The Ghost of Christmas that Should Have Been

On Ebenezer Scrooge’s fateful Christmas Eve, he was visited by three spirits, and they changed his life forever. The Spirits are familiar to all of us who’ve read Dickens’ book, or watched the many iterations of “Scrooge.” (My personal favorite is the 1951 version with Alastair Sim, considered by most, to be the best ever done)

They are the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghosts of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Future.

Each Christmas I find myself caught up under the spell of these three “spirits” in the form of memories, current plans, and hopes for what might one day be. But there is another Ghost I have come to recognize at Christmas. He’s a sad Ghost and He doesn’t appear to everybody, saving his hauntings only for those with regret, sorrow, or sadness at Christmas. He is the “Ghost of Christmas That Should Have Been.” He might be the most frightening of all Christmas Spirits.

He started haunting me 18 years ago, when I first got divorced. Instead of showing me shadows of what was, or what is now, or what might one day be, he taunts me with what was supposed to have been. He shows me flashes and glimpses of the Christmases I longed to spend, with the family I dreamed of having, in the home I wanted to build.

His hauntings were muffled and muted for many years, by the magic in my daughter’s eyes. When she was little, and Christmas was still very much a wonder and a spectacle and when it held its childhood excited mystery for her…this ghost was forced into the shadows. I was busy being happy with her, and because of her, and her happiness, and childish innocence banished him to the fringes.

Once in a while, he would step out of the shadows and whisper in my ear: “This isn’t how it was supposed to be” and I would feel the pain shoot through my heart. But my daughter would be smiling and I would quickly cast him aside with “But how it is right now is very good…” and he would go back into hiding. I thought maybe I’d banished him but apparently, he was just biding his time. He knew the day would come when I’d be vulnerable to his attacks and so he waited.

In recent years, he’s been more visible, more vocal, more daring in his attacks. This year…he’s been downright confrontational, right in my face, too close for me to look away. He reminds me of what my Christmas dreams were, and how far from those dreams I find myself.

He shows me visions of the wife I was supposed to have. A wife who would remain and not give up. A wife with whom I had, by this time, built a lifetime of memories with, and who knew me as I knew her. We shared knowing smiles and funny Christmas stories and we hosted parties with those we loved. She was supposed to be my best friend. She was supposed to know me better than anyone ever knew me. She was supposed to have made me better, and softened my toughness, and smoothed out my rough edges. She cheered each victory and comforted each loss, and I returned the favor in kind.

But she never showed up. Not in the 18 years that have come and gone since my divorce. She was never there to wake up to at Christmas, with impatient children knocking at our bedroom door, begging us to get up and get Christmas underway. She was never there to sneak away with and do our secret Santa buying. She never found me and all the romantic, wonderful, thoughtful gifts I would have picked out for her if only somehow, she’d appeared.

But she didn’t. She never became my best friend and knew me well enough to buy the exact, perfect present for me. I never got to unwrap a gift and be overwhelmed by just how much thought must have gone into it, and how perfect it was for me, and how she really had to know me to have seen this perfect thing in a storefront window and thought, “Craig would just love this”

She never laid in bed next to me, wishing it were Christmas morning so she could take this perfect present from its hiding spot and watch me unwrap it. She never showed up and so I have not had the experience of ever having had a perfect gift from a wife who loved me.

This ghost shows me the family I was supposed to have had. The other children. The in laws and out laws and cousins and friends who would come and go throughout the holidays, never wanting to miss time at our house. Relationships would develop and remain. Life would seem impossible without certain of these faces at our table, in our home, and in our hearts. The sort of friendships and relationships that only come from family. The kind that can never include a single man.

There was supposed to be Christmas mornings where my daughter woke to find both her parents there…not one or the other. Short of this, should have been a woman who loved her dad, and loved her as well, so that she’d have the feeling of family at Christmas, even if it was a blend.

There was supposed to be love, and memories, and excitement, and family.

But none of this ever happened and I wonder now, at this point in life, whether it ever will. I wonder if I will ever feel enough excitement about another person to want to share  my life with them. I wonder if I will ever be so loved by another that she’ll go out in search of that perfect gift, and not rest until she finds it, and be excited when she does.

I wonder if my daughter will ever see her dad in love, and see how he does this, and see a woman love him deeply. (She was only 18 months old when her mom and I divorced, so she has no knowledge of what this would look like.)

