The Longest Night of Childhood

I am haunted by the memories of Christmas.When I was a boy, Christmas Eve/Christmas morning was the longest night of childhood.In my family, we observed all of the secular celebrations, diving headlong into the American traditions of Christmas. Just before bed, I would set out some cookies and milk for Santa, with a little note attached in my shaky penmanship. Then I would slip under the covers around nine, one eye closed, one eye open, waiting for that last light in the living room to be extinguished.Oh, I remember those fitful nights, forcing solid sleep but never finding it. Looking to the next morning with great anticipation. Heart pounding. Mouth ajar. Knees quaking under covers. Wondering if I might catch a glimpse of Ol’ St. Nick as he dropped through the chimney, jolly and sooty.Once I got to sleep, usually I would wake around two, all eager and such, and amble into my parents room in my Spider-Man pajamas—hair a-tousled—and stand at the foot of the bed.“Dad, has Santa come yet?” I inquired from the cover of darkness. Innocent. Hopeful.A note: Awakening my dad from his sleep, back in 1983, would have been akin to awakening a Kodiak bear in hibernation. I remember he awoke violently, producing Beowulf-like sounds:“ARRARRARYARRGARRRAHHHHRAAAHHH!!!!! Too. Early. Santa…here yet. Back to bed!”A fart or two followed, and he was zonked again.Back to my room I went. Crestfallen. Jaded. Listless.But then! Something magical happened in the middle of the night.The next morning around 6:30?Presents!My there were presents!G.I. Joes, He-Man, football stuff, Hot Wheels, trucks with huge tires, remote control everything, Transformers, baseball cards. The entire living room was filled with toys! Walking through the living room was like stepping through some treacherous mountain pass, and I almost needed a Sherpa as I hunted a safe space to land my foot. Buddy, I tore in to those packages. Wrapping paper flung everywhere. For me, there was a lot of getting and very little giving. Regardless, I was happier’n a pig in slop.Then, of course, it was picture time, as I held up my big boxes of awesomeness. Cool stuff, I tell you. The rest of the day was spent visiting relatives (who brought more presents), pilfering through the entire box of Whitman’s Sampler (oh, wow, cherry!), and calling over the boys of the neighborhood to show them how I won Christmas this year.Christmas. The one word that was like sweetness to my ear, one word that could turn the dourest mood into a cornucopia of bliss, the one word, that if spoken, would make children around the globe smile broadly and happily.For me, Christmas was awesome. A glorious time.But my Christmases in adulthood have never matched such pageantry and splendor as those fig-like moments of my youth. For the last twenty-odd years, I have yet to get into the Christmas spirit as in those days of yore. Hard as I try, it is a spirit that I have not been able to replicate.Yet it seems like every year, I make my mind up that this is going to be the year. I start preparing myself in late October, but it never fails. By the time Christmas rolls around, I feel like I’ve somehow missed it again. Those Christmas cards I was going to buy—never bought them. That performance of Handel’s Messiah I was going to attend—never went. That family I was going to buy presents for—never did.I find myself channeling my inner Scrooge. Secular Christmas music, to me, becomes particularly annoying. There’s only so many times you need to hear “Up on the Housetop,” and I assure you, it’s under ten. Eeeeeeevvry body’s got a new Christmas CD out, it seems. Sorry. I just don’t have any interest in sitting around in a vanilla turtleneck and chocolate pants listening to Michael Buble. I just don’t.Honestly, I think, in ways, America has made Christmas sort of a dog-and-pony show. It’s gotten to be too much. Too long. Christmas music starts playing on Magic 96.5 as people are loading their Fourth of July coolers into the beds of their trucks. Trees pop up in late September. And after November 1, the floodgates open: people going nuts, traffic backed up for miles, cars grunting at one another, horns honking, rubes coming to fisticuffs over a $349 Wal-Mart flat screen, stabbings, rednecks trying to out-Christmas-lights the other houses in town, yards looking like a plastic Christmas museum begging for tours, tacky sweater parties with egg nog and whiskey, Christmas Vacation, that bespectacled kid in the rabbit outfit, shoot your eye out, corncob pipe and a button nose, blah, blah, blah.America’s got a fever, and the only prescription is more Christmas.Look. This is not the typical anti-Christmas rant that is served up every year. This isn’t Jesus vs. Santa, wondering if they can coexist like The Rock and The Undertaker on SmackDown. Good grief, I don’t want it to be that.But perhaps the Americanization of Christmas is threatening the spirit that some adults need to resuscitate. Some adults, including me.I mean, surely. SURELY, there has to be more to it than just giving out