When I was a child growing up in Las Vegas, I used to love to spend Christmas with my grandparents in northern Utah. It didn't happen every year because my dad was the feature singer at the Thunderbird Hotel and rarely got a Christmas Eve off. So it was a special treat the year we went to Grandma Corinne's and Grandpa Scotch's house for Christmas. I was 8 that year and I wanted a Toni doll from Santa. (Are any of you old enough to remember Toni dolls?). The first thing I did Christmas morning was to wash and "perm" her hair (with sugar water solution) much to my mother's dismay. The doll never looked the same!
We had snow that year and Dad took my brother and I out on a sled. Dad was the only one who was warm because he was pulling the sled! He helped us make a snowman - my first. I appreciated Grandpa's huge coal fire in the fireplace. It's warmth is one of my fondest memories of that Christmas. Perhaps the thing I remember most is the love I felt in that home. Sadly, that house was torn down in 1966 to make room for a big apartment complex. I grieve its passing as if it were a person. It was a Christmas Card House.
About halfway between Las Vegas and my grandparents' homes is the little town of Beaver, UT. Just south of Beaver, on the west side of the freeway, is a little white farmhouse with a green roof. After my grandparents' home was demolished, I began to I call the house in Beaver my Christmas Card House. It has tall pines around it and in the winter time, it is always surrounded by snow. I remember it from childhood as being halfway to Grandma's house; halfway to love. As an adult, I went to graduate school in northern Utah and used to pass my Christmas Card House every time I drove south to visit my folks. By then, the paint was faded and peeling and I'm not sure my children appreciated my feelings for the house. They do not share my memories of a simpler time and my grandparents' love.
When I see the above picture, I remember the Christmas Card House and that magical Christmas with my grandparents. The snow, the Christmas lights, the snowman, the pine trees - even the old car - remind me of the love I felt that Christmas. I want to make those kinds of memories for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren. When they grow old, I want them to look back at Christmas at Grandma's house as snow and Christmas lights and good food and a crackling fire. But mostly, I hope they remember it as time when they traveled all the way to love.
Text © Gebara Education, 2012
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