Christmas Eve 2017

Christmas Eve 2017

Noel Laflin

Memories of early childhood involved the unwrapping of just one gift on Christmas Eve, candlelight church services, and playing the part of a Wise Man – with faded striped towel over the head and staff in hand.

Later, there was the year that I was disappointed when I did not get the fancy, newfangled pair of roller skates that I had requested. I wish I could travel back in time and wipe that disappointment off my face, as my mother clearly saw it.

Two doors down the street, German neighbors taught me how to toast many a Christmas Eve with dark beer laced with raspberry syrup. They were also the beloved couple desperately trying to get through jammed long- distance phone lines to relatives trapped in mid-sixties East Berlin. Some years they were successful and sometimes not. I was their gardener for many years and was paid in real silver half dollars each week. There was always a silver dollar for Christmas as well. I have every one to this day.

And there was the Christmas Eve that I helped a young hitchhiking runaway with his escape from juvenile hall. I then bought him a parting meal at McDonald's before he hit the road once more, just trying to get home for Christmas.

There was also the Christmas Eve, when I was so broke, that all of my Christmas gifts to family and friends were used books wrapped in the Sunday comics. But they were good books, all personally read by me. My lover and I set a limit of five dollars each as our Christmas gift giving budget for one another that year. That same young man would die on Christmas Eve thirteen years later. But I still have the Rod Steward album that he gave me for Christmas, 1979. It remains one of the most memorable times of my life.

Some loves would come and stay for awhile. Sometimes they left sooner than later, and Christmas Eves were a bit lonelier.

Over time there would be family Christmas Eve celebrations with first a nephew, and then nieces. Eventually a daughter would be tearing through the wrapping paper on Christmas Eve. That daughter now has a husband and I, in turn, now have a wonderful son-in-law.

I have been fortunate enough to share the last seventeen Christmas Eves with Davy. Three years ago tonight we were hiking through a beautiful Taiwanese National Park, in search of a magnificent waterfall. We found it.

All in all, any Christmas Eve continues to be memorable.

Thank you for allowing me to share some of those memories with you.