Woe, Woe, Woe, Merry Christmas

Now, when I'm home, my nephew Tony and I go riding around Columbus looking at opulent houses with their Christmas lights. We ride through Upper Arlington and Bexley. Our threadbare neighborhood never had much in common with those locales. Tony and I just ogle the lights in those pricey suburbs anyway. And, after some silence, we'll concur: We ain't seen the lights strung around a house -- or castle -- that can compete with Jimmy Burke's Christmas lights.

-- Wil Haygood

A Most Gloomy Christmas Eve

That Christmas Eve, my father was back in the hospital. He'd suffered a massive heart attack earlier that year, and now he was lying before us -- me, my older brother, and my mother -- under a thin blue hospital blanket, the machinery of his room chirping like the bird section in a pet shop. Speaking seemed to wear him out, and we filled up the room with our hushed, unconvincing talk. When we finally said our shaky goodbyes, our shoes squeaked all the way to the elevator.

We were on our way to church next. And when we pulled into the parking lot, we tried to arrange our faces in some acceptable form of Christmas hopefulness. But by the time we reached the main entrance, I couldn't hold my composure anymore. I was 19, and I hadn't cried so openly since I was a little boy. "I can't do it," I said to my mother. "I can't go in there." She understood immediately.

"Okay," she said, "we'll go home." She leaned in discreetly to my brother, pulling him back, and said we were going.

My brother, though, was furious and stomped behind us. Once he got in the front seat, he said something -- I can still hear the gnarled pitch of his voice, but I can no longer recall the words -- about our coming all this way for nothing, and that's when I let a wild left hook fly. My arm was stifled by the sleeve of my wool blazer, and mostly I hit the back of his head rest. But he seemed ready for it and, turning quickly, leaned over to hit me back, but I had more room to duck away. My mother screamed for us to stop, and for the next few seconds we fogged the car up with our heavy breathing.

When we got home, we turned on the Christmas tree, the specials on TV, and sat mostly in different rooms of the house, bracing ourselves for the metallic ring of the telephone.

-- David Rowell

A Loss Magnified

One year our calico cat, Sociable, drowned in the neighbor's almost-empty swimming pool, in a foot or two of water. They found her the day after Christmas and my dad went and got her, and buried her in the vacant acres behind the subdivision, and then I was told. I cried all day, and then the next day, and then the day after that. I tried to play with my new stuff -- the Bionic Woman sports car with the "sabotaged brakes" action, so your Bionic Woman doll could stop the speeding car by sticking her platform-sandaled feet out on the concrete -- but mostly I was wrapped in a child's sense of melodramatic grief over poor Sociable (who wasn't). My eyes crusted from crying. I played "A Star Is Born (Evergreen)" on the piano again and again. On the fourth day my mother told me that it was time to stop making such a show of myself.

And she was right. Even now, the only thing I remember about that cat is that she drowned in the neighbor's pool, on Christmas, and that I had overcried.

-- Hank Stuever

Seeing the Light, After It's Dimmed

My memories of Christmas have been as glowing as could be. Literally. For years, when I thought back on Christmas morning, the image it called up was of unalloyed joy -- of me and my five sibs and a mountain of presents, all bathed in a bright epiphany of light.