May this be your perfect Christmas
In this photo, taken by me (Del Stone Jr.) on Dec. 25, 2007, hailstones cover the yard after a Christmas thunderstorm rumbled across the Florida panhandle. It was the closest thing we'd ever seen to a white Christmas in Fort Walton Beach. Photo by Del Stone Jr.
Hello everyone,
For years I’ve been a Christmas card glutton for punishment. I’ve gone through boxes and boxes of cards, mailing them to every person whose address I’ve kept. Why? Because I like getting Christmas cards, and to send is to receive. I read them all. I tape them to the refrigerator door. I keep the addresses in my ancient Visor.
This year, however, I must abandon that happy tradition. The cost of cards and postage exceed my budget. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a step away from the gutter. But I’ve scaled back everything I do and Christmas cards are one of the many casualties.
If you don’t receive a card from me please don’t be offended. I have a list as long as my arm of folks I’d like to send cards to. But again it’s a matter of checkbook numbers.
I’ve also scaled back the number of gifts I give. I hate that but the money isn’t there. And the gifts I’m giving are scaled back too. I’ve got to economize or there’ll be trouble between me and the Eglin Federal Credit Union.
This year, assuming I can set aside a crushing work load, I hope to concentrate on what Christmas is really about. I’m not one to dial the ACLU hotline when a local municipality builds a Nativity in front of City Hall. Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Christ. It’s also a celebration of the idea of peace among all people. If you can’t believe in one you can surely believe in the other, right? Maybe both.
I’ve seen 54 Christmases and remember about 20. Of those four stick out in my mind for reasons good and bad. The first was in 1977. I had just graduated from college and the future seemed uncertain as I still had no idea what I would do with my life. Mom, Dad and I drove up to Columbus, Ohio, to visit my sister and brother-in-law. On the way up we spent the night in Nashville, Tenn. I had to pee really bad and Dad wouldn’t stop. When we reached the hotel I leaped from the car in my shirtsleeves and dashed to the bathroom in the lobby. It was snowing to beat the band and colder than a brass monkey’s balls. The next day we finished the drive to Columbus. That Christmas Eve I was put in charge of the luminaries – paper bags with sand in the bottom and a candle stuck inside. Once everybody had their bags set out and lit the effect was pure magic. A little while later a thunderstorm soaked everything, but the next morning as we were opening gifts, fat snowflakes began to fall. A white Christmas!
In 1982 I was living in an apartment in downtown Fort Walton Beach. That Christmas Eve we finished work in the early afternoon and I went “home.” My roommate had gone to Alabama. Mom and Dad were out of town. All my friends were gone somewhere. I had only a few bucks in my wallet and three or four cheap beers in the fridge. It was dark and rainy that night. As I sat there feeling sorry for myself I decided to visit my grandmother. I called and got no answer, then remembered she had gone to my uncle’s farm for Christmas with the family. I was alone. I spent that cold night sitting in the living room watching a black-and-white TV with nothing to do, nowhere to go and no one to talk to. But guess what? I think that Christmas Eve was instructional. It taught me more about Christmas, and family, and the importance of being with people you love than any other experience.
The next memorable Christmas was in 1998. Dad had died in October and that was our first Christmas without him. The person I felt sorry for was Mom, so I went overboard on the presents. Anything I could find to wrap ended up under her little artificial tree. I remember only one of the presents – a framed newspaper page of me, my younger sister, two neighbor kids and Mom as we dressed up for the Billy Bowlegs festival. It ran on the front page of the Playground Daily News in 1966, along with stories about the Vietnam bombing and the latest Gemini astronauts. It ran there because my Aunt Caroline was a reporter for the Playground Daily News and took our picture in the lobby of the newspaper office on the corner of Miracle Strip Parkway and Perry Avenue. I look at that page every time I go to Mom’s.
The last Christmas I remember was in 2007. I woke up early that morning because I heard an odd tinkling sound. Could it be Santa on my rooftop, squeezing through the range hood exhaust vent to leave presents for me and my cat? Well, maybe. But it was more likely the sound of sleet pellets hitting the exhaust vent hood on the roof. I turned on the porch light and watched ice pellets gather on the patio, the closest thing we’d have to a white Christmas in Florida. Later that morning I went to Mom’s for the annual opening-of-the-gifts extravaganza. As we were ripping off wrapping paper I heard that odd tinkling sound again and dashed outside. It was a veritable sleet storm – with a few snowflakes mixed in! I grabbed Mom’s digital camera and shot some video. Later, back inside, we were still opening gifts when a terrible racket arose from outside. This time hailstones the size of English peas were falling from the sky. More photos and video. I didn’t realize Mom’s camera had a microphone and on one video, after a lightning bolt struck nearby, you can hear me whisper Jesus!
Those Christmases were not memorable because of the loot I received. The payoff was the emotional experience, and the fact I remember them proves for me that Christmas is a spiritual event. The cards and gifts are nice but they’re not what Christmas is really about. That’s what I’ll be thinking this Dec. 25 and I hope you will too.
May this be your perfect Christmas.
And as they say, to all a good night.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .