Are You Guys Brothers?

     More than birthdays or any other specific day of the year, Christmas, for me, provides the clearest memories of times shared with others. I’ll often ask the friends who gather around our table at this time of year, “What do you recall as your favorite Christmas?” After initial hesitation, the conversations that follow are usually rich with feelings.

     I divide my Christmas memories into two groups: Before Ray and After Ray.

     Before Ray, my fondest Christmas memory is of the year my older brother Michael, his wife Nancy, and their five very young children were flying into Detroit from Des Moines through an awful storm on Christmas Eve. Dad took my brother Tom and sister Kathy with him to the airport. Mom, my little sister Maureen, and I stayed home in Birmingham to make sure that everything was perfect for them when they walked into the house. The Christmas records were stacked on the stereo, Mom’s traditional meal of oyster stew was simmering on the stove, and the logs were blazing beautifully in the fireplace.

     If they had walked in the door at the time we all expected Dad to return, it probably would have been a very forgettable Christmas. But Christmas Eve, the night to which we look forward for months with visions of perfect bliss, was spent restacking the records, stirring the stew so it wouldn’t stick, and rebuilding the fire over and over and over again. Dad called with regular updates about their long-delayed flight. Mom, Maureen, and I were very tired but I kept thinking about how exhausted my father, sister and brother were waiting endlessly in the airport and how very stressed Michael and Nancy must have been traveling with five little children, all of whom worried that Santa wouldn’t find them in Michigan.

     It was 10 p.m. when the back door opened and the haggard looking crew dragged themselves into the house. But when they did so, the Christmas music was blaring, the fire was roaring, and the oyster stew filled the kitchen with wonderful, welcoming smells. I don’t recall how late we stayed up that night but none of us went to bed until we were certain that no one was disappointed with their Christmas Eve. Everyone tried harder than normal to be awake, alert, and glad to be in each other’s company.

     I’ve never asked the other family members if they recall that Christmas as one of their favorites. My folks are now both dead, as is my brother, Michael, and the rest of us are in some degree of estrangement from each other. But the feeling of familial love I felt that night for everyone, made manifest by the adversity we all faced, created memories of that Christmas Eve as my Pre-Ray favorite.

     This Christmas will be Ray’s and my 33^rd together. Each one has been wonderful, primarily because we are so very comfortable in each other’s presence and we share the same thoughts about what makes Christmas meaningful. We love to decorate our tree and the house, to create the feeling of Santa’s workshop in our living room, to have yuletide music playing from the day after Thanksgiving, and to watch favorite films such as Albert Finney’s Scrooge, The Bishop’s Wife, It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, and every possible version of A Christmas Carol. We look forward to special meals and fresh baked cookies, to wrapping each other’s gifts and to writing each other’s card. Christmas Eve is the night for which we get most excited, even though we traditionally unwrap gifts the next morning after a breakfast of bacon and eggs. Ray will make me a big hot chocolate and he’ll enjoy the Kringle we order from Wisconsin for the occasion each year.

     Christmas is also when we traditionally give the largest amounts to our favorite charities, now being the Heifer Foundation (which provides livestock to poor people throughout the world), the Smile Train, and Doctors Without Borders, in addition to a local food bank.

     But none of that will make this Christmas particularly memorable. What will probably stand out for us this year is the fun we have had in making the occasion very special for our new neighbors Susan and Tom. They haven’t had a traditional Christmas for 22 years, having worked every holiday in that time. So we surprised them by decorating a tree and their house before their arrival home and we will create magic for them at the dinner table on Christmas Eve with candles, incense, music, delicious food, and the excerpted scene from Scrooge when Albert Finney dresses as Santa Claus and passes out gifts to all of the children on the street as he heads to the home of Tiny Tim with a giant turkey. Our friend Milton from Brazil, who waits patiently for a green card and ultimately American citizenship, will be with us for the first time too and he is so excited about the stocking that hangs with his name at the top that he can’t stand it. Milton takes care of both our home and Susan and Tom’s throughout the year and has become a treasured member of each of our families.

     When Ray and I reflect on what made the holiday special for us this year, it will be the memories we created for our new friends. As was true so many years ago for me the night my brother Michael and his family felt sure that they would miss the joy of Christmas Eve, creating happy feelings for others can be a source of true joy.

UPDATE: Susan and Tom arrived home this afternoon and she wept and wept when she saw the nine foot tree decorated with flickering candles, elaborately-dressed fairies, and baby’s breath. “Thank you. Thank you,” she repeated as she walked wide-eyed through her home. “I thought I’d never ever have a Christmas like this again.” Nice.