A merry little Christmas story

“What if I choose not to believe?”

It’s a line from one of my favorite movies of the holiday season, “The Santa Claus.”  

I’ve always believed in the power of mystery and magic and the older I get the more I understand that my attitude towards everything really is everything.

I have an old rotary dial telephone in my kitchen—not wired in—but yet a direct line to the North Pole.

No “elf on the shelf in my house.” I’m the elf.

I can call the big guy in the red suit at any given hour on any given day and have a heart to heart.

My grandchildren know about the phone too, and this time of year it’s an especially popular item in my neck of the woods. It’s mystery and magic.

My grandchildren also know that the North Pole never says a word in return. Instead, the other end of the line has the best listening skills of all. The North Pole is a “mouth closed, ears open, presence available,” kind of mystery and magic connection.

You’d be surprised how many times I’ve picked up that phone, too, and made my own wishes known to the mystery and magic. Granted I’ve asked for “grown up” things—patience (because sometimes mine lasts about as long as my pinkie finger in a clothespin,) world peace, a break on my taxes, and a rush job on getting answers for some of my “issues.”

Why, just the other day after fighting my way into the porch with the “real” big Christmas tree I’d purchased and laying waste to the rug with sawdust after a pathetic attempt to saw a slice off the trunk, did I call the North Pole.

I was good and hot under the collar. I told the North Pole all about it and that I was swearing off the one-woman Paul Bunyan exploration for a Christmas tree. Next year I was going to instruct my “honey-do” to  “pick whatever tree you like honey, it’s not my department.”

Don’t get me wrong; home queens like me have got it together. My mind is a multi-tasking bionic unit like nothing man will ever know. I’m one of a kind. And I also know what a good Christmas tree looks like. I just shouldn’t volunteer to put it up.    

After my rant to the North Pole, a calmer me went back to the tree, now cringing in the corner of the porch—and mathematically evaluated whether or not 15 strings of LED lights, 20 years of ornaments and children’s Christmas art work would be enough to cover the monstrosity I had just purchased. 

At closer attention, I realized the woman with the saw had hacked off the trunk just below the two good branches on the bottom, leaving no room for the tree stand. Awesome. The tree would be just the right height for a dog to pee on—but that’s another story.

Merry Christmas everyone. Don’t stop believing in the mystery and the magic.