THE JOY OF CHRISTMAS

By Robert P. Bomboy

 I’m wrapping Christmas packages this week in gaily colored paper, and it’s made me think about the joy I felt on a Christmas morning long ago.

I still cherish the memory of the first Christmas after my father came home from the war.

I was not quite five years old that Christmas morning in 1945, standing in wonder and anticipation at the top of the second-floor staircase of our home in the two-sided double block. It was very early, still dark in my upstairs bedroom. The staircase to the downstairs was enclosed and had a right angle at the bottom, so, as I gazed down the wooden steps, I couldn’t see into the rooms below, but only the glow of a wonderfully warm orange light. At the same time, I could hear a hollow roaring sound that had probably awakened me. It made me a bit afraid, but the beautiful glow gave me confidence, and so I started down, one trembling step after another in my bare feet and pajamas.

I could smell the sweet balsam of the Christmas tree even before I reached the bottom of the stairs and turned toward the middle room. And even seven decades later, the memory is still so strong and so good it can make me smile with joy. The room below was full of warm-colored light and full of the Christmas tree. The tree stood on a plywood platform nearly as high as my chin. Round red, green, blue, and gold ornaments – they must have been three inches across – reflected the light and made tiny but magically beautiful pictures of the room and everything in it. The platform and tree sat in the room’s bay window, and, as I took one step and then another, making my way slowly as far as I could around the platform, I saw shining glass pine cones, red ceramic bells, an ornament shaped like Santa Claus, pinwheels in tiny circus tents that hung over the glowing Christmas lights so they would spin, and fantastically thin fluted shapes in red, orange, yellow and green blown glass. Silver icicles stirred softly and made the tree shimmer. From its very top a lighted red star shone brightly.

            But best of all was the electric train. That was what had caused the roaring noise – the train running round and round beneath the tree on the wooden platform. It was a Lionel, and it had a puffing steam engine up front and a sprightly red caboose at the end. In between was a yellow boxcar with sliding doors, an oil tank car with the same realistic kind of ladders that I saw whenever my mother took me past the locomotives’ roundhouse and the railroad tracks. The running train also had a low-slung gondola car and a black coal car like the ones I saw all the time moving through town on the D&H Railroad. A white sheet covered the foot of the tree, creating snowy mountains that the train had to make its way around. On the flat green surface of the platform, farmers worked beside a hay wagon; girls carried buckets of milk from the barn; cows and pink pigs grazed on the green felt grass. Automobiles and trucks ran along a gravel road on their way to the train station, and a flagman stood at one of the railroad crossings.

            I’m old now but I was once a little boy and, even now, I still smile when I think of my mother and father. The custom in our house was that they would not put up the Christmas tree until after I had gone to bed. My mother and father must have worked through the night on the tree and the platform and the train and the trimming of it all. They probably had just gone to bed when I awoke. And, knowing all that, even today, I remember how much they loved me.

                        The joy of Christmas to all, and a Happy New Year too!