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With our commercial engines in high gear revving all of us up for Christmas in recent days, several times I have said, or thought, "Christmas is for children." Today, I have preached myself a series of mini-sermons correcting that mistaken notion. It's easy to note that the real heart of Christmas is everlastingly adult, far too religiously significant to be just a childhood holiday. But however religiously meaningful the day and the season, that is not quite the adult sense I have in mind when I say that Christmas isn't just for children. This isn't the easiest thing in the world to explain. Bear with me while I try. My earliest memories of Christmas were formed during the cancer on civilization known as World War II. In 1941, the war was a little too young to uproot everything the way it would during the next three Christmases, and I was a little too young to remember it clearly. But for the Christmases of 1942, '43 and '44 it was awful, and I had become old enough and aware enough to know it. As bad as they have been, none of the military conflicts our nation has had since World War II have disrupted everyday lives anywhere near the way that war did. It was an emotional sledgehammer, knocking some of the laughter, some of the joy, some of the fun out of everything and everybody. I was the only young person in our family during those years, so I was the beneficiary of most of Santa's generosity. My older sister was so generous and thoughtful with me that I will always be grateful to her. But the worried looks never completely left the faces of the adults, and the strain was often in their voices. It was so obvious that only the very young children were not subdued by it. It was also during this time that I became acutely aware of the family that lived next-door to us. There were six of them -- an elderly couple, their son and daughter-in-law, and daughter and son-in-law. Neither of the younger couples had children, and both younger men were somehow ineligible for the draft. All of them except the old lady had good jobs. They had no close relatives in the military. They were about as carefree as it was possible for a family to be in those circumstances. I started being envious during Christmas of 1942. I watched the neighbors carry in armloads of gaily wrapped gifts. I saw them carry in the first "bought" Christmas tree I had ever seen -- some variety of northern fir. My family and all the others I knew cut cedar trees from the surrounding woodlands. They were good people. They were good neighbors. They happened to fall into a very fortunate niche that no one could blame them for, but which to my little boy's perspective seemed very unfair. The Christmases of 1943 and '44 reinforced my envy and sense of unfairness. Looking back, I know that family was delighted when the war ended and my brothers came home unharmed. 1945 was a good Christmas at our house as well as theirs, even if our tree was still cedar. In 1946, our family began a string of Christmas gatherings at our mother's house that lasted for about 45 years, until she got too old to live independently. They were wonderful years. Meanwhile, the family next-door began a descent into extinction. The old lady was the first to die. Then the old man. Then the son-in-law, and the son, and the daughter-in-law. The last member of the family -- the daughter -- spent the last 10 years of her life in a coma in a nursing home. When she died, the only people at her funeral were members of our family. During the last several years that we shared Christmas at our mother's house, the next-door family's house was empty. Every one of those years, as I walked up the walkway to Mama's house, my eyes were drawn like magnets to that empty house next-door. I always felt a little remorse for my childhood envy, but I always felt a lot more thankfulness for the many happy Christmases we had been privileged to share and enjoy. For many years my thoughts of Christmas have focused on these things. The memories are the stuff of human wonder. Wonder as in wonderful. Christmas gifts are for the children. Christmas traditions are for us big kids.
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