Tuesday, December 25, 2012

White Christmas Hanford 2004, OKC 2012


White Christmas, from dense fog in Hanford, California 2004, to snow and ice in Oklahoma 2012. Nothing much has changed in the past eight years. Christmas Day is still a day for balancing the books, a time for contemplation.

I wrote A WHITE CHRISTMAS IN HANFORD on my last Christmas in California before moving back to Oklahoma. I repeat it every Christmas, creating my own tradition.

A WHITE CHRISTMAS IN HANFORD
By Pat Browning

Christmas Day, 2004: That white stuff is ground fog, not snow. But this is Christmas Day, so the town was pretty much closed down anyway.

There are interesting Christmas stories in the papers, both print and online.

From the war in Iraq:
An online Washington Post headline: Fear Dims Christmas Eve in Baghdad. Steel barricades are up at the Virgin Mary Church of Palestine. Iraq's 800,000 Christians have lived peacefully among Muslims for centuries, but now they are afraid to come to church. Ah, Babylon ...

From World War I:
The Post also has an interesting story on the Christmas Truce of 1914, when British, French, Belgian and German soldiers came out of their trenches to sing, exchange food and tobacco, play soccer, bury their dead. Cultural historian Modris Eksteins is quoted as calling it "the last expression of that 19th-century world of manners and morals, where the opponent was a gentleman."

From World War II:
In The Hanford Sentinel, local businessman and Sentinel columnist Bob Case tells the special stories of two local people.

One, now a retired teacher, was in the first wave of Marines to hit the beach at Guadalcanal in 1942. He spent Christmas Eve in a jungle hospital, under blackout conditions. But after the patients had sung carols, the C.O. allowed them to light one match for just a moment as they sang "Silent Night."

In the second story, a local woman recalls Christmas Eve 1943, when a local church group went to a nearby POW camp to sing carols to Germans who had been captured in North Africa. After the church group finished singing, there was momentary silence behind the barbed wire fence, and then the sound of 400 German prisoners of war singing "Silent Night" in the original language ... "Stille Nacht!Hiel'ge Nacht! Alles schlaft ... "

Small, bright lights in the darkest of times.

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Photo: This World War I cannon, a reminder of the "war to end all wars," sits in front of the Veterans Memorial Building in Hanford, California, wrapped in dense fog on Christmas morning. Copyright 2004 Pat Browning.

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Update: Christmas 2012
Another White Christmas, this one  in Oklahoma, and that white stuff really is snow. It’s pretty, but treacherous. It has been eight years since I wrote about my last Christmas in California. Has anything changed? Yes and no.

For openers, the world didn’t end. I didn’t expect it to but many people did. Don’t blame the Mayans. They didn’t say the world would end. They merely marked off the end of an era, and the beginning of the next one. One can only hope that the new era will be an improvement.

There is still war and unrest in the Middle East. Another American -- a civilian U.S. adviser -- has been killed by a member of the “friendly” Afghans, this one a policewoman. Syria is a bloodbath. Political and religious hatreds are alive and well in Israel, Palestine, Egypt.

In this country we reel from tragedy to tragedy. The most staggering are Hurricane Sandy and the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. And yet good triumphs over evil.

From various news reports:
The Troy family in New York lost their home to Hurricane Sandy. Along comes a businessman who offers to build them a brand new home. No ulterior motive. He’s had some close calls in his lifetime and believes God saved him for a reason. Within 24 hours the businessman and his contractors show up and go to work. The Troys will spend Christmas Day in their new home.

Meanwhile, food, toys and money keep pouring into Connecticut after the school massacre. There’s no more room in freezers for the food, the money is being turned into foundations and a hall is stacked with teddy bears and toys of every description. Generous people are being asked to “pay it forward” by giving their donations to charities of their choice, in memory of the children and teachers who died at Sandy Hook Elementary.

Here in the Oklahoma City Metro, soup kitchens and food banks give hope and sustenance to hundreds of local folks who need it. And a worldwide movement, Random Acts of Kindness, has arrived in my local WalMart store.

At the checkout counter this week I had a small purchase from the pharmacy department. The total was $6.52 and the woman in line behind me said, “I’ll pay for that.” The WalMart clerk said, “We’re seeing a lot of that this year.”

I was dumbfounded. It wasn’t much, but it made my day. I’m looking for a chance to do the same thing for another stranger.

Small acts of kindness, paying it forward, piling up some good karma. Like a candle in the window, the spirit of Christmas still shines, even in the worst of times.


Resurrecting an old slogan from World War II -- "Is this trip really necessary?"

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