I'll begin the list (memories included) and see what you all enjoy, whether different or similar: ~ Wordwind

Well Wordwind I've checked your list twice and the only common Christmas favorites I have with you would be...

(1) Bourbon
(2) The Nutcracker,
(3) The Messiah,
(4) Little girls in velvet red and purple dresses,
(5) And maybe fried oysters in a casserole, a specialty of my Aunt Virginia but we had the good manners not to eat them until Christmas Dinner.
(6) And maybe looking at lights; for several years I'd load up the kids and we'd ride the neighborhood in search of the most garish, the tackiest, the most Lit-up-like-a-beer-joint house we could find. We would laugh and argue over our choices. The finder would receive extra candy. It was fun.

And memories? Most of my Christmases have been bland happy affairs but three stand out...

***When I was a child at Grandpa Griders at Christmas I remember in indelible detail Uncle Jack looking at me as me and my brother sat playing on the floor. It was a look of such sadness and compassion that I can see it today. Jack was a quiet man. The rest of the Griders were spirited and funloving so the room was filled with the din of Christmas joy, but Uncle Jack just keep looking at me with his big sad soulful eyes, people always said he was a dead ringer for Jesus Christ as seen by a Baptist. What, I wondered and still wonder, did those great intelligent eyes see and say?

Jack had recently married a sweet Catholic girl named Catherine. This was a bit of an ordeal for the family. (The last sentence is understated).
Catherine became pregnant. Jack was called to go overseas to fight the Chinese Communists. The airplane he was flying crashed into a korean mountain and he was killed. It was said by those who knew him that he was too good for this world and had gone to another. This is often said as a kindness but with Jack it was said as truth.

Catherine never re-married. She died young. Their son ran around with a motorcycle gang. I haven't seen him in twenty-five years. I feel guilty.


***When I was twenty I knew everything. I knew that Christmas was a mere cultural bonding mechanism that with great hypocrisy gave vent to the failure of all to be loving and kind and Christlike the rest of the year.

I agreed to a night and day watch at the freight terminal where I worked for the 48 hours during Christmas. Great! I'd be paid time and a half for reading, resting, writing, and listening to the radio. Neat deal, huh?

At first it went OK. I learned the structure of the french language from the book "Learn To Speak French In Ten Easy Lessons" in about two hours, but quickly got bored with the repetitive exercises. Time began to drag. I began to wish that somebody would try to break in so I could go get my gun and capture them so I could talk to them until the police came. But no one came and no one called.

My loneliness became unbearable. Christmas day came and I became desperate. I fumbled with the radio dial searching for a live human voice. Nothing but static and Christmas music. Was I the only man on the planet?

Then, at the last setting of the dial, I found a live Disc Jockey who was taking requests for music - a black DJ named "Shelly the PLayboy". I called the station and in a faltering voice I said...

"Shelly, I'm all alone, I... would you please..."

I choked up and couldn't finish. I hung up and cried.

May God bless all poor souls in jails and prisons this Christmas.


***When I was a child of 54 a few years back "VJ's by the Runway by the Freeway" invited all their customers to their annual Christmas Party.
As always it was splendidly done and well attended, mostly by my beer drinking cronies who had lived in the neighborhood many years ago as I did, while most of the others were members of the Air National Guard located nearby.

It was a great party, in full swing until somebody perverted the jukebox by playing song after song of hip hop and rock. I wanted to hear some of the more traditional Christmas songs so I unplugged the jukebox and reset it. Then the fight broke out.

One of the Air Boys, it seems, had complained to Jody, the manager, about me swiching off the songs that he had played on the jukebox, so Jody told him to take a hike, and then for no apparent reason the Airboy jumped on Jody. I dove into the fray to keep the young brute from hurting Jody although Jody sometimes can be a pain, and then like a miracle the room erupted into the Christmas fight of the season; airmen against old guys.

It was quite a scene, everyone 'rasslin and rolling on the floor, biteing and scratching; you couldn't get a chair above your head to throw because the dinning room was packed butt to belly with the fighting celebrants of Christmas. Finally, with great effort, we wresstled the main instigator towards the back door and threw him out and then the fight ended. No one had been seriously hurt so we oldtimers strutted back to the bar and finished our beers muttering "young punks" and "that'll teach 'em to mess with the Vikings" and then we left.

That was the last Christmas Party ever held at "VJs".

And that is the last of my exceptional Christmas Memories.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AWADS