Christmas 1990

It’s Christmas time. It’s my favorite time of the year! I love the decorations. I love the lights. I love the trees. I love the music. I love the movies. I love the countdown calendars. I love the excitement.

This year I am feeling a little more mom stress to make Christmas special. My oldest, my daughter, is 8 and in 2nd grade. I am feeling like this year is maybe my daughter’s “Crucial Christmas year”. (I just made that phrase up just now, but I think you know what I mean).

All parents have a little bit of the same looming fear. The fear that this may be THE year that their babies stop “Believing”. And the fear then fuels a desire to do All.The.Things to stop that from happening.

Play the music louder! Decorate the tree brighter! Go to every Christmas event held in this county and the surrounding three. Make it bigger, brighter, louder, earlier, sparklier… magic-er! But to be honest, I’m already tired and the season is just starting.

The “Magic-er” game plan is a slippery slope. One minute you’re focused on the magic of Christmas and the next thing you know, you’re exhausted, crabby, broke and just waiting for the magic to end so you can get back to being a Conductor of the Ordinary Train, am I right?

So I started thinking, why do I REALLY love Christmas so much? What about my childhood Christmases made me love it so much?

This took me back in my memories, to my own 2nd grade Christmas. It’s a Christmas I have NEVER and will NEVER forget! Lets take a detour back to that Christmas…

The year was 1990. Christmas 1990. Thanksgiving had passed and it was officially Christmas season. My mom was busy doing the Making Christmas Magic thing- decorating, playing Christmas music, shopping, giving my brother and I the old “Santa is watching” speech.

At church, we were getting ready for our Christmas pageant (and I was secretly pouting because again I was not going to be the angel and I really wanted to be the angel and I am pretty sure I had voiced that opinion to the pageant director who was my own MOTHER!!!! But none of this is important to the story, thus the parentheses). And at school, my friends and I were beginning to have some serious discussions.

That’s right! We weren’t rookies to this Christmas thing anymore. The Kindergartenders, maybe! But us second graders, we were starting to catch on! We were starting to question the innocence of every single adult in our lives…

Could they really all be in on this Santa thing? Our parents, our Aunts & Uncles, our teachers, our (insert gasp) GRANDPARENTS?! I personally didn’t believe they could have pulled off that elaborate of a lie without letting it slip!

But then one of the boys in my class informed me on the playground: “None of the 3rd graders believe in Santa!”.

Well, I had to have a quick huddle with my 2nd grade BFF on the way back inside from recess.

I asked, “Do you believe in Santa? Because my mom says if I stop believing, I’ll stop receiving! And I really want a Nintendo!”

“Oh, I still believe in Santa! There is no way my mom would lie to me!” she responded.

And that should have made me feel better. But it didn’t. Now, I was suspicious. What did those 3rd graders know that I didn’t know?! Would my mom lie to me about Santa? Last year she told me I could be the angel in the pageant and that was obviously a lie (turns out it’s a tiny bit important to the story, after all!)

“Is Santa real?” was the single most important thing in my life in December 1990. That was, until the night I’ll never forget happened.

I was asleep. Asleep in my Cabbage Patch decorated day bed, in a raised ranch on a country road, on the outskirts of an all-American small, country town. I believed it to be the safest place in the world! I was probably dreaming about Santa and 3rd graders and angel costumes, though I don’t really remember that part.

But I do remember being woken up and I will never forget the fear I heard in my mom’s voice.

“Morgan! Wake up NOW! WAKE UP!”

I opened my eyes but I couldn’t see anything! It was black. And hazy.

I started to say “Where am I?” when I first breathed in the smoke.

“We need to leave now! The house is on fire!” my mom said.

And for one split second, I thought this was maybe a pretend fire drill, like at school. But, NO, that smoke was real!

The details of my memory become blurry after that. I know I made it out of the house and out the front door. My brother and I went to our next-door neighbor’s house. I know all I could smell was smoke. For days. Months maybe. Smoke. ALOT of smoke!

Our next-door neighbor was a volunteer fire fighter and was a Godsend to my parents that night. His wife and two daughters, were a Godsend to my brother and I. I remember being warm, cozy and watching Cinderella. When I think back, I think I should have been scared! Terrified, really! But I don’t remember being scared. I remember feeling safe. And warm. And it brings tears to my eyes now because as an adult I know that’s because those neighbors and God surrounded my brother and I in love!

I must have eventually fallen asleep. And the next morning, I went to school! The parents in the 80s & 90s…savages (haha!) I wore a slightly too big for me outfit that one of my neighbors let me borrow and off to school I went! And again, I wasn’t overly scared. I was too young to understand the full concept of what had truly happened.

Until, that same boy from the playground says to me,

“You’re here?! I thought your house burnt down and you died!”

(Small town gossip travels fast y’all! It also travels faster when it’s misinformed!)

But, in that second, it hit me: I could have died! My brother could have died! My parents could have died! My house?! Was it burnt down? Was everything in it gone? My barbies? My cabbage patch bed? My stupid sheep costume for the church Christmas pageant? Was it all gone?

When my mom picked us up from school that day, she explained that one end of our house WAS completely gone. Turns out, when the builders who built our home made our chimney, they used wood beams between the inside and outside layers of brick. We had been using the fireplace daily to help heat our home and the wooden beams got hot enough and caught on fire.

The entire wall that the fireplace was on was gone. About a third of our living room, dining room and downstairs family room were gone as well. A lot of our “stuff” was either burnt or had too much smoke damage to salvage. The good news, though, was that our home could be repaired! It would just take some time. It definitely would NOT be finished or livable by Christmas.

We stayed one night in a local hotel. Then, one of our church friends found us an upstairs, one-bedroom apartment that we could stay in as long as we needed to. Derrick and I got to sleep on a pull-out couch bed right in front of the living room TV! Oddly enough, it felt like one big , super fun sleepover to us! Another church friend brought us bags of clothes people had donated for us to wear. They brought tooth brushes! Money! Food!Casseroles! Lots of casseroles!

Once school let out for Christmas break, my mom and brother and I went up to stay with Meema.  Usually, we went to my Meema’s only on Christmas day but that year we stayed almost two weeks! My Aunt and cousins lived close by, so we got to spend way more time with them than ever before, too!

I remember getting to help Meema bake cookies and fudge that year! I remember playing dress up with my cousins! I remember making up a dance routine that we forced my brother to participate in.  I even remember getting to help Meema set out her Cat’s Meow decorations on her old wooden ironing board! That ironing board now sits in my living room and is one of my most favorite possessions.

I don’t remember what gift Santa brought me that year, but I do remember there were gifts. I don’t remember what year I stopped believing in Santa. But I know EXACTLY what year I learned the true magic of Christmas. Christmas 1990. Christmas 1990 is why I love Christmas. Christmas 1990 is why Christmas is my favorite!!

Because I am a lover of love. I am a lover of family. I am a lover of friends. I am a lover of human beings stopping what they are doing long enough to see other human beings in need and responding.

I am a lover of a baby born in Bethlehem, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger, named Jesus. The one who brought us peace, light and salvation! The one who brought us God’s love! I am a lover of the TRUE meaning of Christmas. And in THAT Christmas, I will always BELIEVE…

Merry Christmas, friends! May you feel the True Magic of Christmas this year! And if given the opportunity, may you BE the true magic of Christmas for someone else! May you always BELIEVE!

Safe travels!

Morgan Rae