Storycatchers: The best Christmas, and without the shiny paper

I shared this story at the Storycatchers event of Dec. 8, 2017, at The Refuge Lounge in Appleton.

At last year’s Storycatchers holiday event, I talked about being attacked by our Christmas tree in my sleep.

That really happened.

Over the course of our 35 years of marriage, we’ve had probably three or four Christmas trees topple over onto a living room floor.

It’s never a pretty sight, and it never happens without blaming each other for faulty tree placement and construction, days of pointless second-guessing, and a liberal amount of unholy, not-so-God-fearing language.

Still, from the evergreen’s viewpoint, falling to the carpet when no one’s watching is probably the tree’s way of flipping you off for plucking it from its home.

There’s no good or helpful way to respond to that indignation … except to pick up the pieces, and keep moving.

So, we have. We give gifts, we receive gifts, we try to be thoughtful, and we show our appreciation and our love.

But … here’s the truth. I struggle with Christmas.

No, not as a religious holiday, nor as an important season for retailers.

Not because there are a lot of things happening in a pretty short timeframe, and not because there’s a lot of horrible music associated with Santa, Good King Wenceslas, baby Jesus and Andy Williams.

I struggle because this is a season of get-togethers and parties, big and small, private and public, and because I’m generally very uncomfortable in those settings.

I am Dan, and I am an introvert.

I am the guy who arrives late and leaves early without saying goodbye, and I am the guy with a big dislike of small talk.

I am the guy who likes time to myself, and the guy who has never mastered the art of seeming interested when I am just not interested at all.

I don’t celebrate well. Never have. I don’t dance. Don’t ask me.

I’m the world’s most boring sports fan.

I don’t say I’m “great” when I’m merely fine, and I don’t say “amazing” unless I really AM amazed. Today, that’s rare.

I even get a little overwhelmed at our family Christmas gift-opening. At times, it’s just too much for me to handle. I get quiet, I withdraw, and sometimes, I watch from a distance.

My almost 14-year-old grandson told my wife the other day, “Grandpa’s a grinch.”

I love that kid more than he’ll ever know. And I get why he’d say that.

But … I really do appreciate the season, in my own way.

It’s magic for many people, and that’s a great thing. It’s a wonderful time to show how much we love, and how much we understand each other.

It’s an especially poignant and appropriate time to support good causes and to make a difference through dollars and deeds.

And the Biblical story of Jesus’ birth is one of hope, love and faith. Hard to argue with that.

Those are deeply personal attributes. They can — and should — mean something new and different to every one of us.

In my introverted world, those are the gifts. Not the presents, not the office parties, not the Black Friday bargains, but the way you feel and the way you love the people who matter most.

These aren’t things you wrap in shiny paper. These are things you hold inside yourself.

This will be my 60^th Christmas, and I apologize for this, but I remember almost none of the material Christmas gifts I’ve ever gotten from anyone. Not the year, not the size, not how long it lasted, nothing.

I am sincerely sorry about that.

But I do remember one gift extremely well. I wrote about it in the local newspaper 14 years ago this month (The Post-Crescent, Sunday, Dec. 21, 2003), and I’d like to share it with you.

I met a kid the other day who will probably make a huge impression on me.

Don't know how, or when, or why. But it's bound to happen.

How do I know? Well, I cried before he said a word.

I'd heard about him for months. His mother kept bringing the subject up, and just before we met, it was just about all she, my wife and I talked about.

Mostly, we talked about how my wife and I were too young for this relationship with such a young guy. But we also wondered about how life would change once he we met him. We speculated about what he'd look like, how he'd like his surroundings, how we'd get along with him, what he'll do with his life.

The more we talked, the more surreal it seemed — like he was in the room with us, listening, snickering, rolling his eyes, plugging his ears, kicking his mom every so often to change the subject.

She was thrilled to introduce him to her sister, my wife and me. It was a long Thursday afternoon, a longer Thursday night, and now that Friday morning had begun, she was eager to end the formality. You can only wait so long.

He was crying when we met, in a room of people he'd never seen before. Some of them were paying more attention to his mother than him, which might have ticked him off. Others thought the bright lights or the change in temperature or the unfamiliar surroundings might have caused the outburst.

I don't know what the problem was. I'll ask him the next time we get together.

But he seems like a good kid, even though he's been laying around for most of his first couple days with us. He sleeps, he yawns, he sneezes, he eats, he relieves himself, he eats some more, he sleeps some more.

And when something doesn't set well with him — how could that happen in his lifestyle? — he cries. Everyone pays attention to that, it seems. "It's all right," they assure him.

We carry him everywhere he needs to go. We're hoping that ends someday, but not too soon. We wouldn't want to really irritate him in the early stages of our relationship.

But something else happens when we pick him up, and hold him, and look in his sleepy eyes. It's nothing he can put into words, but it's definitely a feeling that we get.

He depends on us. He trusts us. He loves us. He can't imagine life without us. We feel the same way about him, and we won't let him down.

We're his family.

Matthew weighed 9 pounds, 3 ounces and measured 21 inches long when we met Friday morning. His mom is our older daughter, now 24.

His holiday-season arrival is not lost on us. The presents under our Christmas tree will be nice, no doubt. We'll open them with smiles, and thank each other with sincerity, but the batteries eventually will die, and the fashions will be outdated within a year or so. Some of the gifts will be returned for a refund.

The gift of a child, however, won't ever grow old.

When you give love, and get love in return, the present lasts forever.

Have a Merry Christmas. We sure will.