The Third Christmas of the Iraq War
My father served in World War II but I never learned much about his service. All I knew in my early years is that a couple of his lifelong friends who also served told me separately that he had seen more than he should have and that I should be proud of him. But that's true of most men and now even women who serve in battle zones. They do their job the best way they know how. I learned a few more facts over the years about my father's service but I'll save that for another time.
You would never know that my father served in the war but that's true too of many who have come back home. In his later life, he did very well in business, but the early days after coming home from the war meant long hours of work and struggle and tight budgets and the common worries of supporting a family in a changed world.
My mother was very happy to have my father back home though he came home too late to enjoy the first Christmas after the war. In 1946, my mother insisted that all the local relatives who could come were invited for Christmas. Our place then was small but twelve of our relatives came that first Christmas. By 1952, the number of people in the house for Christmas was around twenty or so. It was mayhem and wonderful.
Pine needles and cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate were among the smells but for some reason, the smells I remember most are the large cigar of a great uncle and the pipe of one of my grandfathers. Many people have memories like these and they are worth having.
By the simpler standards of the 1950s, my mother always went all out with Christmas decorations but her way was to use one dollar to create a decoration that would have cost five dollars. We always had a full-size Christmas tree of some sort, but my favorite decoration was a miniature Christmas tree behind the dinner table on a mantle. Just after the war, when money was tight, my mother broke off the dead branch of an orange tree and had my father saw off the end cleanly and mount the branch upright on a square piece of plywood, 15 inches on a side. She then spray-painted the tree white, put a swath of cotton and glitter around the base for snow, and year after year she decorated the tree with miniature Christmas bulbs.
I always wondered where those bulbs came from. From the beginning of my memory, the boxes for the bulbs looked old and for a while I thought they were family heirlooms from older relatives. I learned later from my mother that she had gotten them when my father went to officer's training school and she had gone with him and the two of them had lived off base in a room smaller than some people's main bathroom these days. She had cut from green cloth the shape of a Christmas tree and used cellophane to tape the tree to the one window, then had used pins to hang the bulbs. She didn't remember exactly where she had gotten the bulbs but suspects she had gotten them cheap from a five and dime store. The newer decoration made from the broken branch survived several moves and lasted for more than forty years.
Christmas meant a lot to our family but it probably meant the most to my father. There's a lesson here and I wish this were just a story. But the world is complicated and life doesn't always make sense. My father almost never went to church. It was strange attending church and not seeing your father. Every few years, he would attend an Easter sunrise for reasons I don't fully understand. In time I realized he was not a believer. He never imposed his beliefs on the rest of us.
His parents had been believers. He had attended church in his youth. He had been married in a church. But something had happened in the war and his beliefs had changed. Some who come back from war become more religious. Some become angry at the universe. My father chose to go on, without belief, but to allow others their beliefs, and to live his life as best he could as a father and husband, as a conservative Republican businessman, as a man who had paid a terrible price while serving his country, who had kept it all within himself while that too exacted a price. And yet, after the war, for whatever reason, Christmas remained important to my father.
In my life, I have met Christians, Jews, Muslims, agnostics, atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Sikhs and even one Zoroastrian. I mentioned a lesson in all this and it's terribly simple: lessons are personal—there are a lot of good people I would never have met and known if my father had not taught me to allow others their beliefs.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. And may there be peace.
You would never know that my father served in the war but that's true too of many who have come back home. In his later life, he did very well in business, but the early days after coming home from the war meant long hours of work and struggle and tight budgets and the common worries of supporting a family in a changed world.
My mother was very happy to have my father back home though he came home too late to enjoy the first Christmas after the war. In 1946, my mother insisted that all the local relatives who could come were invited for Christmas. Our place then was small but twelve of our relatives came that first Christmas. By 1952, the number of people in the house for Christmas was around twenty or so. It was mayhem and wonderful.
Pine needles and cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate were among the smells but for some reason, the smells I remember most are the large cigar of a great uncle and the pipe of one of my grandfathers. Many people have memories like these and they are worth having.
By the simpler standards of the 1950s, my mother always went all out with Christmas decorations but her way was to use one dollar to create a decoration that would have cost five dollars. We always had a full-size Christmas tree of some sort, but my favorite decoration was a miniature Christmas tree behind the dinner table on a mantle. Just after the war, when money was tight, my mother broke off the dead branch of an orange tree and had my father saw off the end cleanly and mount the branch upright on a square piece of plywood, 15 inches on a side. She then spray-painted the tree white, put a swath of cotton and glitter around the base for snow, and year after year she decorated the tree with miniature Christmas bulbs.
I always wondered where those bulbs came from. From the beginning of my memory, the boxes for the bulbs looked old and for a while I thought they were family heirlooms from older relatives. I learned later from my mother that she had gotten them when my father went to officer's training school and she had gone with him and the two of them had lived off base in a room smaller than some people's main bathroom these days. She had cut from green cloth the shape of a Christmas tree and used cellophane to tape the tree to the one window, then had used pins to hang the bulbs. She didn't remember exactly where she had gotten the bulbs but suspects she had gotten them cheap from a five and dime store. The newer decoration made from the broken branch survived several moves and lasted for more than forty years.
Christmas meant a lot to our family but it probably meant the most to my father. There's a lesson here and I wish this were just a story. But the world is complicated and life doesn't always make sense. My father almost never went to church. It was strange attending church and not seeing your father. Every few years, he would attend an Easter sunrise for reasons I don't fully understand. In time I realized he was not a believer. He never imposed his beliefs on the rest of us.
His parents had been believers. He had attended church in his youth. He had been married in a church. But something had happened in the war and his beliefs had changed. Some who come back from war become more religious. Some become angry at the universe. My father chose to go on, without belief, but to allow others their beliefs, and to live his life as best he could as a father and husband, as a conservative Republican businessman, as a man who had paid a terrible price while serving his country, who had kept it all within himself while that too exacted a price. And yet, after the war, for whatever reason, Christmas remained important to my father.
In my life, I have met Christians, Jews, Muslims, agnostics, atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Sikhs and even one Zoroastrian. I mentioned a lesson in all this and it's terribly simple: lessons are personal—there are a lot of good people I would never have met and known if my father had not taught me to allow others their beliefs.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. And may there be peace.
posted by Poechewe at 1:42 AM
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