Lost Trains of Thought

                                                       Lost Trains of Thought

More Christmas Stories  

       

 

Many people have a Christmas story, maybe several but perhaps one stands out, mentally buried for a time in an avalanche of calendar pages of years gone by. It is a particular story or, like one of my own, it is just a simple recollection like walking in the early evening to my grandmother’s house to shovel her snow and watching as the Christmas wreath with the red light slowly became visible in the second-floor window. Ducking inside afterwards for a cup of hot chocolate (she insisted) and conversation was time well spent, and I miss her very much. This is typical of Christmas stories because they often have elements of both happiness and melancholy.

 So does my friend Sue’s.

Happiness and disappointment are core parts of life. You cannot always be happy. You must feel melancholy at times. It is knowing how to deal with grief, reality, and hard times that helps us to understand all aspects of life and makes the good times feel even better. Melancholy reminds me of the cod liver oil my mother gave me when I was a kid. She may not have understood why this foul-tasting oily liquid was beneficial, but her powers of observation told her that children given cod liver oil were less susceptible to colds and flu. In other words, it kept me healthy and therefore made the good times better.

“Joe’s parents (Sue’s late husband) had a silver tree like that one, with blue ornaments and a rotating light with different colors.”

I just showed Sue a photo of a 1960’s aluminum Christmas tree. The tree was more than one-half century old, but the photo was not. This was 2020 and I just took it. Another friend had one and erected it in his office each year. My family too had such a tree years ago, but Charlie Brown killed it. (More about that later.)

Sue took me for a walk down Memory Lane.

“But my family always had real Christmas Trees,” Sue quickly noted rather emphatically. “My father liked bargaining (for a tree) as much as an Arab trader and he was twice as shrewd,” said Sue. “He bought one off of a corner lot.”

 

“….and we had thick tinsel…the kind you could smooth out with your hand, not the cheap fly-away stuff you would see in later years. Mom would save the tinsel and use it year after year. Then we had a Lionel train underneath the tree.”

“Yes, it seemed nothing finished a perfect Christmas setting better than having a Lionel train under your tree. “Santa” coloring books were sure to offer children several pages to color that included a decorated Christmas tree with a star on top with a toy train beneath. It was like an American icon.”

 

“Dad stored the train in a special box he had carefully constructed. My sister (Judy) and I loved that train. I still remember how it puffed smoke when you placed pellets into the smokestack and after my son Tim was born, I wanted to be sure we shared the holiday magic of the Lionel train with him. Tim was two years old now. It was time….it was Christmas Time.”

“So where is the train? I asked my brother who had appointed himself the unofficial choo-choo caretaker over the years.”

“What? You gave it away!

“Homemade, holy, holly, holiday, happy, herald…. there are many Christmas words that begin with “H.” Homicide is not one of them, but Judy and I were about to “kill” our brother.”

“Sure, Christmas is a time of joy, but sometimes you have particular expectations for how special Christmas is really going to be and you feel let-down if those aren’t met. It is like comparing your family to others. It is easy to look at someone’s Christmas card and think his or her life is perfect, full of joy and that you are the odd one out. Bet they have a train under their tree.”

“Well, I finally found a replacement. It was not exactly like the old train, and it did not smoke, but it was nice, and Tim now has a train to place under his tree for his daughter. (Girls like trains too, remember.) My “train” of thought that carried memories of Christmas past beneath gentle whiffs of small circling plumes was lost, but the magic comes back at Christmas along with Tim’s train and a real tree.”

Personally, I admit a special fondness for the aluminum tree. It reminds me of my own childhood innocence when anything seemed possible, including a Christmas tree made entirely of metal. But in the mid ‘sixties our nation seemed hungry for reassurance — a return to a nostalgic past that was simple, sincere, honest. and understandable.

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” helped to fill that void, and the object that was used to represent all that was wrong with Christmas was the aluminum Christmas tree. Throughout the story, Charlie searches for the true meaning of Christmas

As he and Linus seek out the perfect tree for their Christmas play, they come across an ice-cold display of aluminum trees. Walking into the array, Linus raps upon the shell of an aluminum tree, which echoes back with all the emotional appeal of any empty trash can. The death knell comes when he says, “Now this one really brings Christmas close to a person.”  

The twosome continue their search until arriving at a lot of fresh firs: Douglas, Balsam, Fraser, Noble, and Grand, and Spruce and Pines too.

“This little green tree here seems to need a home,” Charlie tells Linus, pointing to a scrawny needle-dropper. Like a lost puppy, he takes it home. Ridiculed by his friends at first, they eventually rally around Charlie and his sad-looking little tree. “Charlie Brown is a blockhead,” Lucy confesses, “but he did get a nice Christmas tree.”

 

This was a time when something seemed missing from America, tradition, authenticity, perhaps compassion, all needed a fresh look and suddenly foil needles did not seem to sparkle so brightly. Sales of Evergleam and like metal trees plummeted and manufacturing stopped in 1970, but emotions can change and by the mid 1990’s sentimentality caused a renewed interest in the vintage trees, Old Evergleams were rescued from attics and aluminum tree production resumed.

Christmas is often a time to return to our past. Families gather to share in the warmth of their collective memories. What was old once again becomes new. In my family, nothing says that more for us than our collection of large heavy metal steel trucks and cars that date back to the early 1930’s. We bring them out at Christmas, and watch as our grandchildren play with them, just as children did ninety years earlier, and yes, the magic of my Lionel trains appears as well on a large table down in the recreation room. “May I drive the train next Papa?” The kids line up.

Merry Christmas.