About 10 years ago, my wife said our Christmas trees should have only white lights.
No colored lights.
“I hope you and your NEW HUSBAND enjoy those Christmas trees,” I replied.
After 40 years of marriage, nobody has to explain the value of flexibility to me. For years I've preached that,“It's a lot easier to take the garbage out than to argue about who takes the garbage out.”
I'm a reasonable man.
But, I have my limits.
I know that “tiny white Italian lights” are very popular. But where I come from (Corn Belt, pretty much), neglecting colorful lights on the tree would tell neighbors,“Old Dave's gone Hollywood on us. Get a load of those tiny white Italian lights. Who does Dave think he is, Ricardo Montalban?”
One of my favorite memories from my years in Laramie was the towering pine trees along Ivinson Avenue on the UW campus, decorated with big, colorful Christmas lights. Not a tiny white Italian light in the bunch. It was beautiful, especially when it snowed.
(It was enough to make us rush out to Gibson's to buy strings of cheap Christmas lights and put them up in our dorm windows.)
My wife came up with a compromise. The artificial tree we bought (more on THAT atrocity below), came equipped with tiny white Italian lights. But we had colored lights, from the years we put up real trees, so she put them on the tree as well, giving us the options of tiny Italian white lights, large colorful lights (including the essential bubble lights), or both.
Problem solved.
And the marriage was saved.
More Yuletide memories:
- We had natural trees for years, until the year our cat decided that the natural tree in our living room was some kind of annex to her cat box.
A number of presents had to be re-wrapped, and that was the last year we had a real tree.
It was hard work wrestling a natural tree out of our mini-van, trimming the stump, getting sap on my hands, hauling it into the house, then getting the tree stand adjusted so the tree didn't tip over. Took a whole afternoon to get the job done, and we got the kids out of the house while I did it so they didn't learn new words from Dad.
(The cat eventually died, but we still have artificial trees.)
- For years I was on a Salvation Army board in a town across the river from Peoria, Illinois. On the Friday after Thanksgiving, board members would each take an hour or so outside the local Walmart to ring the bell at the Salvation Army donation kettle.
This was during the longest strike in Caterpillar Tractor Company's history, and many Cat hourly employees in our town were on strike, facing Christmas without their usual paychecks.
And we noticed something. It wasn't usually the well-dressed, successful folks who put folding money in the kettle. They were always in a hurry. No, it was often the guy in work clothes, or his wife, with some kids in tow, who put a $5 or a $10 in the kettle. Tough times didn't make them less likely to give. In fact, it seemed to make them more likely.
One other thing: It isn't as easy as you might think to ring the Salvation Army bell when manning a donation kettle. Takes a while to get the hang of it.
- For years, at the paper where I worked, just before Christmas an envelope would arrive in my mail, with a type-written message and a crisp $100 bill. It directed me to deliver the money to some deserving family in town - folks who were going through tough times, a serious illness, or a tragic loss.
No signature. No return address. For about 10 years I delivered those $100 bills.
I always figured it was some high-roller in town, but couldn't figure out how they got it into my mail slot without being seen.
Turns out it was our custodian at the paper, an old guy who had known some pain in his life, and wanted to make sure some deserving family had a little extra to make Christmas brighter.
I think about that old guy every Christmas.
- And lastly, my wife and I – both firmly embedded in our mid 70s – spent a couple days with our granddaughters, ages five and seven, last weekend in Gillette.
There is nothing more wonderful than the excitement of Christmas in the eyes of children that age. For oldsters like us, with a full complement of aches and pains, being around the little ones at this time of year is an elixir, a shot in the arm, a wonder drug.
A much-needed sip from the Fountain of Youth.
Dave Simpson can be reached at: DaveSimpson145@Hotmail.com
