Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Remembering

Bob Aldrich

Plagued with the Christmas blues? Not a chance!

About this time of year, magazines run articles about how to deal with the holiday blues, and newspaper agony columns are loaded with advice on how to get through Christmas without calling on Dr. Kavorkian to send you up the flue. You'd think Christmas was nothing but a treacherous obstacle course with only a few survivors expected to make it, alive and breathing, to the new year.

I'll admit there are a few problems to handle as the season heads in toward Dec. 25. But I still like Christmas.

Call me a sentimental old fool if you must, but there are some things about the season that make it all worthwhile. Take Christmas cards. (Did someone say "please"?) Sure, they're a bit of a time-consuming nuisance, not to mention the cost in stamps. At 32 cents a stamp, I may cut a few distant acquaintances from my list next year. But cards do get you in touch with old friends and relatives who've been ignored for too long. They remind you of times past. It's a little like Old Scrooge being escorted on a journey back to his youth by the Spirit of Christmas Past. Once in a while it's good to look back and remember the scenes that were.

Yes, I like Christmas even with all the strain and hassle. I have, by rough estimate, about two dozen relatives in the Midwest and on the East Coast, including assorted nieces and nephews, and while I have given up trying to gift each great-niece or great-nephew with a snuggle-bunny or a book suitable for a 3- or 5-year-old, I do try to get packages to every family. Outside of a new Mercedes or yacht, what can you think of that everybody in a family from 2 to 86 will love? It's tough.

How did the civilized world manage before the invention of Scotch tape? I can picture Mrs. Nero saying to the emperor, "Put your finger right there," or Josephine telling Napoleon to try and tie a decent knot for once. Package-wrapping is a talent some possess and some of us don't. I am lucky if I emerge from a wrapping session with all my fingers. I can't tell you how many post office clerks have had to suppress their hilarity at the sight of one of my packages.

"Here comes old Bob," they say, nudging each other. "Betcha that one winds up in the 'undeliverable' bin." For me, wrapping a package for mailing is a trial that should be in the Olympics.

Still, I like Christmas.

I guess it stems from the fact that as a kid, my Christmases were times of warmth and splendor, when a cornucopia of good things seemed to open up and pour over me like syrup over a waffle. I don't mean just the material things, though a real Lionel electric train under the tree was unimaginably exciting. There was the feeling of closeness, of family togetherness--well, to come right out with it, of being loved.

I was lucky, of course. Not every kid had it so good, and the one marring note I can remember of my own Christmases past was a vaguely guilty feeling because some other kids in our little town didn't have it so good.

I knew my mom had taken baskets to some small house where the father had left and the mother was struggling to keep a family together. I knew, as I gazed into the crackling fire in our living room, speculating on what might be in all those packages under the tree, that there were kids who weren't going to be getting much.

If you expect me to report that guilt drove me to run around a day later, giving my presents away, forget it. I figured it was enough just to feel guilty for maybe 20 seconds.

There was the family gathering to mount and decorate the tree, with my brothers arguing over how to make it stand up, and my sister seeing to it that the traditional angel was placed at the very top. There was the sleepless night waiting to get up early and join the family circle and open all those gifts. What a long time the grown-ups dawdled before getting settled around the fire after breakfast!

I still like Christmas because it's a time when people are drawn a little closer, when smiles are a little warmer, when "Merry Christmas" has a sincere sound to it that is missing in a mechanical "have-a-nice-day." I like the hustle and bustle in the stores, the smells, the cheery ringing of bells, the music. Someday I may even learn to like "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." I like the sound of horses clop-clopping along on N. Santa Cruz Avenue, drawing a carriage-load of passengers, reminding me of Dickens and kids tossing snowballs, knocking Scrooge's tall hat off.

I like the way when, after the strain and hustle and hurry, everything comes together somehow, and here we are around the Christmas table lifting our glasses.

Merry Christmas to you, too!

Bob Aldrich, who died on June 14, wrote the 'Our Town' column that ran in this space for 15 years. He also wrote many Op/Ed pieces. We have been running several of his most memorable ones. We conclude with this reflection on Christmas he wrote in 1994.

[ Back to Contents Page | Los Gatos Weekly-Times Home Page | Archives ]