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Jack Atkinson
Last year with great enthusiasm I ordered John Grisham’s audio book, Skipping Christmas. I had read the book when it came out but I thought that listening to it would help build the Christmas season. It arrived late in January or early February! So there went my “perfect Christmas” last year. However, I listened to the book all spring long. The story itself parody’s several families attempts to have just the perfect Christmas. One family decided to take a cruise instead of giving the party and gifts and decorating. After months of saving for the cruise and doing away will all their Christmas traditions, their daughter unexpectedly comes home from the Peace Corps expecting all the usual – decorations, party and gifts. Beginning in the 1950’s or earlier the Garfield Atkinsons gathered at my grandmother’s home on the hill Christmas Eve. She would grind ham and make ham salad sandwiches and have a few cookies. It was fun being surrounded by grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles and cousins. By the 1970’s this command performance was difficult to enforce as children grew and moved away. What started so simply became an ordeal to attend (dress, gifts, travel etc.) and to give (it rotated among the brothers after my grandparents died). Something always went wrong (too much to drink, the Jell-O did not gel, someone was late or even worse, absent). This tradition died and no one cried. In 1975 we decided to have a Williamsburg Christmas. This was a place I had visited for 7 years in a row. It is a perfectly restored town with lots of national history. It was decorated with perfection. My family (including my first son who was just a year old) and my wife’s family went out for Christmas Eve dinner in one of the restored eating establishments where period menus were served by a costumed wait staff. You guessed it: the one year old did not think it was so nice and a charming evening was accompanied by a hiccough the whole evening. He was a good child but somehow he instinctively knew how to get attention that night. In 1982 or 83 the movie, The Christmas Story, came out. My two sons and I went to the theatre to see it. Later we bought it on VHS and then on DVD. In one scene the dog gets the turkey, drags it across the floor eating it. Growing up Christmas dinner always had that looming doom about it. Would this be the year we would forget to put the cranberry sauce on the table or would it stay in the refrigerator until it was missed? Would the turkey be too dry? Would there be enough oysters in the dressing? Would someone remember to peel and section the oranges for the ambrosia? In the movie the family is forced to go out to eat and only a Chinese restaurant was open. They get duck. We began having duck in our family on Christmas day as a salute to the old man in the movie who lost his turkey. One “perfect Christmas” I remember was celebrated in an ante-bellum home where we lived for 25 years. The aging in-laws were with us for Christmas and then came the coldest recorded Christmas in Georgia at -6 degrees. The furnace was under the den where the tree and presents were. The gas logs in the fireplace were going full strength. I had bought two special heaters with glass cores and had to get heavy extension cords to plug them in from other rooms and circuits. With all of this and our blankets and coats, it was still hardly above 30’s in the room. This was not a “perfect Christmas” but we were inside and together. One Christmas I celebrated with my sister and her family in Charleston. I came from Atlanta with my nephew who had packed me like a sardine among the packages. My niece works hard every year to have a “perfect Christmas”. She does all the right things by planning ahead, buying along, organizing and then there is the big put together time the night and morning before and the proper arranging. Her “perfect Christmas” was stymied by all of us guests sleeping where she wanted to arrange the gifts. Can you wait until next week to learn how to have the perfect Christmas? You won’t have to wait because there never was a perfect Christmas. Remember, there was no room in the inn. They had to make do and it worked out pretty well.--Jack Atkinsonis our regular guest columnist and a resident of Garfield.
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