I tried to name the most unforgettable Christmas ever at the McDonald house when I was a kid; initially, I thought I could not pick a clear winner.  Hence, I narrowed my list down to the final four.  I had planned to present them in a series of five postings ( posting # 1 was to be an introduction and each of the final four most memorable Christmases past was to appear in its own posting ).  The true story below was to be posting # 5 in a series of 5 and a continuation of the stories of series #1, series #2, series #3, and series #4.

 

As I tried to write the conclusion of this series, I found myself in a situation similar to Joe McGinniss.  Joe is a well known author of investigative journalism.  In the early seventies, he was invited by Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald to investigate the charges against him and write a book proclaiming his innocence.  Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, a well liked Green Beret Captain stationed at Fort Bragg, slaughtered his pregnant wife and his two children of five and two and claimed it was a Charles Manson type murder.  At the invitation of the captain, McGinniss actually moved in and lived with MacDonald and was given inside accessibility to MacDonald and his law team.  MacDonald received even a bigger shock than his guilty verdict when McGinniss' book was released. In the final chapters of Fatal Vision, McGinniss summarizes that the facts show MacDonald guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt (please note Jeffrey and I are NOT RELATED! ).  MacDonald, by the way, was working part - time while off- duty as a doctor in Hamlet Hospital E.R. prior to and during the time his family was murdered.

 

Just like Joe McGinnis, my initial hypothesis that all four Christmas memories were equally memorable was as wrong as his initial assumption of MacDonald's innocence.  My investigation of my memory recall actually brought me to conclude that the Christmas of 1960 was my most memorable Christmas at the McDonald house ever beyond a shadow of a doubt.  The other three Christmases posted in series #2, series #3, and series #4 finished in a three way tie for second.   Christmas ' 60 stirred so many memories that I must expand series #5 into series # 5A and concluding series # 5B.  My goal is to have these Christmas memories wrapped up by Groundhog's Day, those precious childhood memories of growing up in Rockingham, North Carolina - a small textile town in the South in the ' 50s & ' 60s.

 

 

 

Fairy tales, cartoons, bedtime stories, and make believe are part of every child's

world.  Make believe characters and super heroes in a child's eyes are invincible.

 Their purpose in life and status never change throughout time.  The "Man of

Steel" will always be the crime fighter against evil forces in Metropolis no matter

what decade and Lois Lane will always be his flame.  "Yabba - yabba - do" will

always be Fred Flintstone's rally cry.  Tarzan will always summon help from the

animal kingdom with the same "Tarzan Yell" every young boy has imitated

hundreds of times or repeated by every teenage boy pounding his chest around a

swimming pool of young girls.Even the young girls picture themselves as

Cinderella looking for Prince Charming.  All these characters and more started

out as heroes in our imagination as Mom or Dad read a bedtime story.  The

discovery of the comic book raised the bar on our hero worship even higher as

characters appeared in color.  In fact, black and white television put voices,

faces, images, and living flesh into our childhood allies.  Likewise, the invention

of color television converted imagination to reality through a child's eyes. 

Furthermore, color television converted black and white into reality with the

color of our environment.  Finally, Hollywood transferred these heroes from a

twenty-one inch color box to life size characters and life size surrounding in

cinemascope color with real world sounds first in stereo and now in surround

sound of the big cinema screens in theaters with rocking chair comfort.  This

conversion has been ongoing throughout the decades.  Christopher Reeves made

millions as Superman and Drew Barrymore turned a storybook heroine from a

Disney cartoon character into a live in - the - flesh appearing girl whom we all

loved as much as we hated her mean step - sisters.  In addition, Hollywood keeps

giving rebirth to our super heroes as Warner Brothers is releasing Superman

Returns in early 2006 with Brandon Routh as the alter ego of Clark Kent.

 

Life changes for all of us when we grow up.  As Bill Crosby, perhaps the greatest

comedian ever, once said, "Life changes when the phone bill, the light bill, and

the water bill you pull out of the mailbox all have your name on them!"  Yes,

responsibility can slap you in the face and wake you up to the real world. 

