It’s obviously not an original thought on my part, but for some reason it never ceases to amaze me how this time of the year can provoke such a paradoxical range of emotions.
And, as I get older — now approaching official entry into the septuagenarian grouping — the more often I reflect back on Christmas memories, those that have brought unbridled joy and those that have brought great sadness. (Sentimentality seems to correlate, at least for me, with the aging process).
Growing up in Gander, it was the former — that of pure, adulterated happiness — that seemed to characterize Christmas, a time when that cloistered, protective, wonderful world in which I lived was even more apparent, more pronounced.
There was always a monstrosity of a tree that I helped Dad cut down and transport back to our Balbo Street home. Truth be known, I had observer status as the old man and a few of his airline colleagues parlayed an afternoon of camaraderie (there inevitably seemed to be an abundance of laughter) into the allocation of trees for their various homes. (No one would be caught dead with a so-called fake tree; in fact, I don’t think they even existed in our part of the world).
And Santa Claus was always good to the five Wakeham offspring.
I recall one year Dad told me on Christmas Eve that a set of six guns and a Winchester rifle I had asked for hadn’t arrived from the North Pole, news that brought my chin down to my chest as I wandered off to bed; it was all a fib, of course, because the “weaponry,” to be used in the “tall grass” near Nungesser Avenue to reduce the number of outlaws in our town, sat beneath the tree the next morning. Dad’s explanation, which I accepted without qualification, was that Santa had shown up just before dawn with the pistols and the rifle.
Growing up in Gander, it was the former — that of pure, adulterated happiness — that seemed to characterize Christmas, a time when that cloistered, protective, wonderful world in which I lived was even more apparent, more pronounced.
(My father, a born ham, and an amateur actor all his life, would entertain me and my buddies for years with that rifle by standing in front of our house, legs spread apart à la John Wayne, cocking the gun, and declaring in a slow drawl: “You boys, git off ma land!”)
I think the only down-in-the-mouth Christmas I ever experienced in Gander was in 1962, when we knew that we would be leaving Newfoundland in six months to take up residence in the United States, a move — as I’ve mentioned here on several occasions — that shattered my existence, unaware at that time, obviously, that I would one day return to live and work back here and embrace this special place with an unquantifiable fondness. (See, I told you this was a sappy time of the year for me).
As a young man, as a journalist still wet behind the ears, there was at least one Christmas that was unforgettably sombre. On Boxing Day morning in 1976, I was assigned by my Telegram bosses to cover the fire at Chafe’s Nursing Home in the Goulds that killed 20 senior citizens; it was an event that no journalism course in university could ever have prepared me for, and it’s something I always recall this time of the year, whether I wish to or not.
There were also more than a few Christmases in my 20s and early 30s that I don’t recall with any great fondness, times when my addiction to booze led to solitary hours in a dingy apartment, in a state of drunken neutrality, the holidays meaning little or nothing.
But that was then, as they say, and this is now.
Christmas for many, many years has been an occasion of grand elation, when my wife and I do the “family thing” in a big way and enjoy every single moment.
There is, for sure, that paradox of emotions I referred to earlier, especially when I recall loved ones and friends with whom I once shared tremendous Christmas merriment (my father, for sure, who led a long and tremendous life, and treated Christmas as only a bon vivant could; and many relatives and buddies, like John Furlong and Bill Kelly and others who left this life way, way too early).
But they’d be the first to tell me to “get on with it, b’y” and enjoy myself; to love and be loved.
And that’s exactly what I plan on doing.
Have a good Christmas everyone.
I promise to take my saucy pills once again in the New Year.
Bob Wakeham has spent more than 40 years as a journalist in Newfoundland and Labrador. He can be reached by email at [email protected]
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