew? We had a huge heron on our property early this fall. Its wingspan was magnificent! The baby robins, which hatched before our eyes in the lilac tree just outside our kitchen window, had the tiniest, most delicate wings….

We often think of angels in the classical sense with wings that are large, that tower high over the head of the celestial being. Wings that could cause trees to violently shake if one of these creatures were to pass by. But if you saw the film Michael that starred John Travolta then you know that wings can get battered and bruised in the course of a angel’s earthly duties. He might not even be able to produce a gentle breeze from his tired wings.

“Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.” And if you listen closely, you’ll hear one of those bell as an angel by the name of Clarence finally succeeds in getting what he so desperately wanted. In the original story, he was Gorge Pratt, but he will be forever ingrained on our minds as George Bailey, portrayed by a youthful Jimmy Stewart in the film It’s a Wonderful Life.The angel in the original story by Philip Van Doren Stern - condensed for the December 1994 issue of the Reader’s Digest - gives George Pratt back his life, and ends the nightmare.

” ‘However, since it’s Christmas Eve - close your eyes and listen to the bells.’ George did as he was told. A cold wet snow drop touched his cheek - and then another. When he opened his eyes, the snow was falling fast. The little stranger could not be seen.” An excerpt from the original story by Philip Van Doren Stern in 1943, called The Greatest Gift: A Xmas Tale that was eventually made into the movie It’s a Wonderful Life that starred Jimmy Stewart…It was also included in the book No, But I Saw The Movie: The Best Short Stories Ever Made Into Film, by David Wheeler, published in 1989 by Penguin Books. It was condensed for the December 1994 issue of the Reader’s Digest. What would Christmas be if it wasn’t for It’s a Wonderful Life?

Clarence reminds me of this poem. It is called Working Angel, posted on the Internet. It is author unknown:

“Last night I had a dream; / It had a tale to tell. / I dreamed I saw an angel; / Poor thing - he wasn’t feeling well..

His body was bruised and battered / -His wings were ripped and torn - / This angel could hardly walk, / He looked so tired and worn..

I walked right up to him to ask, / ‘Angel? How can this be?’ / He turned around and paused a bit, / - Then he spoke these words to me..

‘I’m your Guardian Angel, / A great task, as you can see../ You’ve run amok most all your life / - Look what it’s done to me…

These bruises are from shielding you / In times both dire and ill, / Those alcoholic bouts and drugs you’ve used / - I’ve often paid the bill..

You see my wings are ripped and torn; / A noble badge I wear../ How often they have flown you / - From evils-unaware..

Each mark its own story / Of deadly wounds destroyed. / You made me wish - more than once -/ That I was unemployed.’

I could not believe all I had heard, / Let alone how much he cared, / I wept upon his shoulder / Then left him in despair..

The next day I sat and pondered; / Should I really try? / And in the distance I thought I heard / A frail, old angel-cry..”

(This poem is not complete like the angel itself, but its message is timely, indeed.)

One of the best descriptions of wings I’ve ever heard is this. A French proverb states, “A baby is an angel whose wings decrease as his legs increase.”

***

Don Jackson

“I saw little tracks in the snow. / Looking at them, / I saw for the first time / The world that is governed by small animals, / Little birds and beasts in the woods.” An excerpt from Invisible Tree by Tamura Ryuichi (b. 1923) translated from the Japanese into English by Naoshi Koriyama and Edward Lueders.

In my show tonight between 9 and 11pm (EST), I speak of some of the tracks that I see in the deep snow on my property out by the huge pond where the koi sleep the winter away. One set of tracks that I recognize belongs to a small rabbit that used to live in the ravine that borders our community. For some reason it has chosen to find a new home close to a family of people. The little creature settled for a warm, dry spot under this neighbor’s front porch. It offers a safe place to return to as darkness descends. There might also be another reason why it has returned from the wild to be near people…

Most of us are familiar with the story of The Velveteen Rabbit. The story was originally published in 1922 and again published in 1995 by Smithmark Publishers. Margery Williams, the author of this beloved children’s classic writes, “The little rabbit grew very old and shabby. He [the Boy] loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off, and the pink lining to his ears turned grey, and his brown spots faded. He even began to lose his shape, and he scarcely looked like a rabbit anymore except to the Boy. To him he was always beautiful, and that was all the little rabbit cared about. He didn’t mind how he looked to other people, because the nursery magic had made him real and when you are Real, shabbiness doesn’t matter.”

