Merry Christmas
Thursday is Christmas Eve. Friday will be the 76th Christmas I will have enjoyed.
When I was a mere kid back in the late 1930’s my younger brother, Phil, and I had come to look forward with great expectations to waking up Christmas morning and discovering the wondrous gifts Santa left under our tree. We believed that Santa Claus made his trip to each home worldwide in his sleigh pulled by eight reindeer. Back that far Rudolph and his red nose had not made an appearance yet.
The idea was to get to bed early on Christmas Eve and sleep in an effort to speed up the arrival of the next morning. However, expectations overcame the ability to sleep easily.
One of my first lessons of life came on Christmas Eve in 1939. Phil and I were in bed shortly after sundown diligently striving to fall asleep. As fate would have it, I heard some subdued talking and rustling of paper through our bedroom door.
Phil and I stealthily rolled out of bed and peeked through the keyhole to see what the commotion was. I half anticipated I would see Santa through that keyhole jovially placing Christmas presents all around the perimeter of the tree. Somehow, I feared commission of some great sin in discovering Santa in the act of delivering the presents. I reasoned he did not wish to be seen in his altruistic act of benevolence.
The light from the living room glowed through the keyhole into our bedroom. I could see through the aperture mother and dad busily wrapping gifts in Christmas paper and placing them around the tree. No Santa in sight! No sleigh resting on our roof. No reindeer!
The myth of Santa exploded in my young mind. The source of those Christmas gifts each year was and had been our mother and father—not Santa Claus!
A life lesson learned. There is NO Santa Claus. It was a bitter pill to swallow.
Years later I would learn a second life lesson in a completely different way.
On December 7, 1941 the Empire of Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. I was eight years old. I did not even know such a place existed much less what a war was.
I came to understand we were involved in World War II in both Europe and Asia. As the months and years passed by my good friend, Jerry and I learned how to watch the skies and identify enemy aircraft. We watched the movies each week. John Wayne, almost singlehandedly, eradicated Japanese soldiers from Iwo Jima. I was learning from the long series of war movies that we Americans were essentially invincible. Wayne was unscathed as he stormed beaches exterminating those horrible Japanese soldiers right and left. The good guy killing all those bad guys.
It was all propaganda. In my younger years I had never heard the word—propaganda—much less understand what it was or meant. Nevertheless, it was clear to me that the Japanese were some kind of subhuman, sneaky, homicidal beings that would slit your throat in a heartbeat.
Fast forward to March 1952. I was in the Air Force enroute to Japan on a troop ship. When we docked at Fuchu, in Tokyo Bay, I was looking over the ship’s railing down onto the docks. Scores of Japanese people were scurrying around doing various errands. All those John Wayne movies prompted me to think they were all subhuman, sneaky, homicidal beings that would slit my throat in a dark alley somewhere if given the chance.
I was in Japan from March 1952 until September 1953. In that time I traveled all over Japan, Okinawa, Korea, Guam, Philippines, and Iwo Jima. I became acquainted with a number of Japanese and others. They were decent and polite—not at all like those I had seen in the John Wayne movies.
My second life’s lesson has been that ordinary people, anywhere in the world, are basically the same. They aspire to a roof over their heads, food on the table, good education for their kids and a peaceful life. Not unlike ordinary people in the United States.
It is the world’s leaders we have to fear.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.
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