Hometown

The Unscathed Christmas

When bad things don’t happen to good people

By Bill Fields

Looking back on the Christmas season, I realize that we were lucky.

It wasn’t just that our family had a roof over our heads, that we always had enough food and presents to make us happy, or that we never let disputes occurring in our spirited Monopoly games that were an entertainment centerpiece escalate into unpleasantness. (The adults at the table even indulged very young me when I wanted to be able to put houses and hotels on Baltic Avenue even though I didn’t own Mediterranean.)

Although a vicious intestinal bug did hit us one year with the ferocity of a Dick Butkus tackle, the miracle was that we survived each holiday season without serious harm. We didn’t have a fireplace, so there was no danger of a stray ember setting fire to G.I. Joe’s fatigues or tissue paper that had swaddled a something new from Collins department store. In place of the real thing, after one of my mother’s largest lapses in judgment, we were the proud owners of imitation logs illuminated by orange incandescent bulbs. The “flames” flickered from foil circles that rotated near the lights, although one would have needed a lot of enhanced eggnog to feel warm.

Our fire threat came from another source. We had two sets of Christmas lights, those to decorate the camellia in the front yard and those to string on the Christmas tree in our living room. They were labeled “outdoor” and “indoor,” but the difference was less than that between Carolina and sky blue. The large bulbs on each strand seemed to approximate the heat of a glowing briquette charring a steak.

Before moving on to white pines and later firs or spruces, we were a cedar tree clan. Even if we regularly filled the red stand with water, those things would get pretty crispy. It’s a wonder there was never a real fire next to the faux logs, not that there wasn’t a close call. The same angel that graced the top of our trees for many years — well into the era of tiny lights that didn’t heat up — bore a melted spot from her years of service with the big bulbs.

We skirted a lot of trouble around Christmas time, when you think about it. Nobody crashed when a neighbor got a mini bike. We avoided getting hit by a car when testing new tennis rackets by playing a set with an imaginary net out in the street. Lawn darts landed only in the rye overseed. Bruises and scrapes were the worst that came from tackle football. Dad somehow managed to get the barbecued chicken done when he cooked out in the dark. 

Indoors, there were potential hazards everywhere. Owing to my father’s job at Proctor-Silex, there was gifting of irons for a few years, but no one ever dropped one of the heavy devices on themselves in their zeal to unwrap such a utilitarian present. Nobody tripped over the Hot Wheels track after I set it up to emulate the Rockingham drag strip, but I heard a few curse words when an adult stepped on a plastic soldier or Tinker Toy. 

Santa Claus never forgot to bring bags of walnuts, pecans and Brazil nuts. The pick that went along with the nutcracker could have been classified as a weapon of war so sharp was the point, but we escaped with minor puncture wounds for which a little mercurochrome would do the trick. A dab of butter took care of any burns from rogue Crisco escaping a cast-iron skillet.

But the kitchen hazards didn’t stop at the stove. Man was going into space, but he also had time to invent the electric knife. The whir of the blades was part of the Christmas soundtrack as much as “Jingle Bells” or “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.” Mom worried as Dad took on a turkey or a ham or a roast. There was the occasional grinding of metal on platter if he misjudged his cut, but fortunately the only red on the table came from the apple rings.  PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.