Christmas Ghosts

I do not believe that I am like Ebenezer Scrooge in his greed, nor do I believe Christmas a bah humbug; however, like Scrooge, I am haunted by the ghost of Christmas past, the ghost of Christmas present, and the ghost of Christmas future. 

I have several fond memories of Christmases past, and I know, like Scrooge, the stories of Christmases past have taken part in shaping Christmas present, and Christmas present will take part in shaping Christmas future. 

I have fond memories of Christmases past, my last post was such a story. One story, that I have thought about, often this week, occurred on Christmas morning 1976.

My father was a Dallas firefighter-paramedic. While growing up in his household, I occasionally spent the night with him at the fire station. Christmas Eve 1976 was such an occasion. 

I don’t remember this particular instance at the fire station; however, I do know, when I spent the day with him, at the fire station, the men included me in the daily chores. In the apparatus room, I could look, but not touch, nor climb on the engines. I was not allowed to go on a run, but would stay at the fire station alone while the men were called out on a run. 

I would spend the night on a bunk, just like the men, but with instructions to stay in bed if they went out on a run.

I remember riding home with my father, in his big green Ford van, coming to the place were Audelia Rd and Skillman St come together, just south of LBJ freeway. Why is this part of my memory and why is this memory so vivid? I do not know, but I do know that it was Christmas morning 1976 and we were on our way home together.

We arrived at my boyhood home in Garland, Texas. My brother and sister were not allowed to leave there rooms until we arrived. Santa Clause had come, he had neatly placed toys in three groups. 

I do not remember the other toys in my group, but I do remember an ambulance, equipped with paramedics and a stretcher. My younger brother received a fire truck, that had a raisable bucket, that could be attached to a water hose, and spew water to put out large structure fires, although, of course, on miniature scale.

My father is no longer with us, he died on February 16, 2014, from Parkinson's and Lewy bodies dementia.

My family spent Christmas together, for the last time, on December 24, 2013, my brother and his family, my sister and her family, and I with my family gathered at our parents home in Whitehouse, Texas. They had just moved into that home a few months prior. My mother wanted to move closer to us, that she might reach out when she needed help.

It was my father’s dream, to retire, and live on property, with acreage in East Texas. He did just that, he called it his farm with a yellow house, but in a short time, after retiring from the Dallas Fire department, his neurological health began to rapidly decline. The home of his dreams was taken away from him, and he was forced to move into a home of my mothers choosing. 

He saw many apportions, things, people and situations that were not there. He had a difficult time distinguishing reality apart from the things that his deteriorating brain was causing him to see and hear. My mother wanted a break from his continues care, so the hospice nurse offered respite at home place; however, this led to his placement in a nursing home in which he died.

My father knew that the ambulance drivers had come to take him away and he did not want to go. My mother asked that I be there to aide, he would often listen to me; however, I could not talk him into a short visit away from the home. 

Somehow we got him up out of the bed, onto his feet, when his hips were near the stretcher, I forced them down. The last words that I heard my father say to me were on Christmas Day, 2013, “If I did not love you so much, I would bust you in the head.” The memories of that day have haunted me every Christmas since.

Christmas, like all of life, is not all sunshine and rainbows. However, Christmas, for whatever reason, tends to intensify memories, unlike any other time of year. May you be merry this Christmas and love your neighbor as yourself.

A Few Days Before Christmas

A few days before Christmas, the year 1989, a young man went on a road trip, with a single woman and her infant child. 

They were both, in the Army, stationed at Ft. Knox in Kentucky, a field hospital unit, she a surgical technologist, and he, a radio and telephone operator. His family lived in Garland, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, and her’s, in the village of Stanley, Louisiana, several miles south of Shreveport.

The plan was for someone from her family, meet them in Shreveport, and he would continue on to his boyhood home in Garland. He had a new truck, and she had an older, less reliable, small car. Since it was on his way, they traveled together. 

He dropped her off, her sister meet them in a Shreveport parking lot, and he drove the rest of the way to his parent’s home in Garland.

It was a very very cold Christmas, especially for the south. His automobile, which was suppose to be the reliable one, broke down while in Garland, this extended the stay and left her without a ride back to Ft. Knox. 

The automobile was repaired during the day, so he drove at night, to meet her, her infant child and her sister, at the same parking lot in Shreveport, that he had dropped her off at a few days prior. She had to be back at the post the next day, the drive, eight hundred miles, so there was no waiting until morning.

They drove through the night, slept for an hour or two, in the truck cab, in a Nashville, Tennessee, parking lot. The truck was a 1989 Ford Ranger, to say that the cab was small would exaggerate its spaciousness. 

While they slept, freezing rain swept through Nashville, Tennessee, so the highway was made treacherous. 

They made it back to Fort Knox, Kentucky with no time to spare. 

The young man fell in love with the young woman and her infant child, during that difficult road trip. Six months later they would be married, at the town square gazebo, in Mansfield Louisiana. The reception was held at her mother’s wooded home near Stanley Louisiana, a shock to the young man’s mind but he was in love.