The little boy gets sick with scarlet fever and the doctor thinks that old tattered plaything may be part of the reason why he is not getting well. So the little rabbit is to be destroyed and a new one takes his place. The old bunny sheds a tear…

“…And a strange thing happened. For where the tear had fallen a flower grew out of the ground, a mysterious flower, not at all like any that grew in the garden. And presently the bloom opened, and out of it there stepped a fairy.” “‘I am the Nursery Fairy,’ she said. ‘I take care of all the playthings that children have loved. When they are old and worn out and the children don’t need them anymore, then I come and take them away with me and turn them into Real.’ ‘Wasn’t I Real before?’ asked the little rabbit. ‘You were Real to the Boy,’ the fairy said, ‘because he loved you. Now you shall be Real to every one…’”

She takes him to the woods and makes him as “real” as all the other wild rabbits. As author Margery Williams says in the conclusion of her tale, “Autumn passed and winter, and in the spring, when the days grew warm and sunny, the Boy went out to play in the wood behind the house. And while he was playing, two rabbits crept out of the bracken and peeped at him. One of them was brown all over, but the other had strange markings under his fur, as though long ago he had been spotted, and the spots still showed through. ‘Why, he looks like my old bunny that was lost when I had scarlet fever!’ But he never really knew that it really was his own bunny, come back to look at the child who had first helped him to be Real.”

A wonderful story for Christmas reading for those who ever wonder what happened to their old playthings, lost on the long journey to adulthood, lost like the belief in so many myths and legends that made this season magical…

***

Don Jackson

Truman Capote in “A Christmas Memory,” wrote: “A morning arrives in November, and my friend, as though officially inaugurating the Christmas time of year that exhilarates her imagination and fuels the blaze of her heart, announces: ‘It’s fruitcake weather!’”

Out of all the gifts that people might consider returning on Boxing Day, fruitcake would have to be close to the top of the list. And if not returned then repackaged and passed along to another person. I have handled some fruitcake in my day that would break a toe if dropped by accident. I have an idea where the fruitcake you’ll receive this Christmas originally came from. Read on…

This was from a short piece in the December 3rd, 1990 issue of USA Today by Cathy Lynn Grossman. She writes: “At last a self defence system for fruitcake haters. Once, you had no way of knowing which grinning friend or relative bearing gifts had one of those lumpy bricks wrapped with your name on it. But now a USA Today poll of 770 adults’ holiday behaviour reveals the demographics of the fruitcake giver. Nearly a quarter of those surveyed admit they have given a fruitcake. Watch out for:

“* Someone 55 or older (44%). Perhaps they’ve used up their better ideas.

“* Men. They were more likely (25% compared to 21% of women) to ‘fess up to this.

“* Someone from the heartland (30%). To be safe, pick your pals from the Great Lake states, where only 15% say they give fruitcakes.

“* Country cousins. Those from rural areas were slightly more likely culprits than their suburban/urban counterparts. This is not a sufficiently detailed composite to display on the post office wall. But giving a fruitcake isn’t a crime yet.”

That’s still not the true origins of the fruitcake you might receive in the coming days, though…

“So–away with the last of the sour cream dip, / Get rid of the fruit cake–every cracker and chip, / Every last bit of food that I like must be banished, / Till all the additional ones have vanished.” An excerpt from ‘Twas The Month After Christmas And I Ate Too Much–Author Unknown.

One last excerpt from “A Christmas Memory” by Truman Capote. He gives the ingredients for the perfect fruitcake, one that makes me think that the idea is still a sound one. “Tomorrow the kind of work I like best begins: buying. Cherries and citron, ginger and vanilla and canned Hawaiian pineapple, rinds and raisins and walnuts and whiskey and oh, so much flour, butter, so many eggs, spices, flavourings: why, we’ll need a pony to pull the buggy home. One way or another we do each year accumulate Christmas savings, a fruitcake fund. Of the ingredients that go into our fruitcakes, whiskey is the most expensive as well as the hardest to obtain. The black stove, stoked with coal and firewood, glows like a lighted pumpkin. Eggbeaters whirl, spoons spin round in bowls of butter and sugar, vanilla sweetens the air, ginger spices it; melting, nose-tingling odours saturate the kitchen, suffuse the house, drift out to the world on puffs of chimney smoke. In four days our work is done. Thirty-one cakes, dampened with whiskey, bask on windowsills and shelves. Who are they for? Friends. Not necessarily neighbour friends: the larger share is intended for persons we’ve met maybe once, perhaps not at all. People who’ve struck our fancy. Like President Roosevelt. Like Reverend and Mrs. J. C. Lucey, Baptist missionaries to Borneo who lectured here last winter. Or the little knife grinder who comes through town twice a year, or Abner Packer, the driver of the six o’clock bus from Mobile, who exchanges waves with us every day as he passes in a dust-cloud whoosh. Or the young Wistons, a California couple whose car one afternoon broke down outside the house and who spent a pleasant hour chatting with us on the porch. The kitchen is empty, the cakes are gone; yesterday we carted the last of them to the post office, where the cost of stamps turned our purse inside out. We’re broke…”

So if you’ve always wondered where all those fruitcake gifts come from, I’m sure that some are still making the rounds from the original batch made by Truman Capote and his friend…

So to the fruitcake, many, many happy returns–literally! 

***

Don Jackson