Keith Welch: The ghosts of Christmas past
The ghosts of Christmas past have a way of manifesting themselves afresh through seasonal reflection. Please understand, by ghost I am not referring to the types of aberrations which appeared, haunted and changed Ebenezer Scrooge in the Dickens “Christmas Carol.”
My first ghost was a toy plane I received on Christmas Day over 40 years ago. There was a string attached to the plastic plane which allowed you to turn your wrist in such a manner swinging it around in airborne flight.
A Christmas flu illness regulated viewing my toy plane’s first outdoor backyard flight from an indoor sunroom window. My dad was its inaugural pilot. He spun the string centrifugally around and around as the plane responded to his movements with great speed and aero skill.
I soon tired of watching another enjoying my Christmas gift and decided it was time to rest my worn body. Besides, I started to think about all of the enjoyment I was going to experience when I would be able to try out the toy plane for myself when I was feeling better.
My thoughts were interrupted by reality. My dad soon came inside with my brand-new Christmas gift plane sporting a new design. A crumpled nose which occurred when the toy introduced itself to one of our backyard pine trees. There were no on board flight recorders to indicate how the crash happened.
Dad told me he would buy me a replacement one — but evidently it was one of those limited edition prototypes. This Christmas ghost was exorcised about 15 years later when I received a similar plane as a Christmas gift.
I am not sure if this really qualifies as a replacement plane or just an additional Christmas gift. The new plane came with a few modifications to the original design. The handheld end of the string was now attached to a cylinder that housed two D batteries spinning the plane's flight string with the touch of a button.
The second ghost of Christmas was a new football helmet. At least I was able to try it on before it went on an ill-fated flight of its own. My mistake was leaving it by my dad’s recliner chair. We were all watching television one Dec. 25 evening as a rat ran across the living room floor. My dad picked up the first thing he could grab a hold of — the football helmet — and pitched it at the vermin. He missed the intruder, but my airborne football helmet now displayed a wide crack down the middle of it from the impact.
When we lived in an upstairs apartment above a store front building in Ludington, dad gave us kids a trampoline for Christmas. This was not one of those state of the art trampolines purchased today. The trampoline was loosely held together by elastic bands which were looped around the frame to the tramp material itself and were tied together at the ends.
We, the three brothers, would jump on this contraption at the same time. We would bounce up in the air with the trampoline following us up into the air. The frame would land back on the floor just as the three of us met the mat to bounce upward again. It was great fun for at least about a month before one of the elastic bands frayed and unraveled our tumbling fun. Ghost number three.
If we had cared for and saved just a portion of the gifts we have received on Christmas's past — probably played with and soon discarded — today they would be as valuable as gold, frankincense and myrrh. This may be the ghost of “could have been” which is really a useless and discouraging reflective exercise.
There was one gift given long ago which has actually increased in value for me over the years. “And she will bear a Son; and you shall call his name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21) Jesus was born to die and restored by resurrection for us.
Jesus gives us the real reason we celebrate Christmas anew today and every day. This is the best Christmas gift and everyday gift I have ever received.
Merry Christmas!
— Keith J. Welch is a resident of Holland. He has an MFA in creative writing and is a retired Salvation Army Major. Contact him at Keith.welch16@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Sault News: Keith Welch: The ghosts of Christmas past
