I have stood at a distance, this Christmas season, and observed first grade from a silent witness vantage point. This, my first Christmas as a real-live teacher, without the encumbrances of studies, has left me a bit wide-eyed with the joy that children infuse into this most celebrated holiday. To watch their happiness and excitement grow daily is truly magical.
The Christmas program was enchanting. Angelic, nervous, giggling school children dressed in crisp holiday clothes. Parents lugging enough video equipment and cameras to shoot a Wendy’s commercial, and piles of cookies and bars for after the performance. As a teacher, this was my very first Christmas program. As a mother I have attended roughly 947 of them. I enjoyed this one as much as I ever have.
The stage with its elevation above the audience and bright floodlights seems to exaggerate both the shyness and the natural-born extroverts. It’s easy to spot the ones that want to drop through the floor into eternal invisibility, and those that will someday board a bus for Hollywood. I could not have been more proud of those kids that night if they were my own flesh and blood.
Today was another holiday tradition. Our students trudged down the street to the local Senior Center to sing their little hearts out for the elderly, who are trying to digest their noodle hot dish, while Little Emma belts “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” into their Miracle Ear.
I volunteered to be the chaperoning teacher to accompany our dear music teacher, Jeanne (a saint of a woman), and the kindergarten through second grade classes. I lined them up at the front doors of the building and gave them the usual stay-in-line-and-on-the-sidewalk lecture, and then we were off. As we stepped off the curb to cross the street, I hollered over my shoulder, “I’m the momma duck and you are my ducklings!” Squeals of giggles answered me and then the quacking began as I led a slightly crooked, quacking, arm-flapping bunch down the town sidewalk. Main Street is all of two blocks long, so it didn’t take but a jiffy to be at the front door of the Senior Center.
Now the “be quiet, be polite, keep your hands to yourself, and for goodness sakes’ SMILE!” lecture was given before we entered the building. The Town Jewels were already dining and smiled as our students walked in and tried to quietly and quickly line up in some semblance of orderliness, all nineteen of them. We would have had a few more, but some virulent strain of stomach flu is knocking kids down like a twelve pound bowling ball at the Lucky Strike Lanes. Jeanne had already set up her stereo and was busy putting sound track CD’s into it.
With the first recorded notes, they were brilliant. They sang, they smiled, they remembered their choreographed motions, and they charmed the socks off The Jewels. I felt an obligation to get the crowd pumped up a bit so I smiled broader than the kids, bobbed my head in time to the music and grinned every time I could catch the eye of a singing, dancing Darling. When each selection was over, the Town Jewels clapped politely; I boisterously. If I had had a lighter I would have held it high over my head.
One of my boys was just a few feet from me, just givin’ it all he had. He was lost in the moment, and I couldn’t help but be riveted to his sweet little face. Sincerity was written all over his features, front teeth missing, and brow furrowed in intensity. I could hear him well, sitting as close as I was. The closing song was “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” The Crooner really got wound up when he got to the part of, “…good tidings we bring...,” but he errantly thought it should be sung, “timings.” Every time he got to the refrain, he would belt out, “Good timings for Christmas and a happy New Year!”
When the show was over, the beaming children were handed gifts of candy canes and baggies of assorted candies that had been carefully packaged by the Lady Jewels, I’m sure. We struggled into coats once again and then waddled our way back to school, loudly caroling “Jingle Bells” to all of Main Street.
Such a simple thing we did today. A five-minute stroll to sing a few songs and spread a little Christmas cheer. The children enjoy the escape from school drudgery for a few minutes, and the elderly love seeing Christmas through the eyes of a child for a brief moment, and remembering how magical this time of year is to the young and young at heart.
I marveled today, as I watched the young and the old, stare into each others' faces. Marveled that the intervening years are but a vapor that will quickly dissipate and before anyone quite knows what has happened, the children of today who sing and dance for the elderly will soon become the elderly themselves. The young have no concept of this, of course. They fully believe that their youth will hang on them for an endless eternity. They don’t know they will get old because it does not occur to them to think about it.
But the old know. They remember being boisterous children that couldn’t contain their Christmas excitement and they themselves once sang and danced for the joy and entertainment of others. They know that today’s happy child will only need to blink, and they themselves will be frail and slow and will dine on hot noodle dish every third Tuesday at the Senior Center. And those same children of today will come to look forward to the thoughtful attentions of people like Jeanne who remember to bring children to the Senior Center.
They know. They remember. And for the briefest of moments, they are children once again, with agile bodies and light hearts. Life is cyclical. And though society morphs through changes that alter how we think and do things, some things are timeless...
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Children at Christmas and the cherished memories of those that remember what it is like to be a child at Christmas.
And so…
On behalf of Mrs. Dahl and her Little Darlings,
“Good Timings of Christmas and a Happy New Year!”
Merry Christmas!
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