Saratoga News

A snowflake on a collar survives the years

By Vern Hansen

The tricycle and toy train era of one's childhood Christmases has its own special remembered charm because of the sense of wonder attached to those early years. To the young, the world is as fresh as a soap bubble. Christmas brings a special hush, a reverential awe in the telling of the Christ-child story: the Holy Family, The Magi and their beckoning star, the shepherds and a host of heralding angels descending from the skies.

The kaleidoscope of such memories is shaped with the remembrances of silent snowfalls, and the tread of whole families through the snow, heavily mackinawed and scarfed against the winter night. Fountains of air plumed from noses and mouths as we wended toward the gleaming lights of the church, its spire netted in the black lace of barren tree limbs that had turned summer streets into green arches of elm leaves.

The calls of recognition to friends who squeezed together through the church basement doors, the pressure of wool-suited bodies generating static electricity, the stamp of overshoes, the sound of a piano chord signaling one last run-through of a choir anthem before its members took their places in the loft, serve as a backdrop for a singular recollection.

It is the memory of a curly-blonde girl in a light-beige cloth coat trimmed with fur. On her collar was a single crystalline snowflake that had survived the furnace heat in the church basement.

I remember the shy smile she gave me as we took off our wraps and hung them up, a smile that turned into a cheery "Merry Christmas!" Then with a sudden impulse, she stooped and touched her lips to my cheek as I bent to remove my overshoes. I straightened up to see her dash upstairs to join her family.

She was chosen to play the part of the heralding angel who made the annunciation to Mary in our junior high pageant. She had also been chosen to play the part of the angel in our church school program. In our junior high pageant, I had no part to play. In our church school program, I was King Herod.

"The worst part of all!" I had remarked ruefully when lots for the parts were drawn. My angel, who was also the angel of every boy in the class, turned to me and said, "The play wouldn't be complete without every one of the players."

Maybe it was the remembered conversation in our church basement. I don't know. I do think that King Herod had a red and burning cheek that year, and after the program, I gave her all my filled candy from my candy box.

The springs of memory are snowflake-small, but imperishable in the deep well of consciousness. The sight of a Styrofoam snowflake hanging in a greeting card shop window, a six-pointed paper doily, brings back a night when a girl with a snowflake on her fur coat collar said "Merry Christmas," in a never-to-be-forgotten way.

The mystical union of love and innocence, emblematic in a virgin birth, was too lofty a conception for a small boy's mind. But angels have a way of bending low to touch their harp strings in a way that we can hear.

Vern Hansen is a freelance writer based in Los Gatos.

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