The Ghosts of Xmas Past

The spelling “Xmas” pushes buttons. Many decry it as commercial secularization of a religious holiday. A few enjoy it for the same reason. History tells a different story. The first letter of the Greek word for “Christ,” X was a shorthand for “Christ” at least as early as the year 1100. “Xmas” came into use in England by the 1700s if not before. Though I usually write Christmas in full, it’s from taste, not principle. Nor do I fret about commercialism debasing the holiday. Never mind ads, malls, and sales. I relish Christmas for its lights, music, stories, human connections, and many cherished memories.

In my childhood, my father and brother would carry home a spruce tree from a nearby lot. We set it in a bucket and wedged grapefruit-sized rocks around it till it stood up straight. Ornaments culminated in a homemade star on top and tinsel icicles on the branches. (Remember icicles?) Though we’d open gifts the next morning, it’s Christmas Eve that lingers in my memory: carols by the piano, the Christmas Story with illustrations from the Museum of Modern Art, and the beloved poem “King John’s Christmas” by A. A. Milne.

My year in Ethiopia began in the fall. In December, with only a footlocker to sit on yet and no suitable trees for miles around, my mate and I hung stylized aluminum foil branches on the wall. We baked cookies and rode a gari cart—a kind of horse-drawn taxi—to bring batches to neighbors and friends. At almost the last minute, the Post Exchange surprised us with real pines, shipped from Germany around the tip of Africa and up the Red Sea. (The Suez Canal was closed at the time.) We stood a pine in our almost-empty living room and decorated it with more cookies. Next day we woke to a thick column of ants marching between wall and tree trunk, toting away all the cookie crumbs they could carry.

Later I joined a choir in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago. Many winters we sang carols in the community: to nursing facility patients in their rooms, to customers in Broadway Street bars, or to retirement home residents in their common room. In the bars, we took donations to support the Broadway Night Ministry; men who’d been drinking proved especially generous. Caroling in the retirement home gave us a glimpse of old Lakeview back when it was the heart of Chicago’s German community. At “Silent Night,” our listeners sang along with the words they’d known since childhood: “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht . . .” Their eyes filled with tears of joy at the ghosts of Christmas past.

Image: Photo by Chad Madden on Unsplash.