Finding Christmas...

College done for the trimester, my oldest daughter works BIG overtime in the holiday season, feeding crowds of onlookers from surprisingly distant places come to view the spectacle in our county seat. Chickasha, Oklahoma created one of the first Christmas Lights extravaganza's in our state: The Oklahoma Festival of Lights; Christmas Through the Eyes of a Child.

What started out as a small undertaking of local interest has evolved over the years into a major tourist attraction. On the downside, what it means on our small scale is that you cannot shop in Chickasha or even presume to go there from Thanksgiving night until New Year's Eve because of the traffic. The local economy is seriously bolstered by the busloads of folks come from as far away as Dallas. They eat at the restaurant where Jessica works as well as the other places in Chickasha. They buy things at our shops.

Despite the chaos, we try to go every few years, if only to watch the expensive privately rented helicopters come from Oklahoma City hover low over the small lake that even boasts underwater lights. We catch a slow ride in a carriage pulled by four Oklahoma Clydesdales through a mile of the Christmas park not accessible by car. Some years, you can take the tour in shirtsleeves. Others, it is so cold that not even the carriage blankets tucked over your coat will warm you.

The Festival of Lights is free of charge. Still, for some reason, its seemingly commercial sensory overload touches me but does not feel like Christmas. Oh, I like the lights, the gentle sway of being pulled along by giant horses and the insulated feeling of being in the park at night with all the other people, made strangely quiet by the spectacle of it all. Lots of people find Christmas there.

Even if I can't find Christmas at our once small gala gone strangely large and overrun with distance, I almost always manage to find it somewhere, if only for a bare moment. Oh, there have been years when I never found it. The year after I got divorced; the Christmas after I left England. I never know when or if it will come. Perhaps that doubt is what leaves me jaded.

I worked all day today knowing that I had to make a reprovision stop on the way home and then somehow manage to be at Ann's annual Christmas program by 7:30. Ann and I chose not to participate in the community bean dinner, which gave me a little more time to maneuver. Christmas programs are mandatory in elementary school here unless you have a religious exception. In the sixth grade, this was Ann's last command performance. I had no choice but to attend.

To the credit of a small town, we prioritized our love for music. We can't afford to give our children art classes so that's worked into the required curriculum. When the oil pipelines that provide our school funding don't pump much, we sometimes have to cut back on athletics. After the oil bust in the early '80's, our school did not play football for seven years. We never went without music classes.

There is only one teacher, Mr. Lewis, who heads up all our music. He is a young, portly fellow that I embarrassed the other day at a ballgame when I ran after him with the dolly that his four-year-old left on the bleachers. I didn't mean to make him turn red when I yelled, "Don't forget your doll!" Obviously, he has not had children long enough to understand that NOTHING should embarrass you.

Each year, Lewis guides the children in several concerts for the community. Bless the fellow, he tries hard. He has only the children, a tiny budget and his love for music. Every year, he gets better and better. I suspect we would no more part with him than the Baptist and Methodist preachers and our purple heart police chief, just returned from Iraq. We had a special concert last spring when Lewis took our local chorus to the regional choral championship in Dallas and won the damn thing!

The hall where these things are held serves many purposes. That is where we graduate our children from high school, hold political rallies and where funerals are held when the local church is not not big enough to hold the mourners. That is where my ten classmates and I (out of 31) took our state honors diplomas in '79, wearing the ribbons of academic achievement that remain the standard for our local educational effort. That is where they carried my grandmother's coffin when she died at 42 years of age when I was seven. The auditorium curtains had become ratty and torn until a couple of years ago when the Class of '58 (the class of my mother and father) ponied up the $6000 to buy new ones. For some reason, that still makes my mother cry.

We knew to arrive early and I was seeking a seat by 6:45, Ann long disappeared with her group. By a quarter after the hour, the hall was packed, standing room only, my 89 year-old grandmother beside my mother, my father and I. We had been told to anticipate a surprise ending to the concert. Even though my kid was a big part of the program, she had refused to breathe a word.

We chuckled through the fidgeting four-year-olds singing Silent Night. No separation between church and state here. The crowd grew only larger, despite Lewis' announcements that no one was required to stay.

Ann's group took the stage. She is tall and dressed in rhinestones, a bright red skirt and black leather go-go boots that cover her knees. She has let her hair go curly for this night and I am wondering what monster I have allowed to come out in public when I see all her friends decked out in the same manner. They are poised on the edge of earnest adolescence, the boys almost Ann's height, whiskering and sporting serious ties. They sing their first song, interspersed with recitations by various kids about Santa Claus.

We had been warned that no matter what happened, remain still. Leave the auditorium aisles open and be quiet. The first few rows of seats were vacant from the first and I thought this odd, considering that the spectators, even old ones in wheelchairs, were packed shoulder to shoulder in the back.

The second song was not memorable and there was too much movement in the hall to suit me. As the song faded, the lights went down. It was getting on to pitch black dark. But suddenly there is a spotlight and smoke and my kid appears, red skirt whirling. Microphone pressed to her lips, she turns (I did not know this was going to happen) and kinda raps out...WE, WE, WE....WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Spotlights begin to whirl as the footlights come up. And there in the shadows, shades of the Polar Express, is every kid in our school. From the tiny four year-olds to the burly football jocks just about to graduate, to the Goth girls dressed in black, they are all there. More smoke. No one has left, they are all still here. We are all still here.

400 voices; 400 faces all bathed in flickering light. Ann in the 6th grade with the microphone, my cousins from young to old, our friends, Ann's friends, kids we know and kids we do not know. Two black kids, many Indians kids, a couple of Mexicans, three kids from Germany, one from El Salvador and one from Norway. They sing...WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS. All the way to the end. Everyone of them belonging.

I cried. Daddy cried. The community cried.

When it was over, Ann rushed up to me. "Did you like it?"

Yeah I did. The music teacher outdid himself. And in all that, I found Christmas.