Carrol Vertrees: Christmas glow can warm hearts year round

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Carrol Vertrees

Updated: December 24, 2011 2:27PM

I probably won’t be around the next time Christmas falls on Sunday, but I suppose the celebration will go on without me, and my church choir will sing with its usual joy.

One gift that I cherish is the opportunity to put on my choir robe and join my friends in music of joy. I suspect they tolerate me out of deference to my age, but I am afraid to ask.

If it is possible to use “happy” and “solemnity” together, those words would fit the meaning of this special day.

So, both “Merry Christmas” and “Ho! Ho!” seem fitting. Let the words ring out.

Even as a kid, I wondered how Santa got around so well, but my world was small, so I figured he could do it. He really is old, but I reckon he has some special stuff to drink and eat, like an annual dose of goodwill to all.

Now, in my post-adulthood stage, I wonder when his laughter will fade, as it will. When do we take down the lights of Christmas from our hearts?

When does the glow end? That is a question for each of us. If we have done this season right, the glow will sustain us for a long time — the spirit of this day comes in a size that fits all, a clever arrangement.

My choir director and her husband, a younger tenor than I, added a harmonious touch to our choir family celebration. Money gifts went to providing blankets for folks who are cold — in the name of choir members. She not only hits the high soprano notes with purity and ease, she has a special touch in putting our hearts in tune.

All of us, I suspect, remember special Christmases. Every Christmas that I spent as a kid on the farm was memorable. Our cold house seemed to get warm as the big day neared. Usually, from my upstairs bedroom, I could hear creatures stirring — sometimes, it may have been a real mouse or two.

I wonder when I knew that the Santa thing was just a lovely tradition. I never stopped believing, because it is even now, a great story. Most chimneys are too small for a big jolly Santa to come down, but we do believe in miracles. That is the theme of this season anyway.

My worst Christmas was spent in a cold, muddy Army camp in Pennsylvania, where a bunch of scared, confused guys were waiting to head overseas. I had just left the people I loved, and it seemed to me this place was an island between heaven and hell.

A few days later we headed out, and I thought the Lady of Liberty wished us well, but I did not see her lips move.

On the way home, more than two years later, I imagined that she winked a welcome.

It was not the Christmas season when I got off a bus in Indianapolis and saw this girl waiting there on the corner, a few blocks from her home. But it seemed like Christmas. Feelings like that have no season, they just come. They are like an impatient, restless volcano, ready to erupt.

The spirit of Christmas is always ready and we are, too, if we do it right.

Two-word sentences intrigue me. I like them.

The sergeant in Germany told me: “Go home.” And later there were these two: “I do.”

And now, “Merry Christmas.”

“Ho! Ho!”