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Show Page A20 Thursday, December 21, 1989 Park Record Atinafl. ap 14 (Gcnxes rk City ooo BY TOM CLYDE Pa s Sk ATG3. wishes one and all a White and Merry Christmas I r A V 1L Please join us on Christmas Eve at Steeps at the base for our Christmas Eve program and Candlelight Service, followed by our annual Torchlight Parade Sunday, Christmas Eve, December 24, 1989 10:00 a.m. Santa will be at the summit for photographs 11:00 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Santa skis the mountain 4:30 p.m. Christmas Program at Steeps 5:00 p.m. Candlelight Service at Steeps 5:30 Torchlight parade led by Jolly Old St. Nick himself! Santa Claus will also be at Park City Ski Area on Friday, December 23 and on Christmas Day, greeting skiers on the plaza, skiing on the mountain and passing out Christmas treats. Special-combination gift-giving Having your birthday at Christmas is probably no fun. Mine is in the spring, but my brother's birthday bir-thday is today. Not only is his birthday just a few days ahead of the Main Event, it's also the shortest day of the year. I think it bothered him, growing up, that his birthday was thoroughly camouflaged by the holidays. If that wasn't enough, it was also shrunk to a fraction of the size of normal, summer time, barbecue on the patio birthdays. Christmas birthdays just kind of slide by. Of course, we tried to make something of it. There were always a few birthday presents for him. When we remembered that it was his birthday, birth-day, we would retrieve them from under the Christmas Tree and ceremoniously give them to him. They were always wrapped in the nicest, most appropriate wrapping paper for the occasion occa-sion variations of red and green with "Joy to the World" written on it, or holly. You know, real birthday bir-thday material. Then before the wrapping paper hit the floor, we were out of the house to do some "last minute Christmas shopping" to fill in the gap under the tree. "I can't believe you forgot again this year," my sister would say. Some years, the approach was to get one really nice gift for both Christmas and birthday, killing two birds with one stone. These deluxe, special combination gifts never really looked all that different dif-ferent from the Christmas gifts others received, except that there was an extra card attached. People Peo-ple think the gift exchange custom for both Christmas and late December birthdays can be fully discharged by laying it on a little thicker at Christmas. I suspect that the December birthday people would not agree. A 900 page novel, in hard back, might cover for both occasions, where a 300 pager might have taken care of either one on its own. People with December birthdays tend to read a lot of James Michner's work. Over the years, I've noticed a pattern. In those years that I forget his birthday, he seems to remember mine with something really nice. I get a card and a phone call, we go to lunch, and there is a package from Nordstroms or Banana Republic. Those boxes are filled with guilt and a nice shirt. Somehow, this makes his December birthday even harder to remember. So I've always kind of felt sorry for my brother on his December, shortest day of the year, easily forgotten and overlooked birthday. I've also been as guilty as anybody of overlooking it. But not this time around. My old, buttoned down brother hits forty this year. There's no overlooking something like that, even though I suppose he would be happier hap-pier this year if his birthday could be tucked behind some large poinsettia and ignored. Since I was in Shopko anyway picking up some stocking stuffers for the dog, I was able to get a really nice present for the old guy. It's a "Do-It-Yourself Hair Transplant Kit." I think he'll really enjoy that, and his yellow lab is a pretty close color match for a donor. As he enters his Ben-Gay years, its nice to look back on all the fond memories of our growing up together. Little brothers all idolize their older brothers, even when they are being lassoed and hog-tied in back yard rodeos. Older brothers do great things, like let you wash their car. Having an older brother is a real advantage. You can count on an older brother to "break-in" parents. By the time the youngest comes along, they've heard it all before. Things that caused full scale parental panic when he did them were dismissed as "just a phase" when I came along with a repeat performance. His campaign for a car of his own was a two year effort, with many set backs. When I came along, the folks announced that they were not about to let me take Mom's car and leave her stranded, so I better figure out what I could afford, af-ford, and they'd float the loan. Of course, forty does not seem as old to me now as it did years ago. I realize that it is still possible to turn forty and chew solid food with your own teeth. Some of us appear to be going for forty without being bald, though not everybody makes it. But forty does sound different from thirty, or even thirty-nine. At forty, the range of gifts that I considered was a little different. A football was definitely out of the question. A nice, conservative tie seemed appropriate in a terrible sort of way. My brother actually wears a tie every day (though not on weekends yet; that doesn't happen until people hit 50). As people get older, they should avoid those bright colors and bold patterns in their ties. Something in a dark color, with just a little pattern would be great. A navy blue tie with little Geritol bottles all over it would be just right. r I m i i BY TEBI OUR Bright hopes and promises... My close friends know I don't send out Christmas cards. Oh, I buy them every year, and I sometimes even get the stamps and I put them first on my desk and then next to my bed and then over on the dresser and sometimes in the secretary. I just never seem to be able to sit down and write meaningful messages to all those people I think of fondly, so often. So this year, when I sent off a couple of packages to family members I enclosed one of my multiple selections of Christmas cards and I found myself, much to my great surprise, scribbling little lit-tle notes. And in rereading the words I saw a patternwish pat-ternwish and hope cropped up a lot. Years ago a man from a movie company talked to me about dreamers. I thought his observation was noteworthy since he spent his days working with dream weavers. "There are dreamers and there are doers," he told me. "And there are the rare few the dreamers who do." Wishes and hopes and dreams and prayers and faith it is the season... There are nights now I don't sleep. It is a phase I guess, but for someone who has spent her life sleeping at the drop of a pillow it is new. When I woke up the other night the moon was bright and it looked as if in some glass domed way the neighborhood was carefully lit and turned upside down and then back up again so the snowflakes would fall softly just so. The fireplace had a few embers still glowing and the living room didn't need any light between the fire and the reflective snow outside. So I sat on the stairs, like a little kid with my knees tucked under my nightgown and I looked at the tree and I was filled with hopes and wishes and dreams and prayers and promises... There is something both secret and private about a house at Christmas in the middle of the night. A feeling of camaraderie develops between the silent music boxes and the stationary toy train and the motionless rocking horse. The teddy bears sit mute on the piano and the little stuffed mouse stays still at the base of the grandfather clock. They are just things but they have been a part of my life so many years now I look at them with a kind of reverance for their survival. I have packed them and moved them from house to house and I have shared them with friends and family. The rocking horse, could she talk, would rattle off a litany of children, now grown, who rode with great spirit on her back. The bears would talk of candy cane hugs from sticky-fingered children who tugged on arms and legs. The music boxes have been over wound by us all and still they play. On other Christmas nights in other homes I have shared my secret hopes and wishes and dreams and prayers with these inanimate objects because there is a sense of safety in doing that. This night I thought I heard little voices reminding me of promises pro-mises I had made and wishes that had come truc.The year I bought Randy the rocking horse I just wanted to know he would grow up straight and tall and free from harms way. The year I bought the silver doll ornament for Jenny I wished she would always keep her sense of curiosity and dramatically funny way of seeing the world. They are young adults now, those tow- headed toddlers I see so easily this night, and they are curious and happy and loving. I have watched several of my friends and family members suffer from illness and untimely deaths and serious depression this year. I tried to offer what comfort words can be but I hear hollow sounds echo from my lips and I see trite words come out on the pages of some Christmas card bought seasons ago. But the wishes are sincere. And the prayers come backed by faith. And dreams are offered to doers who can make them happen. And it strikes a vein with me that this is the season of hope and promise. That is what lights the dark night, that is what dances in the flames, months and years after the wrappings have been discarded, that is what is left to value above all else. May your new year be filled with bright hope and bright promise... JU4 i |