The Christmas photo
In reviewing some old family photographs, I came across a few taken at Christmas time when I was a kid. One, especially, caught my attention. I had just received my first bicycle and the photograph is of the Christmas tree in our living room and I am putting hands on the new bike for the first time. The photo is in black in white but the memories are not.
I remember the trees that Dad would cut from whatever woods he went to in order to find one. The lights were, by today’s standards, large and always brightly multi-colored. Fragile balls of various colors hung on the limbs and gold or silver tinsel would be wrapped around the tree. A star topped the tree and the decorations were finished off by the placing of aluminum foil icicles on the tree in abundance. The tree was a beacon of light in the midst of a cold Tennessee mountain winter.
After Christmas was over, the tree would be taken down and the decorations, including the icicles, would be placed in boxes and stored in the attic for future use. The tree would be taken into the woods and abandoned to the animals and birds that would make it a shelter during the winter.
In retrospect, the amazing thing is that we had Christmas at all some years. When I was in the third grade or so, my father was laid off from his job and searched for work for 18 months. This was in the day before the relatively abundant safety nets that are in place today. Then, if one was laid off one was simply out of work. No money was coming in.
After the layoff, my dad would get up in the morning, don his work clothes, have breakfast with the family, and head out just like normal. About a mile down the road, he would stop at a local food market, take off his work clothes, put on his only suit and hunt for a job eight hours a day. At the end of the eight hours, he would reverse the process and come home.
It had to be brutal and disappointing. Yet, I was a teenager before I ever discovered that he had been out of work. It was important to him that the kids have a sense of normalcy, hence the familiar routine. That routine included Christmas.
There were long months when my dad wasn’t home much. While it took a long time to find a regular job, he would pick up any work he could find. So, at nights and on the weekends, he worked at whatever people needed done.
If he ever felt demeaned by digging ditches, or pits for septic tanks, or installing posts for fences, or whatever the task at hand, he never let on. He never accepted charity (although my maternal grandfather would secretly slip Mom a few dollars here and there) and believed that a man provided for his family.
How they did it, I do not know, but there were always presents under the tree. We were, for a long season, poor and I never knew it. I never lacked for anything. Indeed, I felt rich.
My dad finally landed a general labor job with a contractor and, after much persistence, was admitted to the electrician’s apprentice program and became a full-fledged electrician. He was never out of work again, although he remained frugal in his finances and always avoided debt. Later in life, he retrained and became certified in electronics.
One of the reasons I put up a tree, I realized not long ago, is the warm, safe feeling that comes when I see the lights in the darkness. Sometimes, at night during the Christmas season, I’m a kid again and I know that all will be well.
From my dad, I learned that a good father provides for and watches over me and mine, often at great sacrifice and cost to himself. Which, of course, is the very story of Christmas.
[David Epps is the pastor of the Cathedral of Christ the King, Sharpsburg, GA (www.ctkcec.org). He is the bishop of the Mid-South Diocese which consists of Georgia and Tennessee (www.midsouthdiocese.org) and the Associate Endorser for the Department of the Armed Forces, U. S. Military Chaplains, ICCEC. He may contacted at frepps@ctkcec.org.]
