Christmas

  • Sunday, February 26, 2017

It was December and we were headed home from our annual Christmas dinner with friends. Turning right to go up our mountain, Nanners laid her head on my shoulder, cold nose in the crook of my neck, causing me to look hard left… smack dab at that pair of Golden Arches. Her life philosophy is “being good gets ya stuff” and except for Elvis staying out one night chasing that 4-legged floozy up the road The Gang had been pretty good all week, so we switched around to get a bucket of McNuggets because they were almost out at home. 

She can count too. 

Instead of pulling into the free-standing McD’s we continued the additional half mile to Wally’s for groceries and essentials to avoid another 27.7 mile trek, each way, in a couple of days on our weekly shopping trip. I’m cheap, not green. 

After getting gas, smokes, then cruising Wally’s aisles picking up a few necessities, a SIM card for my el cheapo tablet computer, the boss refused to peal it off for iPads, food for The Gang, their steaks and treats because the UPS driver spoiled them rotten, but she’s too cute to get angry with, chow, distilled water to keep from eating up the coffeemaker’s heating element... as I reached the front a light flashed on at the check-out lane right in front of me. 

Yes! No line! 

Wheeling into that lane the cashier was finishing some paperwork, looked up with a smile and said she’d be right back. Returning a few seconds later she apologized profusely to which I responded “That’s okay. You’re working. I’m just kibitzing.” A pretty girl, 20-ish, bubbly personality and long, dark wavy hair with just enough freckles to give an impish quality to the twinkle in those blue eyes and genuine smile on her face, we yucked it up a bit while she scanned stuff and collected my hard earned cash... then she wished a cheerful “Merry Christmas.” It was refreshing to hear Merry Christmas again without the well-wisher looking self conscious, not to mention being so cheerful just over a week before Christmas when most retail employees look rather frazzled. When I commented about it she smiled even bigger and said “It’s Christmas.” 

I’m no rich guy, and suffer horribly with PSM. Life can be a challenge when one isn’t as smart as his phone, so instead of trying to figure out how to check e-mail while waiting for The Gang’s McNuggets I went down the receipt cutiepie had just handed over… and discovered she’d gotten distracted and didn’t ring up that bag of t-bone and chicken food for the furballs. They get upset being called dogs. So after McD’s got more hard earned cash I turned around and went back over to pay for what she’d missed. Just in case one of the bosses was watching I picked out a couple of items at the checkout to give us some cover and discretely let her know we hadn’t rung up the, uh, dog-food. Scanning it with packs of cigarette lighters, cheese crackers for The Gang, a Reese’s cup for me, okay… so there was a dark chocolate and a white chocolate Reesie cup for me, a regular chocolate one too, and other incidentals, she commented that some folks wouldn’t have come back to pay for what she’d missed. I pointed to the sentry by the exit and told her I really hated getting the stink-eye from that lady. Then whispered “Besides, I got to hear you say ‘Merry Christmas’ again.” That chick is going places in life. 

Christmas... 

On the way out to the GrampyMobile I thought back to some other Christmases, like one 25 or so years before when a 13/14 year old zit-faced kid, let’s call him Nick for simplicity, ran the roads in Red Bank, scanner strapped to the handlebars of his bicycle, pretending he was a cop running calls. That’s all he wanted to do, be a cop like his dad… and he grew up to be one, a darned good one from my observation, like another, a police lieutenant, son of a sailorman, whose personal hero is captain of Texas Rangers, Mr. William Jesse McDonald. Captain Bill McDonald… one must truly admire a man whose personal philosophy was, as carved on his headstone, “No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow that's in the right and keeps on a-comin'.” These are but two examples of men, and women, who choose to be the last line of defense between polite society and the savages in our world, who willingly forego personal and family holidays so the rest of us may enjoy ours. 

