Category: writing

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Brown Paper Bags for Christmas

My dad saw me running down the aisle toward him. He opened up his arms, and to his surprise, I ran right past him. I had my eyes on what was behind my father on that Christmas Eve. All the children who had come to church that night received their annual Christmas brown paper bag of goodies: peanuts in the shell, an orange, and maybe even a stick of gum and some candy.

Christmas Eve was such a magical night when I was a little girl. The large, old red brick church building was filled with light and children and singing. A large tree, brought in from a local farm, would fill the front of the sanctuary. We would tell the Christmas story as only children can. When I was in Kindergarten, I was a Christmas angel with large, white, glittery cardboard wings, a white robe, and a jealous little sister. (She still remembers how she felt that Christmas Eve!)

Then home we would go, carrying our paper bags which were missing a peanut or two, across the street to the red brick parsonage to eat Christmas cookies and open presents. Both of my parents had always opened presents on Christmas Eve when they were young and so we followed that tradition when I was young. Presents opened, cookies eaten, it was back to church for the midnight service. When I was very little, I remember wearing my pajamas to church and lying down on the pew in the balcony, listening to my mom sing as the organ played.

Ten years ago, my father was the preacher at a wedding. He told the story of that little girl who only had eyes for the brown paper bag, bursting with good things. And how on that day, I only had eyes for my husband-to-be as I walked down the aisle.

When Ed and I arrived at our wedding reception, one of our friends had placed two brown paper bags filled with peanuts and an orange at our table. Christmas had come early that year.

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For Want of a Match

The red tip fell apart as it struck the worn black edge of the box. It simply crumbled, so that nothing was left except a bare wooden stick without a flame. It was my last match.

My fingers were not frozen, as the character’s fingers in Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” were. The man tries so desperately to get his matches to burn. His feet are wet, his fire was doused by falling snow from the tree above, and he grasps a whole bunch of matches in his frozen hands in an attempt to light them. He succeeds in lighting the matches; but they all fall into the snow, extinguishing, leaving him to an icy death.

Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Match Girl faces a similar fate. She is not alone in the Yukon Territory like the desperate man above. She must sell her matches before she goes home, however, or she will face a beating from her father. She lights match after match to stay warm on a wintry New Year’s Eve, until finally her grandmother comes down to take her up to heaven. Her frozen body is found with a burnt bundle of matches in her hand and a smile upon her face.

I was only trying to light a candle. That last match was for want, not necessity.

Do you remember when you learned how to strike a match? My father taught me when I wasn’t more than seven or eight years old. I had to learn to be sure and quick and to strike the match firmly against the black strip, then move my fingers away from the flame quickly lest they get scorched. I soon become the family candle-lighter. I would light the candles we had on our dining room table in the evenings before dinner, which added a nice little touch to our family meal.

I used to have a stockpile of matchboxes. Matchbooks from weddings, white with little gold bells on the front, the happy couple’s names embossed on the cover. Boxes of matches from bars and restaurants, free advertising placed in the ashtrays. I would take them even though I didn’t smoke; I had plenty of other uses for a good box of matches.

It is now illegal to smoke in restaurants and bars in Illinois. Matchboxes, to my dismay, have all but disappeared. Including from my kitchen cabinet. I scrounged around and found a long-tipped, liquid-fueled lighter.

Lighting candles with a lighter just isn’t the same. There’s not that satisfying scratchy feel you get when lighting a match. A lighter doesn’t have that same, good sulfur-y smell. My aunt always keeps a book of matches in the powder room next to her kitchen. A good guest, after using the facilities, will light a match, the overpowering smell the whole purpose of lighting that match. A lighter just wouldn’t do.

I suppose I’ll have to give in and go buy some matchboxes instead of getting them for free.

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