a bunch of gifts, eating peanut brittle until your heart’s content, and copious doses of Johnny Mathis. Then later, after you’ve forgotten to take home the leftovers, you find yourself at Waffle House, the only place that’s open on Christmas night:“All-Star Special, please. Yep. Grits. Strawberry jelly. Lots of it. Yep. Bacon. Can you make that a pecan waffle? K good. Decaf coffee, for me. Yep. Thanks now.”My Christmas.You think I’m mad, don’t you? I’m not mad. I just don’t have any Christmas traditions. That is, except for arguing.Arguing? Yep. Arguing.Here’s how it all happened…After I got big enough that mistakes matter, my relationship with my dad began to unravel. It seemed like he reserved Christmas for his hottest ire, and for me, Christmas was like an impending sinister troll on the yearly calendar. The mere mention of the word “Christmas” caused my face to become awash with disgust, because I KNEW that Dad and I were going to get into it about something utterly ridiculous.And did it fail? No, it didn’t fail!Every year, there was a fight. Every year, there was an early exodus by Yours Truly.“I’m gone!”My dad was diagnosed with cancer six years ago. But cancer didn’t stop the arguing. Sadly, our last Christmas together ended in a fight. He died six months later. (As I was writing this, I stopped and watched a blinking cursor for about a minute, pondering those words.)Christmas hasn’t been much better since. Here it is, four days before Christmas and I’m wondering—yet again—if I’m going to be able to revive that old feeling of childhood again. (As I’m writing this, I get a text from my friend that says: “I haven’t really thought about it being Christmas.” “Why not?” I asked. “Well, I’ve been working. And it’s been 80 degrees.)Welcome to the South. “Christmas in Dixie”: it’s summer in the pines.Alright. So not everybody feels bubbly around the Christmas season. I bet there are others who might be reading this, others who have lost loved ones, who are looking at Christmas with particular dread because the people who were part of their Christmas traditions are gone. Loss makes Christmas a cold time, a despondent time. A time when the loss of a loved one or loved ones has more of a texture. A time when a husband is missed the most. When the sting of a wife’s death hurts deepest.Things hurt harder when they happen at Christmas.I cannot imagine how lonely some people must feel as they “celebrate” Christmas alone.So this is for these people.I am writing this with the hope that we will one day find Christmas again. That we will one day experience the longest night of childhood again.What do you think it’s going to take?I think we have to become kids again. I think Big People have to look at the Christmas season with great childlike anticipation and wonder. Not for Santa, mind you. But for the Christ child. The coming of Immanuel, “God with us.” God’s great gift to humankind, salvation wrapped in a bow, placed in a manger. God’s Christmas card to us that reads, “You are not alone.”Sure, we can shop. Sure, we can spend time with family. Sure, we can go to the tacky sweater party. Sure, we can play Dirty Santa. But we replicate our childhood awe by appreciating Christmas in reverse: by emulating God's spirit of giving, not getting.I think we need to get back to those old traditions. Caroling. Candlelit singings of sacred music (the best Christmas songs are sacred, and it’s not even close).O Come EmmanuelAngels We Have Heard on HighWe Three KingsO Holy NightO Come All Ye FaithfulHark! The Herald Angels SingThe First NoelTaking the time to read the Christmas story to our children. Understanding what Christ has done.For just a moment, allowing the words of “Joy to the World” to come alive. Instead of mouthing them robotically, actually listening to them.Joy to the World,The Lord is Come,Let Earth Receive Her King,Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room.Are we preparing room in our hearts this Christmas for Christ? Have we carved out space for Jesus amid the return trips to Target and Best Buy?I think we have to remember the longest night of childhood. A night that’s been relived for over two thousand years. A story worth retelling. Again and again. The Greatest Story Ever Told. A story that reminds us that God didn’t choose to love us from afar. He sent his son into this world to be born. That He would care about us so much that he pierced the barrier between this world and the next. That He would send Jesus—righteous, holy, upright, blameless—into this cruel fallen world to save us. That he would build us a place where we could one day reunite with these loved ones we’ve lost.Because of Jesus Christ, I will see my father again. And there will be no arguing.This is unfathomable. THIS is something truly worth celebrating!So this Christmas, Come Thou Long Expected Jesus! Come, Holy Spirit, Come! O Come, O Come Emmanuel! Born is the King of Israel! Let every heart prepare HIM room!And heaven and nature sing.And heaven and nature sing. 78Please go to www.facebook.com/78mag and give us a like!