I wonder if Christmas will ever be what I dream of it being, and what I hoped it would be, now that the wonderful distraction of my daughter as a child has passed.

As a boy, I dreamed of being a parent one day and what kind of Christmas I would have for my family. Perhaps it was there that this particular Ghost of Christmas was born. Perhaps, in reality, he is a monster of my own making. I have always loved Christmas and held a high standard and a romantic notion that could have only been accomplished by a true couple…not by a single man, doing his best to raise a daughter alone.

And so, in that fertile ground, he grew, and on that fertile ground he plants his seeds of regret, disappointment, doubt, and longing. He has never ruined Christmas for me…for I am too much of a hopeless romantic and sentimentalist at Christmas for him to ever take it from me completely. But he has damaged its glow and dimmed its star. This Christmas in particular, has been hard on me in ways I’ve never experienced before.

I need to exorcise this ghost or surrender to his haunting. But I don’t know how to do either. And so, I do nothing. Nothing but enjoy Christmas as I can, and –in my quiet moments—look at his taunting and teasing with honest regret.

Of all the Ghosts of Christmas, he is the most sinister, and the one I am most powerless against.

Christmas is six days away. I have to find a way to silence this ghost before then.

Advent Day 5: The Broken Christmas

“Daddy,” the little girl asked gently, “Do we still get to hang Mommy’s stocking by the fireplace?”

The words cut through the young man’s heart. He smiled softly at his oldest daughter, and tried his best to hide the immense pain he was feeling. He had asked himself this question only this morning. “Yes, Izzy,” he answered. “We’ll always hang Mommy’s stocking along with ours. Mommy will always be part of our family.”

In his heart, he knew this, and he believed it. But he wasn’t feeling it very much these days. His name is Chris, and he is 32 years old. His wife Rachel died unexpectedly in October. She hadn’t been sick, in fact, she was the picture of health. Chris woke one morning and she was lying next to him, with a smile on her face, cold and lifeless. The doctors never could figure out what had happened. It was just her time.

Rachel was a Christmas soul. She loved the holidays and she made their home into a festive, welcoming haven. They’d been married 9 years, and had three children. Isabella, “Izzy” was 7, Michael was 5, and Millie was 18 months. Chris spent about three weeks in shock after Rachel died. His family, and her family, and folks from the church kept his house full of companions, and helped with the kids. But by Thanksgiving, he was left to deal with the rest of his life. A life without the only woman he’d ever loved. He had to figure out how to be a dad and do a mom’s job. Christmas was bearing down on him like a freight train and he was determined to make it feel as normal as possible. For the kid’s sake. And for his.

He hadn’t slept in their bed since she died. He fell into the habit of laying on the couch watching TV after the kids were all tucked in, and he’d just fall asleep there. Sometimes he’d wake to find himself on the living room floor, curled in a ball, his fingertips cut from the carpet fibers where he was gripping them in agony as he wept late into the night. He missed his wife. He was shattered. His heart broke for his children. How was he going to do this?

He’d hired a woman off Craigslist to come and give him decorating ideas. He’d shown her pictures of their house at previous Christmases and she was wise enough not to change much. She could tell he wanted to recreate Christmas as it had been before this year, and so she obliged. She finished in one day and refused his money. She had tears in her eyes when she told him she wasn’t taking it. “Keep it for you children,” she’d said, “This is my gift to you and to them.”

Chris hugged Izzy tightly as he reached down and scooped her up. They hadn’t really talked about this yet. About Christmas and their mom not being there. Millie was only now beginning to ask questions about where Mommy was. But the other two…there have been nightmares and crying fits and questions…oh the questions. They’d asked every possible question except one: “Why did God take Mommy?” Chris was glad they hadn’t asked that one because he had no answer. He was still asking it himself, sometimes in a whisper, most times through tears, occasionally in wild, rage-driven screams when the kids were at their grandparents and he could vent his spleen toward Heaven. After each mad session, he would fall to his knees and cry out to God, “I know you have a reason…help me to make it through this long enough to see it. And dear God…please help my children.

Chris sat the children down on the couch and sat on the floor on front of them. He didn’t know where to begin, so he just asked them bluntly; “What do you guys feel right now, about Christmas?” The answers were wide ranging. The kids opened up and poured out their soul. They couldn’t understand why Mommy left them. “Oh, honey she didn’t leave us,” Chris reassured. “It was her time to go to Heaven, that’s all. I’m sure if Mommy had a choice in the matter she would have stayed. She loved you guys so much. Never forget that…your Mommy loved you so much.”

