Lamar Thames

OK, that is enough dillydallying. Let’s get this thing done.

I am referring to my annual Christmas column. At least the one I used to write when I was the editor of a North Florida community newspaper. It was about Christmases past and present and contained images that ranged in my mind from the good, the bad and the ugly of Christmas.

Notice I have used the word Christmas four times already, not holiday. America’s national holiday is Christmas and it is about both giving and receiving and Christ’s birthday. As well as it is about Hannukah and all the other religions that celebrate their deities in some way. Let’s get over this idea of we have to say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. Celebrating the plurality as well as the original intent of the day is what makes this such a wonderful and great national.

So, Merry Christmas to all. Now let me try to entertain you with some of my holiday merriment.

Emma loves to watch the Christmas train as it makes its rounds under the Christmas tree at Nana and Papa's house.

First, the good has already occurred. It happened recently when my granddaughter Emma came running up to me and squealed, “Papa’s home! Can we turn on the train now?”

It was a night I had to pick up my grandson from basketball practice and meet up with my daughter at our house. Emma had obviously been instructed to wait until Papa arrived before the train could be turned on but she didn’t wait a second before popping the question.

“Of course, we can, Emma,” I answered. We proceeded to the living room where the Christmas train was assembled under the Christmas tree and I showed her how to turn it on and let it make all the sounds of the season that we all enjoy so much: “Ho, ho, ho” and “Merry Christmas,” as well as ringing the train’s bell and Santa shouting, “All aboard.”

Emma is the just the latest in the line of grandchildren who have enjoyed the train and one of these days we hope there will be one more. We haven’t gotten a commitment on that score, but we keep our fingers crossed that we will be blessed with one more grandchild who will someday enjoy the tradition of the Christmas train at Nana and Papa’s house.

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In years past, I have had some sort of calamity with either the Christmas tree or the decorations, both inside and outside.

At different times, the calamity has vacillated between bad (as in the time that the live Christmas tree came crashing down at 3:30 in the morning, thus maintaining a long-standing family tradition that my wife refused to accept until she heard that fatal sound — keerash — and let me buy a more stable artificial tree) and ugly (as in the question, “I wonder what he was thinking about?” when neighbors would survey my outdoor light display.)

This year, my lament was merely bad, primarily because it rectified itself within a couple of days.

Since I don’t have a paying job, the responsibility to assemble the Christmas decorations fell solely on my shoulders this year. I gladly accepted the assignment and went dutifully about the chore in a time-honored tradition — with a glass of wine and Christmas carols. But since it was 10 o’clock in the morning, I quickly realized I wasn’t going to be able to accomplish the task in my normal fashion, i.e., a sip of wine with every ornament hung. So dispensing with the wine was essential if I was going to get everything done by the time my wife got home that day.

Well, the tree went up, the Santas were placed on the mantle with care and then it was on to the really important part — the outside lights. I broke out in a cold sweat remembering some of the disasters of the past, like the time I managed to fry almost all of the lights by somehow supplying power to both ends of the strand. I am not kidding about this; it really happened. How, I don’t know but it did. Trust me. I know what I am talking about.

So, I studied what I wanted to do and went over it in my mind how to get all the lights going in the same direction, using the colored ones in one area, the white ones in another and remembering to put the male end of the strand next to the female end of the strand. I know that sounds complicated to some of you, but that is how it is done. Believe me, I have learned the hard way, from experience.

So, anyway, I finally get the outdoor lights assembled and got ready for the big moment — plugging them in. I said a little prayer: Please let there be lights! And, viola! There were lights! Just in time, too. A late afternoon storm was heading our way, but I didn’t worry because the lights and extension cords were all labeled for outside use.

It rained and the lights stayed on — for a while. About 8 o’clock that night, Rusty the Wonder Dog needed to go outside and that’s when I noticed it — there were no lights in my yard. Oh, rats, (or something like that) I said to myself.

To shorten this already too long of a story, suffice it to say that I checked fuses, reset the GFI (look it up like I did), replaced one extension cord and after three days of the lights going out at 8 p.m. every night, they have been on now for almost two weeks. Maybe it was the rain, which stopped after three days, I don’t know. I prefer to think it was Clark Griswald’s fault because at precisely the time the lights went out the first time, a television station was airing the classic movie National Lampoon’s Christmas, with Chevy Chase as the bumbling Griswald. A coincidence? I don’t think so.