My Christmas Carol

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.  Wait, that is not my story!  However, Christina says of me, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.  But this was not always the case.  I joke with her that things changed…right after three spirits visited me.  But in reality, unlike Scrooge, my revelations came about differently.

Christmas as a child for me was grand.  Broken homes are meaningless to me as long as you have love.  Between my Mom and my Grandparents there was plenty.  I was lucky to have two places to decorate, the apartment my Mom and I lived in and my Grandparents house.  A small tree, and even smaller Christmas items were placed in the apartment.  However, my Grandparents house would be…umm…grand.  The tree was a throwback to the old country.  It towered over me.  This beautiful real pine was decorated as if pulled from a picture of the first Santa related Christmases.  Oh Tannebaum played in an endless loop in the background…in full German.  The tree was dotted with bubble lights.  As they warmed up, the glitter in the thermometer shaped glass would move, like a ménage of miniature snow globes.  I was allowed to place the old fashion ornaments on the tree.  I was always told, larger ones on the bottom branches…smaller ones on the top.

As the years moved on, my Mom remarried.  We moved only 4 houses away from my Grandparents.  Not long after, my Grandmother passed away.  Oh Tannenbaum would be no more.  But this was not the end of Christmas, just that one.  Much like in “Merry Christmas Charlie Brown” our real tree was replaced by an “aluminum” one.  I never recall ever SEEING an actual aluminum tree as referenced in the traditional Charlie Brown special.  But our Christmas tree from now on would be a fake one, and as a kid I referred to it as our “aluminum” tree.  Color coordinated, I would place each level of branches into the broomstick like tree trunk.  Now playing would be “Oh Christmas Tree”…all in English.  Gone where the bubble lights…consumer affairs mentioned somewhere they caused tree fires, so Mom would have none of it.  At the time our family situation was good, so I was never left wanting.  In my early teens that would all change.  The tree would get smaller, the presents fewer.  But my parents always seemed to make Christmas special.

By my third year of college I was living on campus full time.  I was still at my co-op job so I would be working right up until Christmas Eve before driving back to New York.  Not being home to set up and decorate my family’s tree, my roommate and I decided to get one of our own.  Of course, as college kids, we were not going to actually BUY one.  So we were off to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey to cut one down ourselves.  We finally found a perfect fir, unfortunately it resided just on the tail end of someone’s property.  We circled back with the car lights and engine off.  We glided right into position.  As I stepped out to cut the tree down, my friend grabbed the saw from me.  “You do things so slow, it will be spring before you finish cutting it down.”  He was right…and it also minimized our chances of getting caught.  Plus I was driving the getaway car anyway.  When we got back, we set the little fella up.  It was dubbed our Charlie Brown Christmas Tree.  Our room would become the center of activity…who am I kidding…it was already.

Everyone loved our tree and appreciated we got an early jump on Christmas.  However, December 14^th would be the end of the semester.  And that was when I got some crappy news.  They would be shutting down MY dorm for the break.  I didn’t have to move our stuff out, I just couldn’t live there.  I would have to relocate as much as I could to another dorm since I was working up until Christmas.  If you recall, my dorm room was by no means an ordinary one.  We were extravagant.  Now I was moving to a jail like cell.  It was cold, uncarpeted…I fully expected a toilet bowl to be in one corner.  Whatever I brought with me would have to travel back to New York since I was not going to be allowed back into my room…and I couldn’t leave it in the cell.  I brought clothes, bedding, my TV…and the Christmas tree.  For the next 10 days I was alone…in solitary confinement.  During the day I at least had work, but the nights were long and lonely.  The weekend was even worse.  What was a bustling college campus only days before, was now a ghost town.  I was left in a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms and desks.  At one of these a lonely boy was reading.  There I was, alone again, when all the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays…and Fan was not coming for me.  Christmas eve I arrived back at the dorm after work.  In a still quiet I packed my clothes, my bedding and my TV.  I left the Christmas tree behind.  It would be the last Christmas tree I would have for the next 20 years.

The spirit of Christmas was not lost in all one night.  Over the years family issues made the holiday a formality.  You could not, NOT go see your family…although the thought always crossed my mind.  Christmas was no longer special.  I tried to recreate it with whatever relationship I was in during that time of year.  However, it was usually their place, their tree….not “ours”.  This distanced me further and further from the holiday.  Scrooge Walsh was born.

My change of heart came from just that, the heart.  Three spirits may not have visited me, but in a sense it was from someone who took the place of all of them.  I started dating Christina in August of 2002.  Quickly Christmas was upon us.  She had said after her divorce and moving into her apartment she felt lonely during the holidays.  It reminded me of a certain schoolboy.  Instead of the path that boy took, she decided to follow a different one.  She would have a Christmas party at her apartment with all her friends.  She would refuse to give in to the loneliness a holiday can sometimes provide.  For the next three years the party was hers.  In 2005 it became OURS.

Christmas became special again culminating in a gathering of all our friends.  I would start decorating our house in Mid-November and wouldn’t stop until Christmas Eve.  Inside is an endless array of festive festoons.  Outside thousands of lights litter the landscape, both front and back.  Gift giving would become an art form for me and Christina would reap the rewards.  And the tree?  Real of course…with bubble lights.  And each year the tree would get bigger.  Some say I am trying to compensate for something.  Yes I am.

For years of lost Christmases.