Giving the Gift of Service

Christmas Eve was always my absolute favorite day of the year. Wildly celebrated by Granny, Grandpa, their seven kids, spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, and grandkids at the old family home, bursting at the seams.

Like something out of a movie, Grandpa cut and painted a life-sized Nativity scene. Complete with wise “guys,” sheep, straw, and flood lights. There was a life-sized Santa with a list of names. There were so many lights and figures in their yard, people came from miles around just to see it. It was the winner of innumerable decorating contests, and featured in newspapers.

Grandpa would still be shopping right up until the moment of the buffet dinner. He’d scurry into his bedroom, laden with shopping bags, and wrap, yelling for tape and scissors. Or recruit one of my aunts to wrap for him. His first choice was having the store wrap, but not all stores did that anymore.

The meal was always turkey (the cheapest protein that would feed a horde). Grandpa would have inevitably already eaten a turkey wing, long before anyone arrived. He was a turkey fiend. If it was a prosperous year, there would also be a canned ham, that Granny would cross-cross slice on top and have me stick cloves into the join points of the x. Dessert would be pies of many kinds, much like Thanksgiving, served with cream and coffee.

But my favorite part was Grandpa’s tree. I would lie down on the mustard-yellow carpet of the dining room, and wiggle my way under the tree among the presents. I’d spy to see my name on the tags, and then look up through the tree branches at the lights, tinsel, and star on top. I felt…safe.

After dinner, and before pie, we’d open gifts for hours. My brother and I would squirm and run amuck, usually wearing stick-on bows on our heads. We’d inevitably be tasked with gathering the mountain-sized piles of wrapping paper into black garbage bags.

After a heaping slice of pie, we would go to the Elmwood Church, always called the “new” church (even though it was still 100 years old. Small towns have their own terminology). They had a midnight service. It was a beautifully hand-built building with wood painted all white and black in the Protestant tradition. There would be candles, and a choir in robes. We had thick programs of Christmas hymns, that all would be sung badly before the night was out. Grandpa would drop a big bill in the collection plate. We’d squelch out through the snow, rain, and mud in our slippery best shoes back to our cars and go back to our welfare-funded apartment and await Santa. I always wondered how he got in to find me, as our apartment had a plug-in heater with no chimney to speak of.

Christmas went on like that into my 30s. I loved it all over again when my girls were little kids, and excited over toys and candy. I felt happy, safe, and well.

Then Grandpa died on the day of the Newtown, CT shooting. And so did that family Christmas. His funeral was a week before Christmas that year. Granny put the urn with his ashes into his Christmas stocking. The man who hung hundreds of wreaths on tombstones had no tombstone of his own for me to bring a wreath to.

He had bought me one, last gift that year. It was one of those Jane Seymour Open Heart necklaces. I cried like a baby opening it. I wear that necklace often.

Every year, I put up a big tree, for Grandpa. I try to give to the family who gathers here at my home, some of the gift he gave to me. It’s my turn to be the giver, and not the gifted. But my Christmas is a poor shadow of what Grandpa celebrated.

I miss him today.

But there is giving work to be done. I am off to give the gift of service.