The Reindeer Keeper

I remember the evening my parents walked into our house situated on a lane with their arms full of bags and boxes; some wrapped and decorated with curly ribbon. They’d been downtown Christmas shopping. They’d been gone a long time. While our father took the babysitter home, our mother told my brother and me to go upstairs and get our pajamas on; then come back down and stay in the living room while she put things away. I watched her put one box on the dining room table as I hurried up the front stairs. When our father returned, we were told to sit by the tree in the living room. I could hear them whispering in the dining room. Then in they walked with my mother carrying that box she’d placed on the dining room table. Sitting in a chair by the tree my mother handed the box to my father. I can see him standing there still wearing a tie. He was always wearing a tie. Sometimes he’d be wearing a tie as he strung the tree with strands of blue lights. My father loved those blue lights....

Every Christmas a big, smiling, plastic Santa Claus sitting in his sleigh with his reindeer hitched up and ready to go hung above the intersection of the two main streets of the downtown where I grew up. When the wind blew really hard off the river the sleigh appeared as if it was in flight. And when it was snowing many of the shoppers in a hurry slowed down to catch a glimpse of the jolly old man waving at them through the snowflakes. Looking back I believe what mattered to those rushing by was the fact that Santa and his sleigh were right where they had been for as long as most could remember. That Santa and that sleigh and those reindeer were a holiday tradition in the community. I loved going Christmas shopping downtown. My aunt would take my cousins and me on a Saturday. We'd spend the day-having lunch at a favorite spot of all the locals. It had plastic tablecloths and big glasses of chocolate milk. Conversations were friendly. Everyone knew everyone. Families caught up w...