Little Things of Christmas
Aunt Martha and Uncle Charles in Tallahassee have not felt up to the task of stringing lights on their fresh Christmas tree, which you can smell throughout their small house. My wife, Lisa, and I are visiting them and are happily doing that holiday chore. Our instructions from Martha are to “just get them on there and make them look pretty.”
Evening descends. Charles nods, feet raised in his recliner. Martha cooks chili. Old Christian Christmas songs and the standards of Bing and Burl play softly here in the living room. It feels like Christmas is supposed to feel, like it hasn’t quite felt in a long time.
The music comes from an actual record player – the kind with a lid and built-in speakers behind gold fabric. Gotta go. When the needle approaches “White Christmas” I don’t want to miss the crackly prelude to the first note.
Guy D. Johnson is a writer and marketing communications professional. Previously an animation studio owner, daily newspaper editor, reporter and photographer, volunteer fireman, railroad bridge gang helper, FM radio station underling and cave guide. He has lived on farmland trusted to the sun and rain; atop a wooded hill; beside great rivers; upon an arid, high plateau; and at the subtropical coast of the Gulf of Mexico. For 20 years, he worked and wrote in New Orleans.