Remembering the magic of Christmas

This Christmas Eve has been a day of chores, and it will end with, perhaps, a favorite Christmas movie and a candlelight church service. How different this is from the Christmas Eves of my youth, and how different Christmas is from the Christmases of my youth.

The primary missing element is magic. Christmas was the most magical time of the year, a time when even a family like mine, with seven mouths to feed (not counting a cow and a dog), could experience the miracle of Christmas bounty. Fresh citrus fruit that seemed not to exist at any other time on the calendar. Candy bars and chewing gum and whole nuts that, with some self-discipline (but not much), might last the remainder of the week.

And then there were the toys. Christmas provided a trove of toys, not just one or two that might come on your birthday but a whole universe of toys designed to fulfill your most outlandish desire. I never got the pony or horse that I asked for each Christmas for several years and which I imagined would be tied to the front porch columns, but I received so many other things, that disappointment never entered my mind.

And how did this happen? It had to be magic. My hard-working, Depression-weaned parents could not have fulfilled such grand wishes year after year. It had to be magic, and the whole day was wrapped in a magical aura. I never imagined in my naivete that some people worked on Christmas Day. The whole month of December was a waiting time, and we were an audience sitting restlessly in our seats anticipating the opening of the greatest show of the year. "You're slow as Christmas!" I remember one of my cousins telling another cousin. The remark was made in mid-summer, but the meaning was clear. Christmas was the most anticipated day of the year, the day that it seemed would never arrive, the slowest item on any calendar.

By Christmas morning, sitting on the cedar chest, waiting to be admitted to the living room where an aromatic cedar tree, a crackling fire, sweet chocolate candy and boundless toys awaited us, I shivered with excitement, unable to control my shaking. Christmas magic had transformed the living room — the room that was closed off from the rest of the house, that room where children were forbidden entry — into a magic land where wishes do come true and the inexplicable occurs.

Even the night was different. The sky seemed darker, the stars closer as the world awaited Christmas morning, a time when, I thought, the whole world stood still, no one worked and miracles happened.

I will enjoy the remainder of this Christmas Eve and the gathering of loved ones on Christmas Day. I will share the thrill of wide-eyed pre-schoolers as they open presents and marvel at all there is. But I will miss the magic, the naive belief that this day is miraculously different, a day when the whole world pauses and no one works or worries.