As I write, the song “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” is on my mind. In reality, other than decorations and the endless Hallmark movies, and the absence of leaves on the trees, it wouldn’t look like Christmas at all. There is no snow, though the temperature is dropping below freezing, and a brisk wind is blowing, making the air feel colder due to the wind chill factor. A more appropriate song might be “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”.
I indicated in my last article that I would share some thoughts about one of the favorite holiday characters of a favorite Christmas movie. You might find it hard to believe this, but I was not referencing a Hallmark movie!
I remember that first time I saw A Christmas Story. I was fascinated by the way the movie revolved around Ralphie’s imagination. Intertwined in his imagination was the adventures he would have with the “official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time”. I had to Google the description—when I was a kid I could have memorized that line, but I was an adult when I first saw the movie, and a few Christmases have passed since my first viewing. I’m so old now that I’d probably have trouble memorizing the multiplication tables.
When I was a kid I was no stranger to guns—that is, toy guns. All kinds of toy guns—from cap pistols to plastic machine guns—but never actual BB guns. My mother was too much like Ralphie, afraid I’d shoot my eyes out!
Cap pistols were my very favorite. In my mind, much like Ralphie, with guns in hand I was a fearless cowboy, riding the lonely trails into the sunset. My horse was almost always an old mop. Sometimes my red wagon was a police car, and I was a sheriff or detective, always catching my man, always fearless. Ralphie’s imagination seemed to be fueled by radio—mine was fueled by television.
There was one day in my childhood that I was riding “Mopsy” at a hard gallop through that wonderful field of adventure. I held the mane in one hand and my well-oiled, Daisy air rifle brandished like Hoss Cartwright in the other. I rode like the wind until “Mopsy”, whose feet felt strangely like my own, slipped from under me in a mud puddle left by a recent rainstorm.
Down I went, flat on my back! My rear end was wetter than if I’d had an accident of another kind, and mud ran from my shoulder blade to the back of the calf of my leg. “Daisy” went one way, “Mopsy” the other. I was flat on my back, looking to Heaven, all the wind knocked out of me. A much subdued, humbler terror of the plains rose from the ground, retrieved “Daisy” in one hand, “Mopsy” in the other, and slowly, achingly trudged my way back to the “Ponderosa”.
Isn’t is amazing, Dear Reader, that after a fall like that that I could carry a rifle in one hand and a horse in the other? “Daisy” seemed to have fared better than “Mopsy” and me, though instead of shooting bullets she now only popped air. Also, how very strange it seemed that the mane I fearlessly clung to just moments earlier seemed nothing more than mop strings! “Mopsy” sure had gotten bony, too. It seemed her poor body had shrunk after the fall to nothing larger than a mop handle!
I thought I was in the clear as I limped slowly homeward. The dirt on my clothes wasn’t a big deal. Mother was a worry wart, but she was used to me getting quite dirty when I played.
A few days later, our landlord’s wife came to visit. In the course of conversation, she looked at me and said, “Boy, I watched somebody take a hard fall the other day!” Gerri Warwick had been at her kitchen sink and was the only witness, other than God himself (and “Mopsy” and “Daisy”), that I had slipped in the mud hole in the middle of the field.
I wonder if reality was as great a shock to Ralphie as it was to me? My fearlessness on the plain of the landlord’s field behind our rental house somehow failed to follow me into the reality of adulthood. Strangely, it seemed that the older I got the more fearful I became of life. One of the pleasures of childhood is the ability to erase from the imagination anything that goes wrong and rewrite the script. One of the burdens of adulthood is the inability change, run from, or avoid unpleasant circumstances.
Even my aunt Duskie Mincey Jones said when she was in her late 70s or early 80s that Christmas was never the same when she learned there was no Santa Claus. When I was a beginning third grade teacher, my students were just at the tragic age when they begin to question the reality of Santa Claus. When a child asked me if there was really a Santa, I told them that the spirit of Santa Claus did indeed exist. It was the spirit of giving and doing good to those around us that made Santa real.
Of course, there is an older Spirit, older than Creation itself, with which this spirit of giving began and has endured throughout human history. That Spirit is the “Reason for the Season” that should truly be celebrated at this most holy, festive of seasons. May you, Dear Reader, find your fullest joy in that ancient Spirit to whom all is owed.
Dear Reader, I hope that Christmas 2023 will hold a most sacred, precious meaning for you, and that you will have memories to cherish forever as a result. Thank you for taking time and sharing part of your life with me by reading what tumbles from my musings. I look forward to continuing the journey with you next month as I think about the New Year. Until then, I’ll end this year with a little wisdom from the lovely land of email.

They told me I was gullible and I believed them.

One minute you're young and fun.
The next, you're turning down the car stereo to see better.

Being an adult is the dumbest thing I have ever done.

I run like the winded.

If you're riding' ahead of the herd,
take a look back every now and then
to make sure it's still there.

In the 1980's I fell off my bike and skinned my knee.
I'm telling you this now because we didn't have social media then.