THE MAGIC OF CHRISTMAS

DECEMBER 20, 2019 – What’s as predictable as Christmas is the alacrity with which it arrives. Now. When I was a kid, the slow passage of time allowed me to savor the approach of the biggest holiday in American culture.

When I was in second grade, our teacher, Mrs. Lundring, who seemed way past retirement age—I put her in my grandparents’ generation, not my parents’—thought it was a good idea for us to have a little quiet time immediately following post-lunch recess.  “Quiet time,” lasting about five minutes, meant crossing your arms over your desktop, resting your head on your arms, and closing your eyes—or at least one eye, allowing the other eye to survey your immediate neighbor to make sure you weren’t missing out on something.

Around the first of December of that year, I had a dream one night about Santa’s Workshop. It was very detailed and left quite an impression. During quiet time at school the next day, I consciously revisited the dream. Rather than doing so as a passive observer, however, I added to the dream.  This was long before “interactive” would become a word, but that described my process. 

There with my head upon my crossed arms folded over the desk—both eyes closed—I took myself back up to the North Pole to build workshop additions . . . a wing here, another wing there. Then I’d add elves, wall decorations, and all sorts of festive materials. That all took a week of “quiet time.” The next week, I ventured outside the workshop and trudged through soft, powdery snow in search of the reindeer.  I found them in a large shed, which in turn, I decorated over the course of another few “quiet time” sessions. 

I saved for last my encounter with Santa himself and Mrs. Claus.  They offered me hot chocolate in a cozy corner of their home.  We sat next to the fire while the arctic winds howled outside.

I have no idea what the other kids were thinking about during “quiet time,” if they were thinking at all.  For all I know, one or two may have dozed off, and who is to say visions of sugar plums didn’t dance in their heads? But for me, “quiet time” was never long enough to finish what I had in mind for the North Pole.

By second grade, I was a year past “the truth” about Santa Claus. I knew full well that a jolly ol‘ man couldn’t stop time, defy gravity, and overcome all sorts of other realities in order to slide down our chimney to deliver a sackful of presents. And the dead giveaway: the handwriting on his thank-you note for the milk and cookies was a bad disguise of our mother’s writing.

But my realization made little difference.  I could go on imagining, if not believing, pretty much anything I could cut out of whole or partial cloth fabricated inside my head.

And therein, it seemed to me, lay the magic of Christmas.  

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© 2019 Eric Nilsson