Chapter 18: That Christmas Past

It’s often hard to remember just what was unique about a given Christmas season in our past.  When I was a little kid, I tended to recall Christmases past by what long-anticipated gift I got that year. The Christmas in this picture was the year I got a target for bow shooting, a new Bible, new shoes (lost somewhere in the paper), and a tire for my bike. I've written about it before, but I remember it most as the first Christmas when my little brother Jim was old enough to enjoy toys.

The Christmases of my college years are marked by what house I returned home to, and later by travels to see my wife-to-be; in early parenthood, Christmases are marked by which children have entered the world and dolls and bikes and videotaped angels in the snow. But I confess, after age fifty-five, Christmases become a blur of indistinguishable smiles and photographs chronicled most accurately by the age of grandchildren half-lost in the gift-wrap on the floor.

Some Christmases even in adulthood stand out. In our family, for instance, Christmas 2015, was the last time we all gathered at the family homestead in Waverly, Kansas. For each member of my family, that Christmas plays like an old silent movie of horse-drawn memories.

These thoughts have little to do with Enoch’s story but for the fact that it was that same Christmas, in 2015, that Enoch’s father had just begun a 2.5 year prison sentence. In fact, on December 20, a Sunday, ten days after his arrest, Enoch’s mother went to the jail to pick up her husband. She knew that the law did not allow more than ten days detention without a trial. But when she arrived at the jail, standing at the counter of the police station, she saw her husband with a black hood over his head. He was being transferred to a prison. The officers repeated some made up charges, though he had he still not been allowed to see his lawyers.  Brokenhearted, Enoch’s mother returned home to her two sons without their father. That was the first day of Christmas week, 2015.

Christmas fell on Friday that year. On the Monday before, Enoch went to school as usual still wondering about his father’s future but unable to share any of his thoughts with teachers or friends who knew nothing about what had happened at their church eleven days. As he sat in his first class, the “Home Room” teacher passed out a routine memo, a reminder that there would be no Christmas celebration allowed in the school that week. 

This ban was not only on nativities and things relating to the birth of Christ (such things are also banned in American public schools). It applied to all things Christmas: No Santa hats. No jingle bells. No exchange of red papers (gifts). Students were not even to talk of that European holiday that is not allowed in China. So when I asked Enoch how it felt that first Christmas when his father was not home, he shrugged and said it passed like any other school day. 

[Note: By 2018, the ban on Christmas decorations in China extended to retail stores as well as schools. Does this sound familiar? Until recently, saying “Merry Christmas” was nearly banned in the US.]  

The memo saying that December 25 would pass unnoticed was not taking away a holiday the other Chinese students knew to celebrate, because it is not a part of Chinese culture. No. The memo was issued because since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, it is more and more popular for Chinese students to adopt the festivities of Western culture—especially those that promote retail sales such as Valentine’s Day and Halloween. I saw this myself at some Chinese schools in late October, 2014.

That first year of his father’s imprisonment was especially hard for Enoch and his family. Amber, the chosen English name of Enoch’s mother, felt she had to be strong for her two sons, and she was. Very strong. Enoch told me he rarely saw her cry for those 2.5 years. The first time he remembered seeing her cry was November 17, 2016, not long after receiving the letter from prison. 

Looking back on it from 2019, Enoch has told me that his mother cried herself to sleep many nights during those thirty months, but he and his brother did not know this at the time. There are many things in life we do not notice at the time. Likewise, Enoch did not see his mother cry upon reading this letter, but the letter mentions something that Enoch would later call a small miracle. And it was that miracle that brought the tears first to Enoch's eyes and then to his mother's.

Grammatical Note: The two words "Christmas Past" echo Dickins' A Christmas Carol and the "Ghost of Christmas Past." In that usage, "past" is an adjective, often invoking wonderful memories of days gone by. You'll notice that this chapter title uses the verb form of the word: "passed" ... as in "that day went by." 

[On to Chapter 13]