When I was a kid, every year, about a week before Christmas my maternal “Granddaddy” would go to the bank and bring back my brother and me each a new, crisp fifty-dollar bill.
He would sit in his cloth rocker that was upholstered with gold bath towels - my grandmother had tacked on to keep the real fabric safe - and summon us over.
He would make a big production of pulling the money out of his front shirt pocket, then shoving it back in like he had changed his mind, tooth pick dangling from the corner of his mouth, then reaching in again and popping the money out, bills so rough they easily slid across each other between his fingertips.
He’d grin, never daring a full smile, as we flung our arms around his neck and kissed him until he would tell us how much he disliked us and then rub the kisses from his cheeks, uttering a mild curse word and telling us we should “git now.”
As I left the room, I would always glance back to see a depth of affection for us in his eyes.
He was the wittiest man I’ve ever known and pleasantly handsome, so much so that once in the 1920s G-men tried to arrest him for being Pretty Boy Floyd.
This was due partly because they shared the same last name, and partly because my Granddaddy tended to “dabble” in the bootlegging business.
He was born in 1900 poor and neglected, the eldest of ten children. He was rough on the outside, and I fiercely loved him.
He died at the age of 82 of lung cancer, and on the last Christmas he spent on this earth, my Christmas gift was a little different. I still got my fifty-dollar bill, but it was sealed in an envelope.
My name was written across the front in what looked like a child’s crude handwriting. It was handed to me by my mother.
I looked at her confused.
“Did you know that your Grandaddy was never given the chance to go to school?” She said.
“No ma’am, I didn’t,” I replied.
“Well he wasn’t, and so he never learned to read or write. He has always been embarrassed of this and has never wanted you kids to know, but that doesn’t mean he’s not smart.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I knew that.
She continued, “Your grandmother has read him the daily newspaper and the almanac every morning since they have been married. She does all the writing, but this year he wanted to do something special, so, she wrote your name down and he carefully copied the letters on that envelope.”
She pointed to my gift, “As far as I know that is the first name he has ever written.”
I would learn later that he signed his own name with an X.
“He loves you very much,” she said, then turned and walked away.
I was left holding a treasure.
This recollection visits me from time to time like the The Ghost of Christmas Past, and I allow myself to ponder it.
I like to ponder.
My favorite verse from the story of Jesus’ birth is,
“But Mary treasured up all of these things and pondered them in her heart.” Luke 2:19
To ponder means to think things through.
Thinking usually involves your head, right?
But scripture doesn’t mention Mary’s head.
Instead, Mary absorbed the scenes around her and stored them heavy inside her heart. She would not be able to recall them, without first recalling love.
She was weighed down with love, anchored to it.
How fitting, because this is how so many of our own Christmas memories are stored - like the one I described above - deep in our hearts, heavy with love.
They come to us and paint scenes with smells and tastes that are lit with the twinkling of stars in the background, illuminating the faces of the people who have meant the most to us.
Christmas is about laying ourselves aside for Love, because it originated from Love.
Christmas is swallowing your pride and scrawling your granddaughter’s name down on an envelope that she would later write about in a small town newspaper almost 40 years later.
It makes affection possible even when you were not taught to be affectionate.
These are the kinds of things that God had in mind so long ago when he sent the angels to proclaim the name of a baby resting in His mother’s arms.
Christmas links us, one to another, through every generation, like garland around a tree and forces us to come full circle over and over again, as if by design.
And, it anchors us all to the One who remembers the neglected, and the uneducated, and the poor, and all of us who are somewhere in the middle.
I don’t know what the Ghost of Christmas Future might bring us, a lot changes in one year, but it is my hope that The Ghost of Christmas Present shows you and yours the absolute best Holiday Season, and that you might take a little time to ponder.
Merry Christmas!
