christmas – NEWSMAGRENFREW

It’s Christmas morning.

For as long as I’ve been alive, this morning has had a magic for me. As a kid, I was just like any other kid, eagerly anticipating the dawn of this particular morning, believing in Santa early on, then not caring as I grew older, so long as those presents kept appearing under the tree.

It was Christmas morning where I was exposed as a fraud, or a con-boy. I was the youngest child, so all my older siblings, eight, ten, and twelve years older than me, gave me money to buy Christmas gifts for the family. The only condition was that I not say anything, a condition I had no problem with, given how I was collecting cash from them all.

I proceeded in a business-like fashion, finding the cheapest of gifts, purchasing them, and pocketing the difference. Hai Karate cologne for my brother Jeff. Curlers for my sister Karen, who happened to have curly hair. Janice got a scarf. I can’t remember what I got my parents but a lightbulb wouldn’t be out of the question. One for each. It’s not like I’m gonna make my mom and dad share a lightbulb.

Then I sunk my hard-earned profits into myself, buying several books from the Hardy Boys series, which, in retrospect was probably a sound self-investment. But it was a self-investment rooted in graft, in chicanery, and in the nastiness of childhood fraud schemes.

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So it’s Christmas Eve.

What can I talk about today?

I don’t feel like being a crime-fighter, exposer of scandals, whistle-blower, or any of those really cool things. I mean it’s the day before Christmas for the love of Pete, so bad form to be throwing punches and slinging rocks.

I could do my own little story about the journey of the Holy Family, with the star and the kings and the Inn and the stable. Frankincense and myrrh. And the gold too. But you’ve probably heard that one before, maybe plenty of times, along with eloquent analysis and commentary about what it all means. If I were to do that, I’d be spoiling your pastor’s homily/sermon tomorrow morning, and I’m not going to do that. Church will be standing room only tomorrow so I’ll not do anything to take away from the experience.

So I’ll share three personal Christmas Eve experiences with you and call it a day.

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I knew when I saw the boys working in the window, there was going to be trouble.

The calendar had just turned, and the march towards Christmas was on. Yet it wasn’t. Because the window at Scott’s Hardware in Renfrew was still decidedly not Christmasy in appearance, which was pretty odd because Scott’s has an iconic Christmas window, one known far and wide, a fixture along Renfrew’s main drag.

But on this day, nothing. Except the two employees, Connor and Jackson, rifling through some boxes in the window, Connor holding up a forlorn Santa who didn’t look as happy as the one at the mall.

“Jeff, what’s up with the window?” was the best I could come up with as I passed by on my Saturday morning walk. Jeff Scott is the owner of the place, the guy who’s been setting up a fabulous chunk of Christmas in his store window for years. I guess I just figured he’d know what I was asking about, and I was right, he did.

He told me that he felt a little tired this time out, that maybe he didn’t have it in him to put up the beautiful display that I’ve seen at this location for the thirty plus years that I’ve lived in this place. I still remember my first Christmas in Renfrew, and part of that memory was the window at Scott’s. It just gave you that ultimate warm feeling of what Christmas is all about. It was wonderful.

And now he’s talking about not putting it up at all.

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Tag: christmas

CHRISTMAS DAY

CHRISTMAS EVE

SCOTT’S HARDWARE DELIVERS CHRISTMAS AFTER ALL