Christmas: Just Like the Ones I Used to Know
I return in memory to a moss-green turn-of-the-century house set high above a snowy hill in Baltimore, Maryland. In the massive living room, draped with billowy spruce boughs, vintage Christmas twinkle green, yellow, and red. Beneath a fragrant tree rich with pine, tiny skaters in bonnets and top hats glide across a miniature teal lake, fashioned of glass and tinted angel hair. My small finger traces the names of children and grandchildren inscribed on gleaming ornaments that sparkle in the darkness.
In the dining room, my aunt, a ginger-haired child with freckles, plays carols on the piano. She jumps up from her music to greet a group of family and friends at the ornately-carved front door. Bundled against the cold, they bear red and gold foil-wrapped packages. Scents of English Lavender and Old Spice marry as visitors stomp their snowy boots on a fluffy red mat.
Sven and Elsa, a Danish couple who rents from Grandmother, welcomes me into their cozy apartment to view a tree decorated in the custom of their ancestors with brightly-colored paper flags. Logs spark and crackle in Sven and Elsa’s fireplace as we savor buttery cookies cut into stars and Santas, crunchy with sugary sprinkles.
When the visit is over, I run up the winding staircase and slide down the mahogany bannister, which bears me like a roller coaster to the living room where guests gather to await Santa’s arrival. Jangling harness bells freeze the hugs, the talking, and the laughter, as Santa bounds through the carved brown doors into the living room. Children crowd around him, shouting and jumping as he offers each a doll, truck, or game from his weathered brown sack.
Grandmother stands in the center of the living room, tall and regal in a flowing black dress with a scalloped white collar, She offers me a small package. Ripping open the wrappings, I discover a golden music box. When I turn the key, it pings out “White Christmas.”
Thanking Grandmother, I wrap my sparkly treasure in tissue paper and return it to the box, fearful that if I play it too long it will run out of music. I want it to last forever, like this night, like these people I love.
Everyone follows Grandmother into the room across the way where my aunt sits on her piano bench banging out “Christmas in Killarney.” The guests start singing even though they aren’t all sure of the words. Magically, it sounds like heavenly harmony with high-pitched young voices blend with trembling old ones. Logs spew out huge sparks like fireworks. Heady pine mingles deeply with the pungent flames. Duke, the dog, just in from the snow, shakes his wet fur at us.
The chorus swells, drowning out the piano’s staccato chords: “It’s Christmas in Killarney with all of the folks at home.”
On the corner table, a Madonna and child huddle in a brown manger, shivering against the cold. A blue-frocked angel with golden wings kneels at their side, shining perpetual light and comfort. Wise men with jeweled turbans offer the baby precious packages. Children join hands with white-haired Aunts and Uncles singing “White Christmas.”
Firelight flames against the darkness. Snow relentlessly pelts the windows, but those gathered here sing long into the night, warmed by the fire and the emerging aromas of coffee and chocolate laced with cinnamon. They sing, “May all your Christmases be white.”
Here I go now, racing to the mall, with canned music, bigger and better things, things, things, and long lines of kids waiting to see Santa. Can I ever get it all done? And when I do, will it be perfect?
On the way home, I stop off at the tree farm, inhale the pine, and feel the snow showers sting my face, and oh, is that Bing singing “White Christmas” on the car radio?
“Just like the ones I used to know.” Softer now. “Just like the ones I used to know.”