Christmas… 

Each of The Gang scarfed down a McNugget and settled in for the 50-60 minute, 27.7 mile trip home. A reasonable person doesn’t zip down twisty country roads at almost midnight. Chewbacca and SparkPlug sprawled out in the back seat. Nanners won the argument over who’d ride on the armrest and took her position. Elvis and Priscilla snuggled up together in the shotgun seat. Cracking the window so the furbies wouldn’t die from second-hand smoke, me either, I lit up a fag and, holding it gently in my nicotine stained fingers, took a long, deep drag while thinking back to a comment made not too many weeks previously by a lady, quite a lady I might add, that her cub would miss both Christmas and his birthday while visiting one of our nation’s premier vacation destinations… MCRD Parris Island, South Carolina. By now she’d received that 10 second phone call that he’d arrived safely and would be back in touch within seven to 10 days. I didn’t have the heart to tell her this would just be one of many Christmas and other family holidays he’d probably miss. 

Back in 1986 one Lance Corporal James M. Schmidt penned an adaptation of the Christmas poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” more popularly known by its first line “'Twas the Night Before Christmas.” His version, “Merry Christmas, My Friend,” was later published in Leatherneck Magazine where I first saw it. Over the years since it’s been attributed to various named and unnamed members of the military, from all branches and modified as necessary, but LCpl. Schmidt’s was first and is interesting in its different perspective. 

Both poems were written in the first person, the original from the perspective of the family’s father with LCpl. Schmidt’s from St. Nicholas’ as he happens upon a person the likes of whom he’d never known, a person basically described in the first two stanzas: 

‘Twas the night before Christmas, he lived all alone,
In a one bedroom house made of plaster & stone.
I had come down the chimney, with presents to give
and to see just who in this home did live. 

As I looked all about, a strange sight I did see,
no tinsel, no presents, not even a tree.
No stocking by the fire, just boots filled with sand.
On the wall hung pictures of a far distant land. 

“(H)e lived all alone”… a simple, Spartan lifestyle ready to split on a moments notice if necessary, who’s done so on at least several occasions in the past, a perfect example of the independence Robert Frost advocated in “A Road Less Taken,” but equally capable of performing tasks as part of a team, a small cog in a potentially humongous machine. 

Christmas... 

Some believe our primary holidays should be celebrated every day. Christmas… Easter… Good Friday… Independence Day… Memorial Day… Veterans’ Day… Thanksgiving… the Marine Corps Birthday… and they’re probably correct. The rest might just as well be relegated to an excuse for having a white sale and cookout. 

As we went through the final dogleg and turned off the hard road, The Gang came back to life. Nanners got up with her nose in the windshield. Elvis and Prissy and Chewbacca and The Sparkmeister all claimed a window to bark and growl at any rabbit or deer intruders to their territory, with the attendant doggie boogers on the glass, as I thought about that soon-to-be Marine Mom and the surprise awaiting when next she sees her cub. Today she still isn’t officially a Marine Mom but her cub’s within spittin’ distance of his first goal, earning the title United States Marine. Perhaps then she’ll be able to observe some of the training challenges he’s faced and say to herself “(My cub) did what?” and gain a whole new appreciation for the little heathern she raised. 

As we pulled up in front of our cabin I couldn’t help but recite LCpl. Schmidt’s second to last stanza to myself. 

I didn't want to leave him so quiet in the night,
this guardian of honor so willing to fight.
But half asleep he rolled over, and in a voice clean and pure,
said “Carry on, Santa, it's Christmas Day, all secure.” 

We live in the greatest nation ever to grace the face of Planet Terra, these United States of America. But what is a nation? Isn’t it nothing more than the algebraic sum of all its citizens, their abilities, their goals, their accomplishments? We most definitely have the prettiest girls in the world... and we don’t have to look far to see the men and women, our first responders, our military and others who voluntarily go off to ensure the rest of us can live in peace. 

“Carry on, Santa, it's Christmas Day, all secure”… such attitude, such confidence, brings to mind another Robert Frost citation, "Never be bullied into silence, never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life, define yourself." It's almost enough to make an old curmudgeon have hope for this generation coming up. 

Almost… 

Bah, humbug. 

Royce Burrage, Jr.
Royce@Officially Chapped.org


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