On June 30, 1990 a young mother from a backwoods community in Louisiana, and a young man from a major metropolitan area in Texas were joined together in holy matrimony. 

This life long union began, un-expectantly, on a road trip, on a day like today, a few days before Christmas.

What Is Man

Are we anything or are we nothing at all? Day to day we walk the earth but for what purpose? We are born, we grow, we live and we die. Generation after generation, very few live in historical memory, but most are forgotten. If not to be remembered, for what purpose do we walk the earth and for this specific time? 

The scripture says that God created man, male and female in his own image, yet all have sinned and fall short of his glory. 

It is the Christmas season but this season has different meaning, to do different individuals. Are we all the creators of our own meaning or is this part of our falling short of God’s glory? If we all fall short, then the meaning that we think is true is faulty in someway. I suppose that some are closer to the truth than others, just as some are more wicked, but we are all wicked, so we all must fall short of the true meaning of Christmas.

I believe that I have lost the meaning of Christmas, or did I lose what was faulty to begin with. I had always associated Christmas with children, excitement, wonderment with opening of presents. Is this the true meaning of Christmas? If it is, I have lost it, but if not, can I find the true meaning? 

Our church follows the liturgical ceremony of  lighting advent candles. The meaning of advent comes from the latin “adventus,” the period of preparation for the celebration of the birth of Christ and also of preparing for his second coming. On the four Sundays, leading up to Christmas, a candle is lit, and a passage of scripture read. The first candle represents hope, it is the prophecy candle. The second candle represents peace, it is the Bethlehem candle. The third candle represents joy, it is the shepherd’s candle. The fourth candle represents love, it is the angel’s candle. On Christmas Eve, a service is dedicated to reading passages of scripture and the singing hymns, at which the Christ candle is lit.

This is all that I have remaining of what I once understood as Christmas. No children, nor grandchildren, excitement, and wonderment associated with the opening of presents. All is lost, but have I lost the meaning of Christmas, or is the meaning of Christmas greater than my meaning?

Thanksgiving Day

There is a podcast of a radio program The Ramsey Show, that I enjoy listening to on my way to work. I was listening to this program the morning after Thanksgiving Day, when the host told a story that I had never heard, reading a historical document that I really needed to hear.

I was lead to believe that Thanksgiving Day was started by the pilgrims, the people and congregation that made up the Plymouth, Massachusetts colony.

I enjoy history because it helps me to understand why things are the way that they are. I have done some extensive reading on the Plymouth, Massachusetts colony and had read that they did have a feast, on a certain spring day, with some local Indians that had befriended them. However, this does not account for the Thanksgiving Day feast that I came to understand from my childhood.

I had come to understand Thanksgiving Day as a family feast, a holiday for extended family members together. In the past few years, our family has lost members, the remaining members dysfunctional. If you would have asked me as a young man, I would have told you that I love Thanksgiving and Christmas Days, but I confess that I have come to loathe these days. I know, to even admit it, puts me on shaky ground as a citizen and at risk of expulsion by Hallmark. 

This past Thanksgiving Day lived up to a high degree of dysfunction. I sat quietly, biding the time, desiring to depart with my wife. At these family gatherings I feel as though I have been locked in a mental institution and all of the orderlies took the day off. I exaggerate, to paint a picture; however, the exaggeration is only slight from reality. 

The American Thanksgiving Holiday

For fifteen years, the editor of a woman’s magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book petitioned every sitting president to establish a national thanksgiving day. You probably know of Sarah Josepha Hale, not from history, or her magazine, but from a children’s nursery rhyme; she is the author of Mary Had a Little Lamb. On October 3, 1789, George Washington did proclaim a day of Thanksgiving but it was only observed in New England and other northern states and at differing times. Abraham Lincoln agreed with Mrs. Hale; therefore, he instructed the Secretary of State William H. Seward to draft a proclamation, signed and sealed by the President of the United States of America on October 3, 1863. 

Proclamation of Thanksgiving ^[1]

October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

[L.S.]

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth. ABRAHAM LINCOLN

By the President:

WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

Delight In The Word

It has been a difficult few years. I have struggled a great deal in heart and mind. Everyday I get older and cannot go back to the days of my youth. Why do things happen or not happen for that matter? Why is the world such that it is? Trouble and anguish have overtaken me and there is nothing that I can do about it. 

Should I worry all the day long? I have worried but worry has not changed anything. Should I desire? I have desired but desire has not changed anything. 

When I say to others that I am defeated, they do not understand, and tell me that I am not defeated, when I know that I am. To whom or were do I turn? I turn to the Word of the Lord. The Word of the Lord promises good for those who trust in his Word and defeat of the enemy. The enemy is as strong as a hurricane but the Lord is my shelter. He has promised good to those who trust in him. The good that he promises is not in this world but the world that is to come. I believe, may he help my unbelief. May he transform my heart and mind to make me into his image.

There is so much that I have desired in this life but have not received. I realize that none of these were promised me but the Word of the Lord promises eternal life in the new heaven and earth that is to come, for all who delight in the Word of the Lord. The Word of the Lord is my delight.