Wishing You The Bestest Of Christmases
Lady Lawanda’s Christmas Gift to Heck of a Guy Readers
The Bestest Christmas
Last year, in The Bestest Christmas, I had the privilege of recounting Lady Lawanda’s magical Christmas experience.
Now, as I did a year ago, I find her story touching, wonderful, uncomplicated, profound, gleeful, poignant, heartening, and exactly the gift to offer readers on Christmas Day.
Lady Lawanda’s Christmas Story
The child of devoted parents and the youngest sibling, by several years, of a swarm of indulgent brothers and sisters, Lawanda was the unwitting star of a long-running series of theatrical productions featuring her as ingénue of an ensemble troupe with family members simultaneously playing support roles, exquisitely and exhaustively stage-managing the shows, and serving as an enthusiastic audience.
A seasonal favorite was the annual Christmas pageant, central to which was the assumption that Santa Claus was a dramatic, all-embracing, benevolent figure no less real for completing his seemingly impossible tasks accomplished out of sight of those whose lives he blessed – not unlike the first Mayor Daley.
While the script of “Lawanda’s Christmas” varied somewhat from year to year, the most ancient of the recurrent motifs was the the discovery of evidence that Santa had completed his holiday visit.
In the service of that goal, sooty footprints were manufactured that began and ended beneath the chimney, partially eaten remnants of the snack left for Saint Nick and the chow left for his reindeer were strewn artistically, and sound effects congruent with a rooftop landing of a sleigh powered by flying reindeer rendered.
To the young Lady Lawanda, the cumulative effect was utterly convincing.
Lawanda’s self-assessed shining moment, overwhelming the multitude of special moments that took place during these Christmas performances, occurred in her ninth year as the juvenile lead of this theatrical cast that not only was like a family but actually was a family and featured an instance which crystallized and preserved for all time her dramaturgical talent for playing a role with absolute conviction.
Lawanda’s Christmas Vision
Running a Christmas Eve errand with her father, perhaps her greatest fan, Lawanda glimpsed something in her peripheral vision. Although whatever had caught her eye has vanished within the fraction of a second required to shift her focus, she knew, whole-heartedly and unquestionably, that she had seen Santa Claus soaring across the sky in his sleigh making his deliveries.
The remaining plot is anti-climatic. Lawanda gleefully informed her father that she had just seen Santa Claus making his rounds, her father acknowledged her report without any suggestion of surprise, let alone doubt, and, on their return home, she found, indeed, that Santa had already come, dropped off her usual bonanza of gifts, and departed.
Epilogue
Lawanda’s glance of that communal myth distilled and condensed the innocence, security, delight, unalloyed joyfulness, enchantment, affection, and all that is special in a childhood that was imperfect, which all childhoods are, but suffused with love, which is not true of all childhoods.
If the celebrations, ornaments, feasts, and traditions of Christmas over the generations have accomplished nothing other than that moment when a nine year old girl, to the delight of her loving family, was convinced she saw Santa flying through the sky, I would maintain the efforts and costs have been justified.
And Merry Christmas to each of you
I believe!
Merry Christmas!
Comment by Mary — December 25, 2007 @ 8:42 pm
Hope you had a very merry Christmas HOAG, and will have a Heck of a new year.
Comment by Helen — December 28, 2007 @ 5:27 am