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Above, Christmas 1944 -- with subliminal snow chains playing in the background...a very young Jim Johnston and his Mom...
James C. Johnston Jr.
When it comes to the world of philosophy, I faithfully follow Plato. Plato, that gifted student-philosopher of Socrates and teacher and mentor to Aristotle, knew that perfection can only exist in the mind as an abstract thought, and in real life there was really no place for perfection as a fact of real life. Plato knew that people would be better off if they simply tried their best in this challenging life and were happy with the honest results of their good efforts. Obsession with earthly perfection in all things, in the end, can only lead to a long series of disappointments. Humans are less than perfect, but we are capable of love, and understanding, and forgiveness. We should always strive to be better members of the Human Race while keeping an eye on our best reality. Christmas is a time for striving to be better, and we will really be all be the better for it.
Oliver Cromwell, the Puritanical “High Lord Protector and virtual ruler of England” from 1653 until his death in 1658, as his portrait was being painted said to the artist, “Paint me as I am-warts and all!”
I didn’t like much about Cromwell, but I did admire his ability to accept the intrinsic reality of his imperfections of his face and of life generally. And strangely enough, there is something about accepting things as they are that makes me feel very good about Christmas. Yes indeed, there is something about Christmas that just makes me feel very good, warm, fuzzy, and all-embracing of this wide and wonderful world that we all inhabit. Yes indeed, I know that we are not always perfect, and I know that the world is not a perfect place, but so what! Things are not always going to go to plan, and that my friends is the overwhelming fact of life. So if things are not perfect, get over it, and dare to enjoy yourselves without guilt and dwelling on the small imperfections of the human condition that you might not actually be able to resolve in the short term allotted us on this earth. Improve what you can, and be as kindly disposed to your fellow humans as you can be, and move on after doing what you honestly do to improve the human condition.
Christmas is, above all, a time to remember just why this holiday is so very special. From far-away days of my earliest Christmases, I can remember the sound of the tire-chains that one would install on the tires of the family car before the first snowfall. These were the days before “Snow-Tires” were commonly made available and generally used. Those chains, calculated to keep the family automobile from sliding all over the icy roads, made a clinking and tinkling sound that sounded very much like the bells on Santa’s sleigh. Deeply buried under the quilts and covers of my old childhood four-posted bed, I could hear the music of those chains as cars passed by my house just before I fell off to sleep, and in my five or six-year-old mind, I thought, “Santa must be making a trial run before the ‘Big Day’ when he delivers presents to all of the good children of this Good-Old-World. However does he do it all in one night!”
Above, before expensive and toxic road salt became a commonplace
every New England driver owned snow chains and knew how to use them.
And then I would agonize over the greater question of whether, or not, I was good enough to qualify for gift receiving. Then I began thinking about how I had badly treated my younger sisters, my sainted grandmother, and my parents over the past year. Now, this was a great and most troublesome conundrum for me to really agonize and stew over. After a bit of reflection, I was sure that I was the worse kid who had ever lived in the tide of times. Sometimes I still feel that way. Now don’t tell anybody that I have confided this terrible and dark secret to you. It might ruin my well-crafted public image. So, let’s just keep this little confession of my deep feelings of guilt strictly between us. Thank you. You really are too kind.
I saw the snow outside in my yard a few days ago, and part of me wanted to go out and play in it, and maybe I would like to revert to age of wisdom, which is to say, five or six and make snow angels or something delightfully stupid like that. Of course at my age, and at 222 pounds, I would need two or three strong friends to get me perpendicular again after my octogenarian play-folly. So, I will have to be content with seeing my five-year-old great nephew Anthony do all the great kid stuff of childhood outside in the world of ice and snow in place of my ancient self.
How great it is to vicariously enjoy Christmas through those gifted young five-year-old’s eyes. I love the fact that Anthony has the capacity to perform all the great feats of childhood in this magic Yuletide Season, and I am happy and have the hope of continuing to have the privileged of watching this great little guy engaging with the miracle of snow and Christmas all at once for years to come. I am also happy to also have a great gift within my capacity to remember how much fun it was communicating with nature in this delightfully and intimate seasonal way.
Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I never want to be one day younger than I am now. It took a lot of effort to get to be me at my venerable age and now enter my ninth decade. It took a lot of effort to sprout and actually keep all of these silver locks which so nicely decorate my ancient head. This silver hair of mine sort of makes me look like a “Jolly Old Elf” these days, which is both fortunate and very seasonal. Hell, at eighty, I am still happy to have hair!
The thing I really like to do at this time of year is to give away really special and interesting old things I have treasured for the better part of my lifetime. I like to give these very special delightful objects that I have treasured to people who really understand and enjoy exactly what I am giving them. By this time, one should really know one’s greater extended family quite well, and gifting treasures that one has truly loved and cherished, to people that are very special and precious to you elevates both the gift and the beloved recipient as well.
Giving is a great joy in any season, but giving something that is special both to you and the loved one, who understands and cherishes the gift, forms and completes a special relationship that will reach out over the years and the generations, in a special undefined love that should form a lasting union-of-memory that endures as long as living beings can relate the story of the special gift.
In the “OLD DAYS” of seventy-some years ago, my parents, sisters, and my sweet grandmother would all bundle into my father’s 1934 Ford Victoria, and the six of us would make our Christmas Eve Rounds. In eight or nine hours, beginning about noon on Christmas Eve day, we would drive from Franklin, to Upton, to Shrewsbury, and then back to Franklin, after making stops in Milford, to exchange Christmas greetings and gifts with family and good friends whom I had known all of my short life. In those days, it didn’t matter whether it snowed or not. With snow chains on your car, well weighted with a big bag of emergency-sand in the trunk, our little car was invincible in any snowy situation. In fact all of us liked driving in the snow, because it all became a especially magic time. Hardly anyone else was on the road, and this gave us exclusive ownership of this highway to happiness.
We cut through snow-drifts like the proverbial knife cuts through butter. Our last stop was always at the large and stately Victorian home of Alice and Harold Clark on Union Street in Franklin. The Clarks were wonderful people who had taken my father in when he was a young fellow just making his way through the early years of his life back in the 1920’s. The son of the household was my father’s best friend, Harold Junior. The Clarks were a real family to us. That beautiful old house, filled with the aromas of Christmas and the Older Harold’s pipe, was always filled with truly good people on Christmas Eve who were suffused with the Yule-Tide Joy of this wondrous season.
This joy was so all-embracing that it was truly palpable. This wonderful Christmas cheer filled us with generalized feelings of completion and well-being. Nothing could disturb the general peace of mind of those wonderful folks so festively and lovingly gathered in under this all-welcoming roof of the Clarks. We were all filled with the utter satisfaction with life in this all-too-perfect-world of Christmas. And we went to bed hours later on this most holy of nights.
All the negativity and doubts were gone from my mind. A Loving-God truly was in his Heaven, Santa was on his way, and all was very right with this wonderful and not-quite-perfect-world. And best of all, the sound of those snow-tire chains, chinking and clinking out their song of pure joy on the road outside my windows, played a holy symphony of celestial music that put me right to sleep, and I was, as if by magic, sent off to that special place that I shall hope to find again as I embrace my pillow on this holy Christmas Eve.
James C. Johnston, an author and a retired Franklin educator, is a frequent contributor to Franklin Observer