They talked for 30 minutes or so, then Chris got them into their pajamas and they huddled around him on the couch and watched “The Grinch.” When the show was over, Michael asked innocently, “Daddy, are you going to tell us the manger story this year?” Chris stumbled with his answer. Other than Christmas morning, the night they set out the Nativity and he told them the “Manger story” was the centerpiece of their Christmas season. Rachel would gather the children around and carefully place each piece in its spot as Chris wove the tale of Jesus, and Mary, and the Shepherds, and no room in the Inn. He’d dreaded doing it this year and had every intention of just putting out the Nativity set during the day while the kids were preoccupied. But now Michael had asked him about it. He knew he couldn’t let them down, and he was determined to keep things much as they had always been before Rachel passed away.

“Yes son…” he answered, “I’ll tell the manger story again this year. We’ll do it on Christmas Eve like we always do.” Michael smiled and stifled a yawn. “Okay,” Chris said, “Off to bed with you now.” He tucked each of his children into their beds, listened to their prayers, kissed each tiny forehead, and returned to the living room. He went to the closet by the basement door and pulled down a worn box.

The Nativity set had been his grandmother’s. It was probably 100 years old, maybe more. It was made from alabaster, like the artisans used to make them back in the day. Rachel had wrapped each piece carefully in bubble wrap. They had discussed once, replacing this set with something newer and less valuable, and keeping it stored away as an heirloom. It was irreplaceable, and with small children around they didn’t want it to break. Then Rachel noticed some faded, yellowed glue along the bottom of one of the wise men. She pointed it out to Chris. “It’s already been repaired once,” he said. “If Nonna didn’t try to keep it perfect then neither will we. It’s meant to be shared.”

He looked carefully at each piece. He could see Rachel’s tiny hands wrapping each figurine. “She was the last person to touch this.” He thought. He clutched the figure to his face, imagining her hands again, trying to feel a connection.

He sat in the quiet of the room. Only the twinkling lights on the tree remained, and pierced the darkness. He thought of his children, “How am I going to do this?” He asked out loud. “How am I going to raise these children without their mom? How am I going to do this right?”

He reached toward the coffee table and picked up a framed picture of his wife. She had just run her first half-marathon, six months after having Millie. Chris was there holding the infant while Izzy and Mikey jumped gleefully in the air. Rachel had a bright smile. “Everything you loved is in this photo,” Chris whispered. The image blurred as the tears filled his eyes. He clutched the frame against his chest. “I miss you, Babe” he croaked.

Chris awoke at 2 a.m. He was lying on the couch with the picture of his wife still in his hands. He sat up and looked at the tree. He saw the little figurine of Jesus, still in its careful wrapping, sitting on the coffee table. “Jesus…help me. Please.” He whispered into the night.

He stood up and walked slowly toward his children’s bedrooms. He entered each room silently. They never felt the soft kiss he placed on each forehead. He hesitated at his own bedroom door, reached for the doorknob, then turned and went to the living room. He pulled a blanket from the closet, settled on the couch, and cried himself to sleep, clutching the picture of his wife. “Dear God,” he prayed, as sleep finally came, “Please help me get Christmas right.”

Advent Day 3: Christmas Homecoming...

I have to admit that today I found it difficult to write. There are myriad reasons as to why. I find I have a bit of the Christmas Blues right now. My daughter is going to be with her mom in Tennessee this year. She almost never misses Christmas with me and my side of the family. She loves the traditions, especially “Feast of Seven Fishes” with my Uncle Franny and my cousins and family. She loves being with Mom C and Bob on Christmas night. But she hasn’t seen her mom since last March and her mom bought her a ticket. I never protest…it’s her mom. But I wish she was going to be with me.

I find myself thinking more and more about when she was a child. I miss my little girl. I know she’ll always be my little girl, but not in the same ways. I miss how it felt when she’d sit on the couch next to me and we’d watch our “official” list of Christmas movies. Charlie Brown Christmas, The Grinch, Scrooge, (the 1951 version with Alistair Sim) and Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

This year we only managed to watch two of them together. She spends her evenings chatting with her boyfriend and leaving me to watch my movies alone. I understand…but it still makes me sad.

