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A Christmas Story from 57 Years Ago
There was no joy in the season
My mother died last year, and in cleaning out her house I discovered two tattered, type-written pages. They were a story I had written when I was 13. Like everything else I wrote and then forgot, those pages had languished in a battered cardboard box in the attic of my mother’s house.
The story was about Christmas, and it evoked memories and emotions.
There’s something both happy and sad about Christmas; something that tugs at my heartstrings and pulls my gaze toward eternity. I must have felt it at 13, and I still feel it at 70.
Joy springs eternally in the songs, the decorations, the long-standing traditions. But sadness lurks in the realization that Christmas rolls around more rapidly every year. Ghosts of people long gone and seasons long past touch us at unexpected moments.
Here is the story my mother tucked away in a cardboard box 57 years ago. I hope you’ll overlook the excesses and immaturity of a teenager’s writing in 1965. I had decided not to share it because of that, but changed my mind after being tagged by Wire Editor Newman to share a Christmas story.
I wish you a Merry Christmas.
