It is the week before Christmas and all through the house
every darned thing is stirring and I wish they would calm down so I could get
some sleep. (I don’t think the poem
would have become such a big part of the holiday season if it had started that
way.) Even though at the writing of these words it is over 60 degrees outside
it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
I take that back. It has been
beginning to look a lot like Christmas since October 15th if you
count going into major chain retail establishments. But I digress. Christmas is nearly here and at my house much
of the decorations are in place, many presents are under the tree and the bank
accounts are properly depleted so let the holidays commence.
This really is a Christmas story so stick with me to the
very end. You know how people tell the
story of how Bruce Lee was such an amazing martial artist he had the ability to
reach up into a person’s chest, pluck the heart from the thoracic cavity and
show it to the person before their inevitable death. (See I told you you’d have to wait until the
end.) Well, it is not just Bruce Lee who
can do that. I once had an
eight-year-old do that to me.
I was playing the part of Santa Claus. If there any believers reading this column I
was simply standing in for the jolly old elf due to an unavoidable scheduling
conflict with the Macy’s in New York City.
You don’t mess with Macy’s. There
was a sizable line of hopeful children lined up to sit on my lap and make their
demands, uh, requests. After the usual
number of requests for video games, electronic devices and the occasional
throwback requests like dolls and BB guns, a particularly adorable girl
approached me. She perched on my knee
and looked at me with brown eyes which may have been partially to blame for
global warming. She did not ask for a
doll, a video game or straight cash. She
said her aunt was very sick and wondered if I could make her better.
Now, everyone who knows me knows I have no problem
talking. At this time I lost the power
of speech. I looked at her. I then looked directly at my feet, the clock
on the wall, the particularly ugly Christmas sweater worn by grandma number
seven taking a few hundred pictures of the oblivious toddler in front of her
and the stain on the carpet next to the exit because it is not a good idea to
show dozens of small bright-eyed children that Santa can cry like a chronically
depressed person watching Tommy Kirk shoot Old Yeller.
I don’t exactly remember what I said to her. I think I tried to explain that Santa and his
elves can’t handle that kind of thing. I
gave her a hug, more for my benefit than hers, and told her I would try
whatever I could to help. Then she
walked away, a tiny Bruce Lee, holding my still beating heart in her adorable
little hand.
See, I told you it was a Christmas story.
As I said in my last column, I love Christmas. Christmas has a lot of different meanings and
messages.
Since I really see my role in this newspaper endeavor as
more public goofball than teller of heartfelt stories, I need to end on a
different note than my real life story of what is most important at
Christmas.
Every year thousands of people, if not millions, watch the
1964 animated Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, an endearing tale of a group of
misfits finding their places in the world.
At least that is what we have been brainwashed to believe for
years. Take a minute to look more
closely. Rudolph is mocked, shunned and
eventually driven to self-exile from home and family because of a simple
abnormality, not because of anything he purposefully perpetrated on his
Rangifer (the genus for reindeer – I looked it up) brethren. It is only when the leader of the elfin
sweatshop realizes Rudolph’s abnormality can be exploited for his own personal
gain that our hero is accepted. Isn’t
that a perfect message for this season of peace on earth and goodwill towards
men. (Just not for Rangifer tarandus,
the binomial name of reindeer. Like I
said, I looked it up.)
Christopher Pyle
wishes all of you a wonderful Christmas season no matter your religion or your
interpretation of Rudolph but he might mock you if you open presents on
Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning.
He can be mocked back at occasionallykeen@yahoo.com.