I was thinking today about the Nativity, and especially about the little figure of Jesus.

Today I was at lunch, sitting there thinking, as I often do, and I was thinking about Jesus as a baby…as a tiny child, only a few hours old. I remembered one afternoon in 2011. My “adopted dad” Poppa John Iorizzo had been in the hospital and his wife Jewell and I had ridden together to see him. As we rode the elevator to his floor, there was a young mother with a stroller and an infant baby asleep in its fold. Instinctively, we both peered over her shoulder and looked at her baby. When the doors opened and we stepped out, I looked at Jewell and said; “You see that, momma,” (I always called her that) “there is something about a baby. I think that’s why Jesus came as a baby…because everyone would drop their guard and look at Him and find God.” I had only recently released my first Christmas book and it was based heavily on this one fact: that Jesus was a baby on that one scandalous night…and babies touch our hearts in ways no one else can.

Pop and Jewell are both gone now. I found myself blinking back tears today as I thought about this story, because I miss them so. And I found myself thinking more about Jesus the child.

There are people who struggle with Christmas each year. They struggle because they struggle with the idea of God. Something, or someone, in their lives had wounded them and soured them on God. God gets a bad rap far too often. I think he knows this and I also think –unsubstantiated as this idea might be—that He chose to enter history as a newborn baby for exactly that reason. People are often afraid of God the Father. They find the idea of God the Holy Spirit as a mystical notion that they can’t easily comprehend. But Jesus, as a baby…well that’s safe. That’s disarming. That calls to me when my heart aches and my soul is vexed from the pain this world feels.

Jesus, the child of Mary, lays still in his manger and all but begs me to take Him in my arms and love him…and let Him love me in return. A baby can’t judge me, He won’t attack me for my sin. A tiny child has no idea of my sordid history or my failures or my sorrows. He only sees me in the current moment, as I am.

On the night my daughter was born, I was transformed. I held that tiny form to my chest and I cried and I told her probably a thousand times “I love you, Morgan.” And every time I said it, I was hearing it ringing back in my own ears, from God the Father, “This is how I feel about you, my son. I love you too.”

What if you could go back there? What if you could lay aside your fear, or your doubts, or your anger with God because things haven’t turned out the way you wanted them to? What if you could set aside your shame, and your hurts, and your self-loathing over the person you think you were supposed to have become by now, but haven’t yet. What if you could stop shifting that heavy suitcase from one hand to the other, and just set it down, and pick up the infant son of God instead.

And what if He nudged His tiny face in close against your chest, to the place where your heart is, and He let out a tiny little baby sigh, and you felt God pouring out His immeasurable love on you through the sound that His son –God Himself in tiny human form—made in response to your overture of love.

Would you believe in Him again…or for the first time? Would you drop your guard, if only for a few minutes, for the safety of a child in your arms?

That’s really what Christmas is all about, you know. Brennan Manning once said, “The only thing more incredible than the fact that Jesus would die for me is the fact that he would even come here for me in the first place.” But he did. He came here to this damp, dark cave. He was born among animals, He was murdered on a cross, on display in a garbage dump, and I call Him Lord. He was the son of God, born to poverty, destined for death, and I have entrusted my soul to Him.

And on this night, 2017 years ago, He made His entrance into the world, unheralded, unrecognized, ignored by humanity. He was illegitimate, a scandal, the subject of rumor and innuendo. He came from Nazareth, which was known as the “City of Trash.” He was from the wrong side of the tracks.

None of those things mattered on that first Christmas night. All anyone knew was a baby was born out in the barn, and He was sleeping in a sheep-trough, when He should have been sitting on a throne.

He is here again. Every year, no matter what we think of Jesus, or God the Father, or the Holy Spirit, we think of the baby. We enter into the safety of the Advent season. When God seems to call a “truce” with our hearts and beckon us to the stable in Bethlehem once more. “Come see my son,” He says, “Come take Him in your arms, and let this love He has…this love I have for you, erase those silly things you think are keeping us apart. I did this for you. I sent Him here as a baby for you. To tear down the walls between us, and make a way for you to reconcile with me. I love you.”

This Advent season, as the world seems to be spinning more out-of-center than ever before, the baby still calls to us. He calls to you. Come to this manger. Come to this baby. Come home…