A Christmas Morning Memory

By Leo Buscaglia

I didn’t believe her. Angels had better things to do with their time than watch to see if I was a good or bad boy. Even with my limited seven year old wisdom, I had figured out that, at best, the Angel could only watch over two or three kids at a time...and why should I be one of them? The odds were certainly in my favor. Yet Mama, who knew all things, had told me time and time again that the Christmas Angel knew, saw, and evaluated all things and could not be compared to anything we ignorant human beings understood. Anyway, I wasn’t all that sure that I believed in the Christmas angel. All my friends in the neighborhood told me that it was Santa Claus who came on Christmas Eve and that they’d never heard of an angel who brought presents. Mama had lived in America for years and blessed her new land as her permanent home, but she was forever Italian as polenta, and for her, it would always be an Angel. “Who’s this Santa Claus?” she’d say. “And what has he to do with Christmas?”

In addition, I must admit that I wasn’t too impressed with our Italian Angel. Santa Claus was always more generous and imaginative. He brought my friends bicycles, Tinker Toys, puzzles, candy canes, and baseball mitts. Italian Angels always brought apples, oranges, assorted nuts, raisins, a small panettone (cake), and some little, round licorice candies we called bottone de prete (priest’s buttons) because they looked like buttons you’d find on a priest’s cassock. Also, the Angel always included in our stockings some imported chestnuts, hard as rocks. I must admit that I never understood what to do with the chestnuts. We finally gave them to Mama to be boiled into submission, then peeled and eaten for dessert after Christmas dinner. It hardly seemed a very appropriate gift for a child of six or seven. The Christmas Angel couldn’t be too bright I often thought.

When I questioned Mama about this, she would only say that it was not for me, “still wet behind the ears” to question an angel, especially the Christmas Angel.

During this particular Christmastime, my seven-year-old behavior could hardly have been said to be exemplary. My brother and sisters, all older than I, never seemed to cause any problems. I, on the other hand, always seemed to be the center of them all. At mealtime, I hated everything. I was required to take a bite of everything, and each meal became a challenge. It was Felice (as my family called me) against a world of adults. It was I who never remembered to close the chicken coop, who would rather read than take out the garbage, and who, most of all, challenged everything that Mama and Papa did, felt, or commanded. In short, I was a brat.

For a least a month prior to Christmas, Mama warned me, “You’re being a very bad boy, Felice. Christmas Angels don’t bring presents to brats. They bring a stick from a peach tree suitable for hitting on the legs. So, you’d better change your ways. I can’t be good for you. Only you can choose to be good.”

“Who cares?” was my response. “The Angel never brings me anything I want anyway.” I did very little over the next weeks toward mending my ways.

As it is in most homes, Christmas Eve was a magical time. Even though we were very poor, we always had special foods to eat. After dinner, we sat around the wood stove that served as the center of our lives during the winter months and talked and laughed and listened to stories. We would spend much time planning for the next day’s feats, for which we had been preparing all week. Being a Catholic family, we would all go to confession, after which we’d decorate the tree. The evening would end with a small cup of Mama’s wondrous zabaglione. Never mind that it has some wine in it, Christmas only came once a year!

I’m sure that it is true of all children, but I found it almost impossible to get to sleep on Christmas Eve. My mind danced. Not with thoughts of sugar plums, but with serious concerns like the possibility that the Christmas Angel would miss my house or run out of gifts. I would become very excited over the possibility that Santa Claus would forget we were Italian and stop in anyway, not realizing that I had already been visited by the Angel. Then I’d get a double dose of everything!

How is it that Christmas morning, no matter how little sleep was had the night before, never presents a wake-up problem? So it was on this particular morning. It was just a matter of moments after hearing the first movement before we were all up and charging for the kitchen and the clothesline, on which were hanging our stockings and under which were our bright, newly polished shoes.

It was all as we had left it the night before except that the shoes and stockings were stuffed to capacity with the Christmas Angel’s bounty, that is, all except mine. My shoes, shining brightly, were empty. My stockings, hanging loosely over the line, were equally empty except for one, from which emerged a long, dry peach limb.

I saw the looks of horror on the faces of my brother and sisters. We all stopped in our tracks. All eyes went to Mama and Papa, then back again to me.

Mama said, “Ah, I knew it. The Christmas Angel never misses a thing. The Christmas only leaves what we deserve.”

My eyes welled up with tears. My sisters reached out to comfort me, but I fought them off savagely. “I didn’t want those dumb presents,” I cried. “I hate the dumb, old Angel. There’s no Christmas Angel anyway.”

I fell into Mama’s arms. She was a large woman, and her lap had saved me from despair and loneliness so many times before. I saw that she was crying as she comforted me. So was Papa. My sisters’ loud sobbing and my brother’s sniffling filled the early morning silence.

After a while, my mother spoke as if talking to herself. “Felice isn’t a bad boy. He just acts bad from time to time. The Christmas Angel knows that. He could have been good if he wanted to, but this year he chose to be bad. There was nothing else the Angel could do. Maybe next year he’ll decide to be better. But for now, we can all be happy again.”

Everyone immediately emptied the gifts in their shoes and stockings onto my lap. “Here,” they said, “take this.” Within a short while the house was again full of chatter, smiles and laughter. I had received more than my shoes and stockings could ever carry.

Mama and Papa had gone to mass early, as usual. They had collected the chestnuts and set them on their way to hours of boiling in a wonderful spiced water, another pot among sauces simmering. Delicate odors emerged like magic potions from the oven, all on the way to becoming our miraculous Christmas dinner.

We got ready for church. As was her usual practice, Mama checked each of us in turn, a collar adjuster here, hair pulled back there, a soft caress for each. It was my turn last. She set her very large brown eyes on min. “Felice,” she said, “do you understand why the Christmas Angel couldn’t leave you gifts?”

“Uh-huh,” I answered.

“The Angel reminds us that we will always get what we deserve. We can’t escape it. Sometimes it’s hard to understand, and it hurts and makes us cry. But it teaches us what’s right and wrong, and we get better every year.”

I’m not certain that at the time I really understood what she meant. I knew only that I was sure I was loved, that whatever I had done, I had been forgiven, and that there would always be another chance for me.

I have never forgotten that Christmas so many years ago. Since then, life has not always been fair or offered me what I thought I’d deserved or rewarded my being good. Over the years, I know that I have been selfish, bratty, thoughtless, and perhaps, at times, even cruel...but I have never forgotten that where there is forgiveness, sharing, another chance given, and unwavering love, the Christmas Angel is always present and it’s always Christmas.