My daughter read what I said about the "Death of the American Christmas"
and disagreed. She said "I dunno, Dad - I was born in '62 (I knew that) and Christmas
was just magical and wonderous for me." And, of course, it was. There is but a very brief
window in early childhood for us all - a period of time that lasts from birth
until we are cast from the nest and into public school - a time while we still have one
foot in Heaven and all about the world is new and good. A time when we are so open. A
time when we take things so deeply in that they will form us ever after. So we
imprint upon the Christmas of our time, and what that was is what it will be for us
always.
The Christmases we've always had were always shaped by Christmases that came before -
from the Christmases of parents and near family, always trying to remake the magic for
us that they had known... hoping to see again through our new eyes and re-enter -
if just in little flashes - the now closed Window. Of course, people don't throw
out all the decorations after Christmas every year and buy everything new the following.
Who's trunks of trimming treasure was not filled with items that were lost friends found
anew each Season? - which elicited the same annual remarks such as "My FAVORITE!!" - and
-"This was my grandmother's and her mother gave it to her....!" So - much is
carried forward year by year and generation to generation.
Had I one magic ticket to traverse Time and relive one decade of the 20th Century, I'd
choose the Thirties. I was born in '41 - 6 months before Pearl Harbor. Christmas practices
had not yet changed. The Christmases of my Magic Time were very much the
Christmases as they were from then, from my mother's time: the '20s and the 30's. The
Thirties fascinate me. They call to me to know them...the most complex and paradoxical
of times .. the Great Depression and the Duesenbergs - bread lines, Labor Wars and the
most fabulous Christmas things that were ever made. The largest and most luxurious
electric trains and toys... locomotives so large a small child could not lift one from
the track! Hobos!
The rise of radio. Art Decco. The Empire State Building and the great zeppelins. The
talking movies. Aviation. Whole regions of the country getting electricity and indoor
plumbing for the first time.An unquestioned faith in the future of technology at a time
when many had an outhouse in the back and the most menial of jobs if a job at all. My
Mom and Dad lived those times. I had the Christmases they made. I heard their talk.
The things they talked about with such energy made their stories real to me and made me
want to be where they had been and see what they had seen and know the people of whom
they spoke. It all seemed so wonderful to me.
I think that that is what collecting is about, especially for those who collect for love
and not for sterile speculation. This is most true of the toys and trappings of
Christmas. Artifacts. Actual, tangible
contacts with our Special Time. It is true that we forget nothing. The power
that an object unseen in decades can have to transport us in mind and spirit back to a
specific period or moment of our lives - to unlock long-closed doors in the mansion of
our memory - is the true value that it has. We can hold such an object in our
hands and know those times were real, and welcome back whole parts of who we were into
who we are ...and let the inner child in each of us out to play again - to live
as part of us and help us see again through our own Magic Window .
So, God bless us every one, and AMEN! Reality be damned! This is CHRISTMAS! You will
find that those old objects will take you back in time, but never listen to those fools
who say that you are "living in the past." We are what we are because of our pasts.
We cannot live in them. Would that we could! But we can bring them forward, to live
within us, standing side-by-side as partners and allies as we face the present and the
future. Those pasts taught us everything we
know.
Never be ashamed of your nostalgia ...it was, and is, your reverence for the life you
had, - the path that you have traveled .
"Papa" Ted
The Magic Window
