Dreaming of a black Christmas

Today I’ll share a December excerpt from my memoir, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir. The scene takes place on a mission center, Lomalinda (pretty hill), in South America, during our family’s first December there. 

But first, review Your Christmas stories need sensory details, and then notice those that I included in my excerpts, below. (Sensory details: What do you see, hear, taste, smell, and feel?) 

Lomalinda was into the dry season with clean cerulean skies and hardly a wisp of a cloud. Daytime temperatures rose to over a hundred degrees in the shade—cruel, withering. The green scent of the rainy season had given way to the spicy fragrance of sun-dried grasses. Immense stretches of emerald disappeared, leaving grasslands stiff and simmering under unrelenting sun.

      Muddy paths and single-lane tracks turned rock-hard and, with use, changed to dust. Yards and airstrips and open fields turned to dust, too. 

      From sunrise to sundown, a strong wind blew across the llanos, a gift from God because it offered a little relief from the heat. On the other hand, we had to use rocks and paperweights and other heavy objects to keep papers from blowing away. Dust blew through slatted windows and into homes and offices and settled on our counters and furniture and in cracks and crannies and on our necks and in our armpits and up our noses. . . . 

      During rainy season, sometimes laundry took days to dry in our screened-in porch, but in dry season I hung laundry outside and, after pegging up the last garment in the laundry basket, I took down the first pieces I’d hung—the hot wind had already dried them.

      Dry season gave homes and furniture and clothing and shoes and photos and slides a chance to de-mildew. Roads were easier to navigate, no longer gooey with mud. The parched wind gave us a break from the profuse sweating we endured in the rainy season so, in that way, it was a friend.

      But dry season could also be a foe. One sizzling afternoon, Dr. Altig hollered at our door, “Call for help! We have a fire!” Across the road behind Ruth’s house, flames leaped and smoke billowed. . . .

That year, our family’s first there, we learned December traditionally was a time of wildfires in and around Lomalinda, leaving acres of black ashes. Shortly after that day’s fire, the following happened:

One December day I walked a sun-cracked track while that celestial fireball cooked my skin and the smell of charred grassland swirled in the breeze. The school principal puttered up to me on her red motorbike. “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!”

      Pris watched me for a few seconds and then laughed—my face had betrayed my thoughts. I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying, “This looks like Christmas? You’ve got to be kidding!”

    To me, Christmas looks like frost-covered evergreens, and snowflakes, and frozen puddles. Heavy coats, scarves, mittens, boots. Runny noses. Sledding. Ice skating. Swags of cedar and pine and holly tied with red ribbons.

      I learned a lesson on that hot, dry December day. “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” means different things to different people. To most Lomalindians, especially kids, Christmas looked like a bleached landscape, charred fields, hot wind, and a whiff of ashes in the air. Folks enjoyed saying, “I’m dreaming of a black Christmas.”

What are your memories of unique Christmases? 

• Did you spend one Christmas fighting a war overseas? 
• Or did you celebrate the holiday in Hawaii one year? 
• Or did you take a trip to the Holy Land?

What about traditions you enjoyed? 

• Playing fun games 
• Serving Christmas Eve dinner at a homeless shelter
• Going to the Nutcracker each year
• Watching It’s A Wonderful Life or Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer
• Christmas caroling in nursing homes

What memories of traditional Christmas food do you have?

If you have a Nordic background, you might have traditions around smörgåsbords with

• lutefisk, 
• pepparkakor, 
• gubbröra, 
• liver pâté,
• vörtbröd, 
• pickled herring, 
• pinnekjôtt,
• glögg, and
• julekaker.

If you have a Scottish background, you might have 

• haggis 
• tatties and neeps, 
• black pudding, 
• Cock-a-leekie soup,
• clootie dumpling, and 
• Yorkshire pudding. 

Have fun remembering Christmases past.

This is a super busy time of year, but if you keep a pencil and paper handy, simply jot down ideas for now. When things settle down after the holidays, you can spend more time on a rough draft.

And be sure to include sensory details.