This commentary is by Walt Amses, a writer who lives in North Calais.
Apart from being a pillar of strength, comforting young men far from home, some for the first time, the base chaplain’s duties included gently placing the plaster Jesus in the official Air Force creche, under cover of darkness, as the clock struck midnight on that starry New Mexico night half a century ago.
This was not a public ceremony, but something he was accustomed to doing alone. He was thusly surprised at the sound of people and utterly startled to find the manger already occupied by a young GI amid life-sized ceramic donkeys, doting parents and three men, far wiser in their silence than the several of us brushing straw from our clothing.
I don’t remember whose idea it was to create personalized Christmas cards but the reasoning went something like: If we all agree to do it, it probably isn’t all that bad, various states of inebriation notwithstanding
I had the official camera — a Rolleiflex I used on the U.S. Air Force newspaper — and, in the moment, was dull-witted enough to zone out the implications of creating ample evidence for our impending courts-martials. But it was not to be. Crisis was averted largely because said chaplain was a Jesuit with a sense of humor who, rather than report us, invited us over to his quarters for a snifter or two of brandy.
When we were both civilians a couple of years later, I took him up on a longstanding invitation to visit with him at the small, stone chapel where he was now assigned. It was easy to forget we were in midtown Manhattan, isolated by a high wall, sharing tea under the shade of a small tree in a bucolic flower garden, reminiscing about the military and joking about that infamous Christmas Eve.
After saying our goodbyes, the tumult of New York City was a jolt. Although we thought we would, we never connected again. He was the first person I ever saw wearing Birkenstocks and socks.
The seasonal confusion of a Catholic boyhood originates at birth, often lasts a lifetime, and frequently culminates at Christmas each year as we wrestle to make sense of the incompatible greed and guilt that comes with getting presents on someone else’s birthday, the son of God no less. Stress levels, a hallmark of Catholicism, accelerate through December, and in a kind of poetic justice, eventually approach those of parents, charged with way too much to accomplish at the worst possible time. Lunacy often ensues, even within the church itself.
In an effort to remind the faithful and their kids of the holiday’s true meaning, several Sicilian clergy thought it reasonable to point out that Santa did not actually exist and his red suit was designed as a way to sell Coca-Cola. Confronted by a 7-year-old claiming her parents had assured her that the chubby old soul was real and would show up on Christmas, Bishop Antonio Stagliano instructed her to go home and say, “You lie.”
Parents, gone ballistic over Staglliano’s interfering with family traditions and “crushing the spirits of children,” especially during the pandemic, were eventually soothed as cooler heads prevailed, walking back the comments and declaring Santa an “effective image to convey the importance of giving.” Seasonal anxiety and the pressure to “get it right” are frequently a catalyst for sky-high expectations that come crashing down around us.
Another long-ago Christmas Eve, rife with the kind of lust, guilt, humiliation and stupidity that permeated adolescent male lives in the 1960s before ”The Sixties,” involved a new pair of shoes and the horror of Mom actually knowing best. I was headed for midnight Mass, intent on crossing paths with a girl I’d had several brief conversations with and consequently imagined as my future wife. That’s just the way we rolled. It took years to scour the strange moral residue of the chaste, very Catholic ’50s.
There were two shoe stores in town, Thom McAn, the 800-store monolith selling “sensible” footwear largely with rubber soles; and Flag Brothers, purveyors of shoes so cool they were shamelessly marketed to pimps in the “Superfly Seventies,” eventually landing in the Museum of Modern Art. Parental negotiations went on for weeks. I finally prevailed, offering to count the trendy shoes as a Christmas present, making their sleek, pointy-toed debut at midnight Mass. My anticipation was almost unbearable.
You must understand that walking a girl home after midnight when you were 13 would be the pinnacle of male adolescence: Strolling hand in hand through colorfully illuminated holiday streets, snow gently falling on young lovers beginning their long life together.
Of course, these hopes were dashed like a snow globe dropped on concrete. Against parental advice I stepped over the galoshes my mother had left by the door and made my way gingerly over the frozen slush toward St. Henry’s Church and launching myself into young adulthood. What I hadn’t counted on was the icy buildup launching me onto the cement sidewalk, shredding both knees of my suit, lacerating my flesh, leaving me with a humiliation so profound it still makes me cringe.
The only solution when I finally landed in church was to kneel and keep on kneeling. I knelt through the entire Mass in a familiar fog of incense infused with a variety of cheap cologne and even cheaper whiskey.
When the priest concluded and parishioners filed for the exits, I looked up and there she was, standing next to where I continued to kneel, making small talk — expecting, I realized later, for me to stand up like a normal person and walk out with her. Her parents strolled by, saying they’d see her at home, probably thinking I was the most pious eighth-grader they’d ever seen, rather than the lust-crazed idiot I was.
When the church was nearly empty, I gingerly made my way home, festively decorated porches lighting the way. My bitter disappointment eventually gave way to a sense of relief that my debacle remained undetected.
And I still had the cool shoes.