However, reality just does not replace childhood make believe instantly at a

predetermined age in life.  Rather, reality is a gradual transition simultaneous

with the human maturation process.  The older we become the more we realize

that not everything adults tell us is the truth.  For example, a spoonful of

applesauce soaring over our head changes from being an airplane into just food

when we learn that an airplane is a people carrier not a food dispenser.

 

Children mature at different rates.  I am sure we all have seen teenagers pout

like kindergartners and kindergartners react and respond with wisdom way

beyond their years.  Life and our environment sometimes set limits on our

imagination.  One adult con that I never bought was the Easter Bunny.  Please!!!

 Even as a toddler, I can remember being in my Daddy's arms as he walked

through the woods to check on his rabbit boxes.  I really thought I was grown

when I became old enough to have my own rabbit boxes.  The real reward of a

rabbit box was sitting down at the dinner table with my family and eating my

fried rabbit!  I rolled with laughter and ridiculed the grammar school classmates

who told me the Easter Bunny came into their house after they went to bed and

left treats and gifts on their kitchen table.  The character "Easter Bunny" was

never mentioned at my house.  My parents knew better than to sell that

imagination figment to Ken, Gary, and me 'cause we knew better.

 

On the other hand, my parents did sell Ken, Gary, and me on a character just as

ridiculous as the Easter Bunny.  They lead us to believe that if we could endure

the pain and anguish of losing a tooth as they jerked it out of our mouths, we

would then be rewarded with a gain worth our pain.  If we would only spit out

the blood and slide the tooth under our pillow, the "Tooth Fairy" would fly into

our house that night, slip into our room, put his hand under our pillow, grab

our tooth, replace it with a quarter, and slip slide out of our room while all three

of us peacefully slept.  It was amazing that we swallowed the "Tooth Fairy" sham

hook, line, and sinker.  At first, this make believe was as real as real could be. 

After all, every Sunday evening Tinker Bell waved her magic wand as she flew

over the Magic Kingdom on our black and white television while Ken, Gary, and

I settled down to watch Walt Disney Presents.  We never doubted that fairies

were real.  In fact, we suspected that Tinker Bell was also the Tooth Fairy. 

However, as we grew older we began to question the existence of  the Tooth

Fairy.  Perhaps we were maturing too quickly.  We weighed the pros and cons of

the Tooth Fairy.  If we successfully challenged Mama and Daddy on our doubts

and won the argument, that quarter then went out the window with the Tooth

Fairy never to return.  In this case, the pain of no money would not be worth the

gain of reality.  In the late ' 50s and early ' 60s, a quarter was a lot of money to a

kid.  At this particular time period in the U.S. economy, a child could get sick off

a nickel's worth of candy.  At this time in our lives, Ken, Gary, and I made a

major decision.  The meeting of the minds turned the worm in our make believe

world.  We became the "Conners" not the "Conees."  You see we would continue

to believe the Tooth Fairy took our teeth while Mama and Daddy continued to

believe that they had fooled us once more.  This con was the horse we chose to

ride and we would continue to ride him as long as there were quarters in the

saddlebags or we quit losing teeth whichever came first.  The morale of this story

is that make believe does pay.

 

"Why?" can be one of the most perplexing questions in our lives.  Just as make

believe situations and circumstances in our lives seem real, so do real situations

and circumstances in our lives seem make believe.  The unexpected pregnancy,

the sudden loss of a job by lay - off or termination, and the sudden, unexpected

death of a love one are but a few of the real life experiences that initially seem

make believe.  The real world can be cruel.  "Is Santa Claus real?" is a question

that a child eventually wants answered.  We have all asked the question as kids

and kids of today have asked this same question a thousand times over.  Sooner

or later in a child's life, Santa Claus just seems too good to be real.  I can

remember the Christmas the McDonald brothers learned the answer to this

question the hard way.  I will never forget it; ah yes, those precious childhood

memories of growing up in Rockingham, North Carolina - a small textile town in

the South in the ' 50s & ' 60s.

 

to be continued ...